Take Along Thomas & Friends - Thomas

Product Information

Target exclusive. Includes Holiday Toby, Snowglobe Car and Caboose from 76153, and peppermint car from 76156. Target exclusive assortment. Includes: Sir Handel and Fearless Freddie, Rheneas and Culdee, Mighty Mac and Dennis, Billy and Whiff, or Toby and Percy. Target exclusive. Includes Thomas and Toby with decorations, Sir Topham Hatt's Car, and Fireworks Car. The talking feature was not included on European versions of the set, likely due to the lines only being recorded in English. Theo is missing his name plate and he has no front coupling hook. This is because his face is too low to accommodate one.

This range originally launched as a Target Exclusive from 2002 until 2005, after which the range began being sold in other retailers.It was also the only piece of Take Along merchandise to be based on anything from the twelfth series, as no new characters from that series were produced. Despite this, merchandise was produced for Hero of the Rails and the thirteenth series. Hiro was the final character and the only character from the CGI Series released in the Take Along line. He was also the only character from the CGI series to have a character card. The Australian release of the Metallic Gordon had a character card with a picture of Thomas and Edward despite Gordon being the engine included.

Christmas versions of Henry and Gordon were planned to be released but were cancelled. They would have featured Santa hats on their smokeboxes much like Thomas and Percy. Mike's US character card mentions that he works with Rex and Bert, while his UK card just says he works on a narrow gauge railway, although he is minimum gauge. If a set included a character, such as the Fergus and Water Tower set, the character card included would be made of the thinner cardboard. The Australian metallic engines were released with unique character cards (the image either had Thomas along with the engine included, or an image of the shiny engine included edited onto a set from the show), and the box had a strip on the right side the same colour as the engine(s) included.

Thomas' Favourite Friends ( includes; Winston, Captain, Victor, Percy, Butch, Bertie, Diesel, Harold, Thomas and Kevin) Target exclusive. Includes carnival Toby, Lion Car, Monkey Car, and Poppin' Popcorn Car, all with exclusive deco. The Gold Plated Thomas was only available via a competition held on August 18th 2009. Only 333 are known to exist. To win, contestants had to send in a barcode and wait to be drawn.