Say it ain’t so, Thomas
Somebody actually built this, which was kinda the point.
Sure, everything was better when you were a kid, but when it comes to Thomas the Tank Engine, everything was better when my 9-year-old kid was a kid–which obviously wasn’t that long ago.
Yup, Thomas the Tank Engine is now computer-generated. If it weren’t bad enough that hand-drawn animation has gone the way of, well, hand-drawn animation, now the creators of what was once a decent little kid’s show have cheaped out, scrapped those cool old train tables and likely off-loaded the whole shebang to some second-world computer-animation house to save some money and otherwise suck all the fun out of it.
The old shows used real-life toy trains and elaborate sets, replicating the magic of a kid putting his head on the floor while playing with toy trains to become a part of that world. You could appreciate the inventiveness of it all (along with the clever/subversive narrator choices like Ringo Starr and George Carlin). The new version has all the magic of a bad videogame.
I can only conclude that the people making it have decided that we’re all too stupid to notice, so we can just sod off. Worse, Thomas the Marketing Engine makes boxcars full of money, so ditching the old, slow and more expensive production method smacks of nothing but pure corporate greed.
Watching the new versions, I can only feel cheap, used, considered-to-be-stupid and obviously marketed-to. What’s next? Plastic Thomas trains instead of wood?
Ah, crap, that’s already happened, too.
You guessed it–I remain unimpressed.