To me, life is like a thrift store, you never know what you’re gonna get, which is why every now and then I like going to them on my outings to see what interesting items are being brought in second-hand. Whether it be a rare vintage toy, a funny costume, or even a comically large pencil, the thrift stores never cease to amaze me every time I walk into them, I mean, look at this Wii Sports knockoff, for example:
As previously mentioned, I’ve always been interested in the show “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends”, and with that, I’ve been interested in some of the obscure information regarding the franchise including obscure and somewhat elusive merchandise. That being said, here are some Thomas-related thrift store finds that I thought were noteworthy.
First up is this sharpener made by a company named Deli, a company that specializes in stationary products, including rotary pencil sharpeners with unique designs. In 2016, they made one based off of Thomas the Tank Engine, which I’ve rarely ever seen pictures of online prior so this was a bit of an obscure piece of Thomas merchandising to me.
I find it quite funny how the sharpener can be accessed by basically dislocating Thomas’ face. Unfortunately, the sharpener is missing the bin on the back used to catch the pencil shavings but that doesn’t bother me, I’m quite happy to have something a little novel like this, though that face, especially when tilted, does give me the creeps.
Next up is the “Crash n Bang” Talking Thomas toy made by Golden Bear. The company Golden Bear is mostly known (within the Thomas fandom, anyway) for making simplistic and chunky plastic Thomas toys aimed at infants in a series called ‘My First Thomas’ (pictured below).
Previously, Golden Bear’s products were distributed in other countries such as North America and Japan by the company TOMY; these distributions seem to have ceased around 1999 and 2006 respectively, and items made around that time up until 2009 were subsequently exclusively distributed in European countries, making them somewhat elusive anywhere else, including the “Crash n Bang” Thomas, which was released in 2008.
Unfortunately, the screw for the battery compartment has been stripped, so I can’t check to see if there is battery corrosion or replace the batteries at the moment. While information of this toy is somewhat obscure, some images of the box can be found online showing the functions. The toy is pullback and is supposed to speak phrases whenever it bumps into any hard object such as a wall or the plastic accessories that come with the toy.
Even for how goofy the toy looks, it’s quite nice to have something this obscure and novel looking. The shocked face on it looks pretty accurate to the prop seen in the show. I reckon this was because the company Golden Bear had access to the master resin casts/moulds of the face props used on the TV show; I may get into more detail about that but that’s a topic for another time.
And finally, this:
What you are looking at here is a Chinese copy bootleg toy. This bootleg is based off of a Thomas toy made by TOMY for a Japanese series of toy trains called Plarail (released as Tomica World/Motor Road and Rail in some countries and later rebranded as Trackmaster).
Pictured below is a licensed TOMY Thomas:
While I’ve seen many bootlegs based off of the TOMY Plarail products surface online before (LCF’s ‘Player World’ series, Truck Master, and Yue Cheng’s ‘Southward’ series, just to name a few), this one was a new one to me that I had never seen surface online prior.
Here are some comparison images of ‘Huang He’ Thomas (right) next to the licensed TOMY Thomas (left). It’s quite scary how accurate it is, aside from the face moulds; compared to the face on the TOMY Thomas, either Thomas is on his mewing streak or had just won a lemon eating competition, eh?
And that about wraps up this blog. I may make more of these showing a wider variety of items I see at the thrift stores I go to, so stay tuned.