Thomas Wood

Thomas Wood is a toy range of wooden train sets and vehicles based on Thomas & Friends produced by Fisher-Price who is owned by Mattel. It replaced the long-running and beloved Thomas Wooden Railway range in 2017, and lasted until 2021, when it was replaced by an improved version of the Wooden Railway range.

Background
In late 2017 Mattel announced that they would redesign Thomas Wooden Railway into Thomas Wood, using FSC approved premium beech wood. Items were redesigned in a new scale with details printed on exposed wood, described as a "contemporary" design which "highlights the natural warmth of wood". The line also features an emphasis on poseable human and animal figures, which can be placed in items such as passenger coaches, cargo cars, and road vehicles.

The backlash was immediate, with fans and parents criticizing the cheap look of the range, and kids preferring the older Wooden Railway toys. Mattel was forced to do damage control, and in 2019, reinstated fully-painted models. This still didn't help, so in 2021, Wood was unceremoniously discontinued in favor of bringing back the Wooden Railway range with an improved design that has been warmly-received by the fandom.

Why It Sucked

 * 1) To start with, all the engines look rushed and unfinished with exposed wood everywhere. Allegedly, it was because a consumer study found that kids thought the engines were completely made of plastic.
 * 2) * Due to this, this makes some of the engines like Diesel, Hugo and Winston looks like something out of a bootleg toy, not a real one.
 * 3) None of the engines have molded domes, it is claimed this is done because the domes on the Wooden Railway toys could be a choking hazard, when there is no proof of this being the case at all.
 * 4) The cost of it is way too high for something that looks cheap with the cost of $15 to $34.
 * 5) Mattel's response to it and how they handle the customers is really bad. Not only they ignore the user response in the Fisher Price website and showing the link to Fox News thinking all customers are teenagers, but also using the tired "It's made for kids." argument to dismiss the criticism of the users.
 * 6) Some of them are not even accurate to the TV Show models and CGI models. The worst example is all engines and rolling stock sharing the same common chassis to cut costs, as well as certain characters such as Annie, Clarabel, and Bertie having their entire mid-sections cut out to put a plastic figure in, Mattel apparently thinking kids were too dumb to imagine passengers getting on and off. In addition, tenders became simple blocks with details printed on, when in the Wooden Railway line, tenders were always accurate and, starting in 1998, had molded-plastic coal. They also removed key parts like head lamps which makes them look off.
 * 7) Flynn's 2018 model is very bad and arguably the worst of the bunch, as he looks WAY too square, doesn't have nearly enough paint and doesn't even have the molded water cannons that was the main selling point of his other toys.
 * 8) The track design was completely changed in order to force consumers to only buy Thomas Wood track if they wanted to expand their sets (though they did include adapters with the old BRIO-style track in the early sets to help the transition). Each piece of track also has the Thomas Wood logo stamped on them, which is obtrusive and immersion-breaking. When Wooden Railway was revived in 2021, the old track design was also brought back.
 * 9) In some marketing flyers, it is stated that these toys are designed to gain approval from millennial moms, which makes it seem like the toys are more aimed at the parents buying them rather than the kids playing with them.
 * 10) Another justification that Mattel used for the unpainted wood is so that parents can more easily tell what type of toy they are buying. This is very nonsensical, as though some parents had complained about tracks from other toy lines being incompatible, there were ways for them to tell what line it was, such as simply looking at the logo, coupling system or wheels. Not to mention, they did not do the same by leaving unpainted metal on their die-cast line.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Starting from 2019 they moved away from "exposed wood" look and went back to the full paint jobs of the Wooden Railway era, which managed to be a bit of an improvement, though that's only fixing one thing.
 * 2) * Eventually, the line was retired completely and replaced with a revival of the Wooden Railway line, which was a massive improvement.
 * 3) To its credit, the engines actually had some details not present on the Wooden Railway models, such as buffers and whistles.

Reactions
The Reactions to this are negative when it was release.

Video
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