One of the many exciting Thomas things happening for the 80th this year has been the sudden shift in the direction for the toys. A lot of people have been fairly wondering what happened, and hopefully this “rejected” pitch that I presented to Mattel may provide some insight… 🧵

We’re posting this now because it has been enough time that everyone has seen these toys while still being relevant before the next Thomas generation arrives. Today is also the anniversary of Railway Series books 2 and 3, and my birthday! Hooray! Thanks for reading.

So what about the future? Although we’re not officially pursuing this pitch anymore, it was a fun exercise and we may revisit it on our own time as a hobby. Of course, if Mattel is interested in our work they are always welcome to contact us as we have more where this came from!

It will be interesting to see what Mattel does next as they are already straying further from their current direction of the "BOTched" toys, and with talks of another iteration of the CGI show coming next year, things may change just as quickly again...!

We didn’t get a single penny from this, and while disappointed that only a fraction of BOT came to fruition, I'm very proud of the impact we did make. The overwhelmingly positive reaction to these new toys has been vindicating and I feel is a testament to the value our pitch had.

It was very surreal to see the prototype Motorized Thomas be sold among other genuine works of art from Thomas history at this year’s Propstore auction. Especially with that very unique face. And it was signed by Hugh Bonneville!

The die casts also have very similar construction to our exploded view, and the design of the rods are almost identical to what we wanted to propose. There are other strange similarities like the incorrect dark red of our preliminary renders.

One of the most interesting details on this Thomas and the others released is the face. The shape/size of the eyebrows, as well as certain eye positions, don't match up with any existing official face reference and appear to only be for these toys. Draw your own conclusions...

…but then in January 2025, along with everyone else, we saw the Mattel Ruby Collection Thomas. We immediately noticed similarities between what we had shown them and what was being made.

Although Mattel’s representatives were initially very interested, they very suddenly shut us down and made it clear it was not happening. That was in July 2024; we stopped working any further on the pitch, and that was it.

Although our direction changed very little from the first few days of the project to the day we stopped, we suspect all that Mattel ended up seeing were these unfinished renders, which were shared with another Mattel contractor who had offered us help (April 2024).

Here’s an emotions sheet I made for Thomas, almost exclusively utilizing expressions from the books:

A lot of time was put into getting the faces correct. The characters are so expressive in the illustrations and we thought the books’ artstyle would be a good match to use the low-relief face format Mattel introduced in 2021.

In December 2023 I was asked to help put together a pitch for the future of the Thomas brand, with the toys at the center, titled Back on Track (BOT). The original 26 books served as the main basis and I handled the artwork, translating the illustrations into character designs.

🤔

Who doesn't love the troublesome trucks?

Of course, a big thanks to ThomasTankMerch and TDoc for the official prop drawings:

Skarloey is by far my most diverse model in terms of materials, utilizing brass, styrene, acrylic, PLA and resin. Branching out from the usual standard gauge was a lot of fun; these are just the perfect size. This Little Old Engine has certainly won his way into my favorites...

"Skarloey had been to the works to be mended. He felt much better." I'm excited to present my first narrow gauge engine replica: Skarloey!

Thank you all for your support over the years. ...the reason I'm making this post today is because I actually have a really special model I've been saving for the right occasion. I put a lot of time, care and love into this one, so I'm very excited to show you all this Thursday!