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Bluebird Toys was a British toy company founded in 1980, well known for the Polly Pocket franchise, which produced a series of miniature Thomas playsets in the late 1990s. The company went defunct in 1998 when Mattel bought the rights.
Overview
All the sets feature engines and rolling stock with metal rivet wheels which allowed them to run on three-dimensional yellow plastic rails.
The sets consisted of the Miniature railway and the Magnetic railway set. The Miniature railway consists of a layout featuring a tunnel, station, turntable with sheds and two cranes, one to transfer loads from a truck into Bulstrode. The Magnetic set features a similar track layout, but the trains are controlled by a Sir Topham Hatt figure on a small track plan map by the use of magnets (using the same moulds as the miniature railway set).
Smaller sets appeared later on, consisting of Thomas and James sets. These tri-fold sets could fold up and be easily carried to other locations for play.
Sets
Small sets
- Thomas and Terence's Quarry Adventure (with Thomas, Terence and a Troublesome Truck)
- James, Harold and the High Sky Adventure (with James and Harold)
Large sets
- Miniature Railway (with Thomas, Percy, Annie, Clarabel, a Troublesome Truck, Bertie, Bulstrode and Sir Topham Hatt)
- Thomas and the Magical Moving Railway (with Thomas, Percy, a Troublesome Truck, a passenger coach, Bertie, Harold, Bulstrode and Sir Topham Hatt)
Trivia
- TV adverts for the toys were shown in Australia and also in the US by Ertl in 1998, with Keith Scott performing the voice-over in the Australian Version.
- The large and small sets are incompatible between each other due to the size of the rolling stock and tracks.
- The miniature railway has three slots on it (complete with detachable buffers) and a shed with three berths, suggesting that other sets and characters may had been considered at some point with the large size.
