Thomas & Friends Y4083 Wooden Railway Engine Toy

Product Information

Features Soap-Sud covered Thomas with red funnel, soap suds covered Percy, bubble liquid car and hay covered Sir Topham Hatt's car. Thomas's very first prototype features four red wheels held in by nails, red and blue magnet guards, a wider chassis, no detailing, and no face.

Initially released with Bertram and the Scrap Cars; later reissued individually in 2012 and 2016 for limited release.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the line was overhauled and the majority of the models underwent major redesigns. The wooden funnel and smokebox were replaced with a separate plastic smokebox with a more realistic funnel. The tender engines received an additional upgrade, with a moulded plastic coal pile for their tenders. The Wooden Railway merchandise line for the Thomas & Friends franchise was created by Roy Wilson of Learning Curve in 1992, with the line becoming publicly available in 1993. These original models were primarily constructed with painted wood, along with metal used in the coupling magnets and axles and plastic for the wheels and faces. These models were relatively simple, with simple wooden stubs for the funnel and dome, while details such as windows, whistles and buffer beams were omitted.

Early 2002 (new larger face, bigger smokebox, wide boiler, no ledge on rear, new details, shorter dome, funnel hole removed) A total of fifteen characters exclusively from the Railway Series have been released in the Wooden Railway range. However, before Mike was introduced to the television series, a total of sixteen characters were released. While Whiff's model has the correct amount of wheels, this results in him being longer than engines who should be the same size as him.

Fisher-Price Track Adapter Parts for Thomas and Friends Wooden Train Sets

In late 2011, TOMY bought out Learning Curve and as such acquired the rights to the Wooden Railway line. They sold the products previously planned to be released by Learning Curve for early 2012. The products due to be released in late 2012 coinciding with the special Blue Mountain Mystery were cancelled because Learning Curve had only developed the computer generated prototypes, before they were acquired by TOMY. Most of these cancelled releases with the new CGI style models were re-constructed by TOMY and sold under their name and a few others were later released by Fisher-Price. TOMY held the licensing until the end of 2012. The Talking Railway Series was a range of interactive engines and playsets. The engines have special gold magnets which, when they are at a destination, will prompt the Fat Controller to greet them. This range is discontinued. At 25 years, Wooden Railway was the longest-running and most popular Thomas & Friends merchandise line (with ERTL being the second longest-running at 20 years). Thomas has the most variations of any character in the Thomas Wooden Railway, with more prototypes, changes, and variants than any other character in the range.

Harvey's model's cab is oddly short to accommodate his hook. He is also brown instead of maroon red and does not have a boiler.Features Winter Wonderland Thomas, Paint-Splattered Thomas and Breakfast Thomas; reissued in 2013 with the Breakfast Thomas being replaced with a Fish-Splattered Thomas. In 2007, several Wooden Railway products were recalled by RC2 Corp due to traces of lead in the paint, which posed a poisoning hazard. About 1.5 million products were recalled, although no cases of children being affected were reported. The recalled products included: