In 1998 ERTL made a series of collector cards for the Thomas the Tank Engine range. The collector cards were printed on thin cardboard but the bright colourful illustrations provided by Owen Bell more than made up for the rather low quality cards. Today we are going to be having a look at the short lived range of cards made available.
There were 60 cards in Series 1, numbered 1 to 60 with three "shiny" cards released. The cards came in random packs of eight and perhaps you could have swapped them with your friends at school at the time. Each card had a illustration of the locomotive, rolling stock, vehicle or person on the front and a brief description on the back written from Sir Topham Hatt's perspective. The cards are slightly longer than standard trading cards and are landscape on the front and portrait on the back.
Although the packets said "Series 1" there wasn't actually a series 2 released, so they only appear to have been made in 1998 and probably 1999. Despite the collector cards being discontinued in their trading card format they were still used on the back of the packaging for each item purchased until the end of production.
— ThomasCollectables (@TTCollectables) May 30, 2018
The ERTL Collector cards were a short lived dabble into the trading card market for Thomas the Tank Engine. To me they come across as essentially collectable advertising for the range, obviously they are very interesting to see now given how much time has passed since the were released.
In the video below you can see the front and back of the collector cards, but you may want to pause the video to read the descriptions on the back.
As always if you have any questions of comments please feel free to get in touch!
As an experienced collector, one of my favourite things to do is to buy job lots then sort through them and pick out the ones I need for my collection and sell the rest. This is how I have gradually built up most of my ERTL collection. Over the years I have bought job lots in charity shops, table top sales and online. I will then go through and swap out those that are in better collection and sell my duplicates. I decided to do this recently and saved the boxes for an unboxing video.
I am very close to completing my collection of opened ERTL engines and vehicles so I decided to buy some job lots and see if I could make a small profit in the process! I hope you all enjoy the un-boxing video, admittedly it is probably a bit too long as I don't voice over the recording.
I have been focussing most of my attention on ERTL in recent months. I enjoy looking back through the history of the range and trying to collect all the different engines, vehicles and rolling stock they released. They are all very high quality and although they are not without their faults they are far superior to the merchandise of today.
I hope you enjoy the video and if you have any questions you know how to get in touch!
As usual we are going to be travelling back in time to have a look at yet another Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise oddity. This is the 1984 Vulli Motorised Train Set. I tried to find out as much as I could about this set, even resorting to signing up to French toy forums, sadly my searches were almost fruitless.
A ThomasTankCollectables mock-up of the original box!
The set comprises of an interesting selection of track, a station, bridge, level crossing (of sorts), a signal, some bushes, The Fat Controller, a guard, Thomas and a really rather odd little carriage. Thomas is powered by a double A battery and his tiny carriage is unpowered and coupled to Thomas at all times. The battery is actually loaded by removing Thomas's face, he is turned on by moving his face into the straight position. This allows two contacts to meet and the circuit to be formed.
Vulli Thomas compared to an ERTL Thomas from the same year.
As you will see in the video my Thomas isn't particularly sprightly and he frequently needs a nudge or two, especially to get around the bends. The face is almost identical to the one we are all familiar with on the ERTL sticker face Thomas and you will see a little comparison in the video.
Vulli is a French toy company, perhaps most well known for their magic tree-house and giraffe teething toy. I don't think they make all that many licensed toys, so we were lucky to get a Thomas the Tank Engine set. I tried asking about the set on a couple of French toy forums and they didn't seem to know of its existence.
I contacted Vulli to try and find out more about this intriguing piece of Thomas the Tank Engine history. They very kindly went back through their archives and managed to find that the set was listed in the British Vulli catalogue for 1984. They also checked previous and subsequent catalogues, but it was not listed in these. So it appears this train set was only available in the UK for one year. The contact I was talking to said they most likely lost the licence for Thomas the Tank Engine, which is hardly surprising. Given the success of the TV series, it is likely that the price of the licence dramatically increased for 1985.
1984 Vulli Catalogue, with thanks to Nht Pirate for giving me permission to use these images. You can view the whole catalogue on Flickr.
Thomas the Tank Engine centre-fold, what more could you ask for? I love the artwork above the train set, I have not seen this used elsewhere so I expect it was done for this catalogue specifically. Also note the 'NEW!' and 'EXCLUSIVE' boxes on the left, very 1980s. The most important thing you will notice here is that the actual set is very different from the one featured in my video. The Thomas is completely different, the station is more old fashioned, yet the signal is more modern. The track is completely different colours and there are some extra accessories such as the fence. I suggested that this might be a prototype to the Vulli representative I was emailing and he agreed.
The actual set is completely different to what was released!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that little history lesson. If you haven't already, you can watch the video below. As always you are more than welcome to contact me via any of the mediums ThomasTankCollectables is on, but I would recommend email or twitter for a fast response!
I have to say I really enjoyed making this video and I can only hope some of you enjoyed watching it! ERTL was one of the first brands to start making Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise and went on to be one of the longest lasting ranges. From 1984 to 2004 (in the UK, 2002 in the US and elsewhere) ERTL made high quality die-cast models of Thomas and his many friends, primarily in the 1/64 scale although they did make several different variants over the years. That means that there are 20 years' worth of models to collect and some of them are becoming increasingly harder to find.
Sticker Face
When you start collecting ERTL one of the first terms you will most likely come across is "sticker face", to anyone other than a Thomas fan this really won't mean anything! But to nearly everyone in the Thomas community this has just become a standard term.
When ERTL first started producing Thomas The Tank Engine models or toys they were made with a paper sticker face. This method of applying a face was soon replaced in 1990 with plastic moulded faces. The paper faces were prone to falling off and getting damaged. Engines 1-7 and Bertie were the only characters released in this original format and as a result all of these characters now have both a sticker face and a 3D moulded face version. This was the basis for the video, a comparison between the original sticker face line-up and their replacements.
Thomas was the only engine released with a decal sheet.
Interestingly Thomas was the only engine released with a decal sheet. This sheet included his buffer stickers and an alternative face, clearly based on an illustration from Thomas's Train. I have always wanted to take this decal sheet out and scan it, but there is no way I could bring myself to open a packaged ERTL Thomas from 1984! Thankfully SkarloeyFan recently got a packaged Thomas where the decal sheet was right near the edge of the package and he very carefully managed to extract and photograph the decal sheet. He has very kindly allowed me to show it here.
With thanks to @ThomasTankMerch for supplying this picture of a very rare ERTL misprint of Thomas featuring the sad face
All of the sticker faces are quite clearly based on the Railway Series illustrations and although the drawings are quite simple they really capture each character. I personally think the sticker faces have much more character than the later moulded face engines. I feel the moulded faces don't have all that much detail and the facial features are somewhat lessened in the plastic form. The later ERTL models had painted faces and although these were very prone to chipping they were much more detailed. I would be interested to hear your opinions on the sticker faces compared to the plastic faces.
White Running Boards
Another thing that quickly becomes apparent with the early ERTL models is the use of white running boards. By this I don't mean the usual splash of white on an otherwise red running board, I mean literally the whole running board is white, then the red was painted on afterwards! It seems like a bit of a backwards way to do it, but again this was soon dropped in favour of all red running boards for all engines. The only engines that were released with a white running board where Thomas, James and Henry. This makes sense as these were the first three engines released in 1984. Toby, Percy and Bertie were released in 1985, then Edward and Gordon followed in 1988.
Unfortunately I don't have an unboxed version of James with a white running board!
Differences
There were quite a few minor differences between the first ERTL models and the later releases beyond just the face. The most prominent to me is the differences in the detailing of Percy's whistle and dome. They are quite a lot smaller on the later release. RWS_Collection also pointed out that there are some differences with how far the running boards and side tanks stick out on Thomas. I don't personally know of any other differences, but you are more than welcome to contact me if you do.
Track Systems
I started this video with pictures of the first ERTL Playset. This was a cardboard set that popped out and could be constructed into a little layout. Surprisingly for a company producing trains ERTL didn't actually settle on a track system until as late in 1993. So ERTL had been producing trains without a proper train set for almost 10 years. That shows you just how successful the toys were, they could be sold without even having a track! I can't think of any other Thomas The Tank Engine ranges that have been released without a proper track system.
So the first attempt at a track system came in the form of a illustrated couple of pieces of cardboard.ERTL planned to release a wooden track system, as seen in the 1990 Catalogue, but this was cancelled. In 1994, a moulded plastic track playset was released, before settling on the grey track we know and don't really love today. This was also given a face lift in 2002 to make it more colourful. It had decal track and the plastic was green. I have never been a fan of the ERTL track system, I think it is too wide and makes the engines look very narrow. It is quite clunky to put together as well. I do like the later green track, especially some of the viaducts and bridges. Sometimes you will see job lots on eBay where ERTL models are included with track from other sets, often Hornby Playtrains red track.
I hope you enjoyed seeing all of the original 1/64 ERTL models in all their glory. I also tried to include the ERTL sets and merchandise I have from the 1980s. I really loved looking through all the original models and sets, they are all so good looking. I may have got a little carried away with all the pictures!
A big thank you to @RWS_Collection for the use of his decal sheet photograph and discussing the ERTL models in preparation of this blog. I would also like to say a big thank you to @ThomasTankMerch for proof reading this and adding some extra details!
