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Tomy being replaced by… Tomy?!

August 6th, 2007 · 9 Comments

Thomas TrackmasterVisit your friendly neigh­bor­hood Wal­Mart and you’ll likely find that the stan­dard Tomy Thomas Road and Rail items are rapidly being replaced by some­thing new: the Thomas & Friends Track­Mas­ter Rail­way Sys­tem. At first glance, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t even notice: the pack­ag­ing is iden­ti­cal to Tomy except for a red band on the left side. Since it’s a Thomas prod­uct, they have to make it as con­fus­ing as pos­si­ble: the pack­ag­ing is so sim­i­lar that most peo­ple would buy this think­ing it is Tomy. And the prod­uct inside looks sus­pi­ciously like Tomy. But it’s not: it’s from HiT, the giant licens­ing com­pany. At least, that’s what the pack­ag­ing says. And it also clearly says that it is not com­pat­i­ble with any other Thomas prod­ucts. Upon closer exam­i­na­tion, how­ever, the bot­tom of the engine is boldly stamped with the Tomy name. And a lit­tle test­ing showed that the engine is, in fact, com­pletely com­pat­i­ble with the old Tomy sets. So what’s dif­fer­ent? The track.

The track is dra­mat­i­cally improved. It is a sin­gle thick, molded plas­tic form very rem­i­nis­cent of the “fat track” that comes with some Take Along sets. Sure enough, not only does the new engine run on the old track, but the old engines run on the new track as well. The whole thing is just a com­pli­cated dis­guise for a track replacement.

My assump­tion is that HiT bought out the licens­ing rights, but then turned around and had Tomy do the man­u­fac­tur­ing anyway.

One note of inter­est… the new track has a new con­nec­tor sys­tem, one that is extremely sim­i­lar to the Take Along fat track con­nec­tors. There’s a prob­lem with this: I think it infringes on the track patent held by Fisher-Price for Geo­T­rax. If you look at the back of any Geo­T­rax track, you’ll find a patent num­ber. Research it, and you will see that it cov­ers a few basic tech­niques for con­nect­ing track. The first one of those seems to describe the Track­Mas­ter sys­tem exactly. Maybe noth­ing will come of it, but I think FP could have a case if they wanted it.

Tags: Train Toys

9 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Skarloey 1 // Aug 9, 2007 at 10:03 pm

    Any word if there will be a con­nec­tor avail­able to con­nect the blue Tomy to the Track­mas­ter. I guess we will have to go ebay or inter­na­tion­ally to get the cool new sets such as Knap­ford Station .

  • 2 Traindad // Aug 11, 2007 at 8:26 am

    I’m doubt­ful there will be a con­nec­tor. It looks to me like they are try­ing to make this com­pletely separate.

  • 3 thomasfan36 // Aug 16, 2007 at 4:11 pm

    Actu­ally I just picked up the remote con­trol set for my son (Thomas at Tid­mouth Sheds). There were two track adapters included in the pack so they are com­pat­i­ble with TOMY track.

  • 4 traindad // Aug 20, 2007 at 4:20 pm

    I think that’s great news. I think the Track­mas­ter series will do much bet­ter than the TOMY, but there are a lot of us that have a large amount of blue track sit­ting around!

  • 5 Skarloey 1 // Aug 24, 2007 at 2:44 pm

    TF36,

    I picked up a Fear­less Fred­die, the brochure stated that all sets include 2 adapters, good news! How is that TS set? We are look­ing at that set for a XMAS gift.

  • 6 Susan // Oct 1, 2007 at 8:54 am

    Hello,
    I have a ques­tion. We have Geo­t­rax, which my son loves. Do you know if this new Thomas track is com­pat­i­ble with Geo­t­rax ( we can con­nect them together and run trains on both?)
    Thank you.

  • 7 Bethany // Oct 2, 2007 at 8:28 pm

    Hi, Susan,
    I’m mar­ried to train­dad, does that make me train­mom?
    The Thomas Track­mas­ter can­not con­nect with Fisher Price Geo­T­rax, as much as we would all love for it to do so. The Tomy/Trackmaster trains don’t run on Geo­T­rax; it is close, but the wheels aren’t the same dis­tance apart for the two.
    As was noted above, at least the Track­mas­ter track seems to come with an adapter or two to con­nect it to the “old” Tomy blue track. This doesn’t help you if you only have Geo­T­rax, of course. (We bought a big set of Tomy before we found a deal on Geo­T­rax. We like Geo­T­rax much bet­ter.)
    Fisher Price, please come out with a Thomas train! =)

  • 8 Aussie Paul // Aug 1, 2008 at 11:52 pm

    Hi,

    I’m being thrust into the world of Thomas by my 2 year old who is obsessed w trains and Thomas. I’d like to by him a big set for his B-day, but don’t know which one.

    I have one wooden track set, but it’s a knock-off and is low chi­nese qual­ity. I have some “real” wodent Thomas trains, but was con­sid­er­ing switch­ing to the plas­tic tracks. the Tomy one seems the most pop­u­lar one to me, but I also see a lot of the “Take Along” brand ones. Which one do I buy? Does nay­one know if the 2 are compatible?

    Thanks!

  • 9 Jeff // Jan 30, 2009 at 1:11 am

    Just a note.. I have a son about to turn 3 and pur­chased him a very nice Wood set when he turned 2. Now he’s has enjoyed the wooden set for almost a year but their are a few negi­t­ives. 1> Water, he spills his water on the table some times and water and wood don’t mix to well.. warpage! 2> Enter his lit­tle sis­ter.. now 8 months and hard wooden track isn’t some­thing you want your 2 1/2 yr old swing­ing around or play­ing catch with his lit­tle sis­ter. So, some­thing to con­sider when buy­ing SET’s. Plas­tic or Wood! I’m get­ting him a NICE Tomy Plas­tic set for his 3rd birth­day. I’m pack­ing up the wood before some­one get’s hurt. As far as track­mas­ter. Looks a lit­tle bit too brit­tle, if I were to step on it in the dark, would it flex or SNAP?

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