The Mysteries of Merit - The Forgotten Brand

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. 

Picture: ThomasTankCollectables (Thomas Magazine, Issue No.1, 1987) 

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. 

Picture: ThomasTankCollectables (Thomas Magazine, Issue No.1, 1987)

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! 

Email: thomastankcollectables@hotmail.co.uk