Thomas the Tank Engine (All Engines Go!)

Thomas the Tank Engine is an anthropomorphised fictional tank locomotive in the British Railway Series books by Wilbert Awdry and his son, Christopher, published from 1945. He became the most popular and famous character in the series, and is the titular protagonist in the accompanying television adaptation series Thomas & Friends.

Unfortunately, he was heavily flanderized in the infamous 2021 reboot, mh:terribletvshows:Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go!

Note: This page focuses on his flanderization in the reboot. For his flanderization during the Sharon Miller era, see this page.

Why He's Not Really Number One After All Now

 * 1) For starters, his new design is horrible to the point where it actually makes Lion-O's design from mh:terribletvshows:ThunderCats Roar and any other character in that aforementioned show look decent by comparison.
 * 2) *The worst part of the redesign are his two whistle valves, which are now too far apart compared to the original series (which had them close together).
 * 3) *He also no longer has his unique triangular eyebrows, which is a shame since they made his original appearance iconic.
 * 4) *Last but not least, his dome is too bright in colour and is too close to his cab.
 * 5) *His prototype design is even worse, as it looks more like a crappy off-brand Wooden Railway toy than the original Thomas. See for yourself. Thankfully it was changed due to how even the designers presumably thought it didn't resemble Thomas himself.
 * 6) *And in general, its redesign fails to capture the same charm as its original design.
 * 7) He has very odd-looking facial expressions that look extremely uncanny, unappealing and cringeworthy.
 * 8) He is shown to be very egotistical most of the time - for example, in "Rules of The Game", he makes the other engines do his obstacle course his way. In "The Super-Long Shortcut" he acts all-knowing when he is making a delivery with Gordon but instead gets them both lost. While Thomas in the original can be prone to being egotistical and big headed in some of the episodes he's in like in "Thomas, Percy and the Coal" and "The Great Discovery" (albeit a movie), he of course sometimes has a reason why he is egotistical. But here, his ego in the AEG series makes him unlikable just because the plot needs to happen.
 * 9) His new voice is extremely annoying and high-pitched, due to the annoying voice performances from Aaron Barashi in the UK dub and Meesha Contreras in the US dub. While Meesha does try to sound lively as Thomas (since it could be because he presumably is a fan of Thomas and Friends), the same cannot apply to Aaron since it sounds like he is bored or just didn't want to voice Thomas at all.
 * 10) He has received even worse flanderization than the one he suffered from in the Sharon Miller era as he is written as a complete child and a huge baby who always misbehaves and acts like a complete moron to the point that he makes his Miller era counterpart look even better in comparison.
 * 11) *He is now been turned into an annoying engine that wants to have fun rather than working, and also a whiny engine that complains and is ungrateful.
 * 12) For some reason, he’s allergic to hay, which never happened in the original series at all.
 * 13) Nobody ever grounds or punishes him for his selfish actions, making him a Karma Houdini.
 * 14) He is also really bland as his personality could easily be placed in other characters showing that his personality is not really original.
 * 15) Similar to Dolly Dalmatian, Thomas is heavily overused to the point where he appears in every single episode, even when not the main character. Because of this, the other characters are either relegated to supporting roles or are absent altogether.
 * 16) He's also a complete brat in "Letting Off Steam", he gets into a quarrel with Percy just because he laughed at him.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) While his new design isn't as good as his original one, it still keeps many features that made the original Thomas recognizable (e.g. the blue paint, red stripes and the number "1"). Additionally, he still has his original 0-6-0 configuration (whereas engines like Gordon and Nia had their configurations changed).
 * 2) *Additionally, unlike most of the other engines in the show, Thomas still has the iconic whistle sound he has had since 1984. This is a nice touch since said whistle sound is instantly recognizable.
 * 3) *When comparing the prototype design with the finalized design, the latter is the better one of the two since it looks far more like the original Thomas.
 * 4) One of the few decent things about his design is the straight running board that he was given. You can tell that the reason why Wilbert Awdry wanted to fix Thomas' design in the Railway Series story, "Thomas Comes to Breakfast", was because he wanted to give Thomas a straight running board in the book, Branch Line Engines.
 * 5) Despite being heavily flanderized on this show, at least he still has his cheeky and optimistic personality from the original series.
 * 6) He was a much better character outside of this reboot and the Sharon Miller era of the original show.