TrainDad

Track­Mas­ter prod­ucts are hit­ting the shelves every­where, and I’m excited at the changes. The prod­uct line is improv­ing in numer­ous ways.

It’s all about track

You can never have too much track! HiT finally got it, and they are fill­ing the need with the Back­pack of Track and the Track Expan­sion Pack. Both are just packed full, lots and lots o’ track. Good stuff!

I noticed that the pack­ag­ing says “requires assem­bly.” Well, duh!

One of the Geo­T­rax advan­tages is their fan­tas­tic sys­tem of ele­vated track, and Track­Mas­ter is try­ing to com­pete. Every track set comes with a num­ber of ris­ers and ele­vated pieces. Unfor­tu­nately, these still use the same sys­tem as the old blue track. It’s not a sta­ble or sturdy as Geo­T­rax and really doesn’t allow for com­plex multi-level designs. Sim­i­larly, they have con­tin­ued to use the same bridge sys­tems — wimpy. Over­all, though, huge improve­ments here.

Remote con­trol

The cen­ter­piece of the Track­Mas­ter makeover is Thomas at Tid­mouth Sheds. This set even gets its own adver­tis­ing video! It’s a beau­ti­ful round­house and turntable, and of course that remote con­trol — they’ve learned some­thing from Geo­T­rax. If this is the future of Thomas toys, I like where it is going.

More rolling stock, bet­ter detail

Numer­ous trucks and track sets are now avail­able. I’m pleased to see both a focus on new rolling stock — these cars are what make up a real train, after all — and on much bet­ter detailing.

Lots of sets for the grandparents

And aunts, uncles, sib­lings… prod­ucts like these are easy gift options, and always hav­ing “one more set” out there to add to the col­lec­tion is good. Track­Mas­ter hits the ground run­ning. The prod­uct line has only been avail­able for a few weeks, but look at what is already available:

• Thomas at Tid­mouth Sheds
• Hard at Work at Brend­ham Docks
• Sodor Lum­ber Yard
• Thomas at the Station
• Sodor Cop­per Mine
• Birth­day Celebration
• Sodor Adven­ture Set

More activ­i­ties, bet­ter prices, and flexibility

Most of those sets con­tain a build­ing or fac­tory that is a good toy by itself; many have func­tion­ing parts that inter­est­ing. These are much more use­ful toys than the old Tomy sets! Sets can be had for as lit­tle as $15, which is bet­ter than past offers. And all sets come with adapters to con­nect them to the old blue track, so you aren’t aban­don­ing your cur­rent system.

All things con­sid­ered, HiT has made some huge steps to close up the gap with Geo­T­rax. They still have some weak­nesses, such as the lousy cou­pling sys­tem, but over­all this is a greatly improved line of products.