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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
Twitter: Twitter.com/TTCollectables
Vulli Motorised Train Set - ThomasTankCollectables YouTube Channel
Vulli: We had a motorized Thomas before it was cool.
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