Thomas & Friends-Truckloads of Fun (2004)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Main Menu Audio Song Lyrics
Rating
Year Of Production	2004
Running Time	66:06
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	David Mitton
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Ringo Starr Michael Angelis George Carlin Alec Baldwin Michael Brandon
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Junior Campbell Andreas Fehrle Graeme MacArthur

    It's hard to believe that Thomas was created by Rev. W. Awdry in 1945. In a world where fads come and go, Thomas is a constant that most of us grew up with, either in books, on TV or on video.

    The Thomas empire still steams strongly on, an oasis of yesterday with its steam engines and simple stories, and this disc gives us ten Thomas adventures interspersed with three songs for the kids to sing along with.

   I believe one of the reasons Thomas has been so successful is because of the high production standards. While many children's programmes can be of second rate quality as they are "only for kids", Thomas is always well filmed and the time put into the modelling is evident to see. Thomas and Friends - Truckloads Of Fun maintains the usual high standard of the Thomas series.

Thomas And The Trucks (5:36)
    Thomas wants a change so he swaps with another engine so he can pull trucks instead of carriages.

Troublesome Trucks (5:36)
    James has to deal with some troublesome trucks when the couplings break.

Accidents will Happen (3:34)
    A song that the kids can sing along with.

Tenders And Turntables (5:31)
    Thomas has been sent to work on a branch line and the bigger engines are angry at having to do their own shunting.

Trouble In The Shed (5:31)
    The big engines refuse to do shunting so the Fat Controller decides to teach them a lesson.

Off The Rails (5:32)
    Gordon gets stuck in a ditch when he runs off the rails.

The Snow Song (5:32)
    Another song the kids can sing along with.

Thomas, Percy and The Coal (5:36)
    Percy has an accident loading coal and buries Thomas.

Mavis (5:34)
    Mavis the quarry engine gets stuck on icy rails when she doesn't listen to advice.

Heroes (5:34)
    Two small shunting engines are heroes when they save the quarry workers from a rock-fall.

Sir Topham Hatt (3:14)
    Another sing along song.

Four Little Engines (5:34)
    Scarloey, despite his age, is told to pull some passenger carriages and his springs break.

Make Someone Happy (5:33)
    Percy is grumpy until he is sent on a run to bring a special passenger to the village fair.

Video

    These episodes are from the older Thomas TV shows and so are in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The quality is not as good as the later series with some low level noise being present and the overall picture being more grainy. Many of the episodes look to be from a VHS transfer. A couple of the episodes display some telecine wobble.

    These quibbles aside, the video is acceptable and is quite watchable. I doubt that the target audience of toddlers will be too upset by these minor video flaws.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    As is usual with this series, audio is Dolby Digital 2.0.Another good, clean audio transfer with clear and easy to follow dialogue. Not much is expected of the surrounds and sub-woofer, but again, I don't see the target audience complaining too much.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are no extras. The menu is static with the Thomas theme behind it.

    I could not locate this collection in Region 1. There is a Region 2 version that appears to be identical.

    Another collection of Thomas adventures that every toddler will love.

    Video is average.

    Audio is good.

    No extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall