Since the debut of the TV series back in 1984 various deleted scenes and rare stills have emerged from a wide array of sources, including books, magazines, posters and all sorts of miscellaneous merchandise. The View-Master reels are no exception - they include an intriguing selection of unusual images from the first and second series. In addition to the actual reels themselves, the boxes (top 1984, bottom 1990) are covered in colourful images from the classic series.
ThomasTankCollectables Archive 2016
View-Master allows the viewer to see a 3D image. The images are composed of two separate images, one showing the left perspective and the other right. These culminate to produce a seemingly three dimensional picture. When viewed through an actual View-Master you can see the depth of the picture, however this affect is not captured when photographed.
We have gone through the reels provided in the two View-Master sets above and two separate packs of reels, pictured below. In order to capture what is featured on the reels a digital camera was set up, looking through one of the two eye-pieces. Unfortunately some of the images appear distorted, however most of them are of good quality. You can judge for yourself, by watching the video below!
ThomasTankCollectables Archive 2016
We do not have all of the View-Master reels available from that time (1984-1986), but there is a good selection of them shown on the video. Please feel free to comment below, or get in touch via e-mail. Please do not use any of the images made available without seeking permission.
Many of you will be familiar with Merit, after all it was, along with ERTL, one of the first brands to manufacture Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise. That said there is little known about this mysterious brand of the 1980s and all that exists is the toys! A follower of ThomasTankCollectables, Mike Jones got in touch and sent us pictures of his extensive collection of Merit merchandise.
Picture: Mike Jones
Some of the items here you may recognise from our video of the 'Merit Big Big Set', in addition to that set Mike has also got a smaller scale set, Percy and some interesting rolling stock.
Note that once again the set is dated 1983.
Picture: ThomasTankCollectables
We have established where Percy and the yellow truck came from, as you will see in the leaflet below. However we have yet to find how Annie and Clarabel were released.
Picture: Mike Jones
As you can see the blue and yellow troublesome trucks came with the Percy set featured in the bottom right. There was also an orange troublesome truck released with the pull-along Percy. As for the boxed pull along Percy, Mike has one of those as well!
Picture: Mike Jones
This was where Mike found the leaflet shown above. Note the date above the 'Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends' logo - 1983. Hence why it is believed Merit were the first manufacturers to produce 'Thomas' merchandise. Is there a Thomas one of those?
Picture: Found on eBay (ThomasTankCollectables)
This one is slightly different to Percy, in that Thomas is a shape sorter toy. The Thomas for the Big Big Set also has shape spaces, clearly left over. It seems they just added a motor and a battery compartment for the motorised version.
Here you can see that that battery powered Thomas released with the Big Big Set was also released as a pull-along version, as was Thomas with Annie and Clarabel. Note that both engines have spaces to insert shapes despite not being provided with shapes to put in!
As for the smaller scale Thomas set, we have pictures of that as well.
Pictures: Top/R: Ricky (@ThomasTankMerch), L: found on eBay (ThomasTankCollectables)
To the best of our knowledge there was only ever one set like this produced, again dated 1983. However Thomas with Annie and Clarabel was also released separately.
Picture: ThomasTankCollectables
This Thomas is exactly the same as the Thomas released with the previous train set. Note the customised logo on the front and the interesting box art!
If anyone wants an alternative form of transport:
Picture: Found on eBay (ThomasTankCollectables)
Note the logo missing the '& Friends' and 'Based on the Railway Series by the Rev. W.Awdry'.
This baby walker Thomas comes with a Troublesome Truck. This is the only time this has been found with a truck. Aside from the truck, Thomas appears the same as above.
Merit were potentially taken over by ERTL, but this is just an observation.
Picture: ThomasTankColletables
This is a page from the ERTL catalogue of 1993, given to shop owners in the UK. Clearly the models featured here are very similar to those released by Merit in the 1980s. These toys are not featured in the ERTL catalgue of the previous year, 1992. Perhaps Merit were dormant after the 1980s and later bought by ERTL. But this is just speculation.
The Thomas, Percy and Toby models with rolling stock are very saimilar to models that were relesed under the name of 'Nylint' in America. These have also been seen in Shining Time ERTL packaging, clearly suggesting a link between Merit (possibly called Nylint in America) and ERTL.
All of the sets features here show a Union Jack and say they were made in Great Britain.
Argos
Argos appear to have been quick in adopting the Merit range as indicated by the clippings below. The first set to appear in Argos was the small scale set in the Autumn/Winter 1985 catalogue. This set was joined a couple of months later by the pull-along shape-sorter Thomas in Spring/Summer 1986. By Autumn/Winter of that year the small scale set had already been retired and was replaced by the Merit Big Big Set. This set remained for sale in subsequent catalogues until Spring/Summer 1989. The baby walker joined to form a trio in Spring/Summer 1988 and was the final Merit item left for sale by Autumn/Winter 1989. Further catalogues no longer feature Merit items.
Argos Catalogue Clippings:Prepared by ThomasTankCollectables
These clippings were taken from catalogues kindly provided by RetroMash, sadly he does not have catalogues for the year 1987 (Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter). You can look through the catalogues yourself here.
These clippings suggest that Merit was last sold in the UK in 1989, however this is based purely on Argos, the toys may have still be available in other retailers.
So what have we established?
Merit was a toy manufacturer that produced large plastic Thomas the Tank Engine toys during the 1980s, generally aimed towards younger Thomas fans.
They seem to have been in operation between 1983 and 1989. It seems unlikely that toys would have actually been released in 1983?
They appear to be one of the first manufactures for 'Thomas' merchandise and only seem to have produced the following characters: Thomas, Percy, Annie, Clarabel and various troublesome trucks.
They were potentially taken over by ERTL, but this is not substantiated.
There appears to be a link between Nylint and Merit.
The sets were made in Great Britain.
A big thank you to Mike Jones for providing pictures of his extensive collection of Merit items.
If anyone has any further information regarding Merit, please get in touch!
Those of you that are familiar with my old channel (Cyrill227ify) will know that one of my main collections is my VHS collection. I only collect videos released in the UK and I do not own every video produced in the UK, but I am not far off. Video tapes were one of the first things I started collecting and ultimately they were the reason I joined YouTube. It was exciting discovering the different videos that had been released over the years and trying to track them down, which was not easy!
This video shows every UK video I own, most of them are photographs but some of them are scans. In addition to the video I have also produced a spreadsheet of the videos I own in year order with rarity ratings based on my experience. I would be interested to hear if people agree or disagree with my rarity ratings.
