Our family has loved Thomas the Tank Engine for years, and we were very happy to be included in the Parent Bloggers blog tour reviewing the new DVD Thomas & Friends - Engines & Escapades! Thomas & Friends is one show I love watching with the girls. I love the stories about the different engines, and love the gentle messages. The wonderful British accented narrators don’t hurt, either! We like Thomas & his friends enough that we named our (late) green car Percy, and my little blue medical scooter (at right) is named Thomas, as he’s little, reliable, and has a horn that goes “Peep Peep” like Thomas!
Thomas & Friends - Engines & Escapades is a DVD with six new episodes about the engines on the Island of Sodor. The DVD also includes a new song about our new friends the “Narrow Gauge engines”, and it is catchy and fun enough that I don’t mind having it stuck firmly in my head. Each of the DVD’s episode tells a story that includes useful morals, yet the stories are entertaining enough that the kids don’t notice that they are learning.
We really liked meeting Madge the truck, who was strong enough to carry James! She was also strong enough in character to deal with James when he was being rather snotty. We are very enthusiastic in the Gaggle household about strong female characters, and had been thinking that Thomas was rather lacking in that department. In Thomas & Friends - Engines & Escapades, we meet several new engines and friends on the Narrow Gauge line, and are very happy to see spunky females!
In Thomas & Friends - Engines & Escapades, there is a mix between the “old” engines (Thomas, James, Duncan, etc) and our new friends on the Narrow Gauge line who are even smaller than Thomas, yet work really hard. If you have a younger sibling in your house who feels like they need to be bigger, this set of episodes is a great way of reinforcing that little trains and little kids can do big things! Thomas has always been a good example that a little train can be as important as the bigger trains, like Edward, but meeting useful trains that are even smaller was great for my littlest one!
The Narrow Gauge engines have their special Narrow Gauge track, and they also have their own person in charge, just as Thomas and the larger trains have Sir Topham Hat. Mr. Percival works hard with his trains, and it is refreshing to see a new person’s face in addition to the new train faces.
Our family had two minor complaints about Thomas & Friends - Engines & Escapades:
- The DVD is on auto-play, so it starts itself, which makes it difficult to select favorite episodes
- We don’t see a lot of Thomas and Percy. We like the new engines, but we miss our old favorites!
With those two minor exceptions, we really enjoyed watching Thomas & Friends - Engines & Escapades, and we’ll be watching it again and again and again… This is a good DVD to pick up for any young engineers you know, there’s a great variety of characters and episodes that will enchant kids and entertain adults, too.
We give Thomas & Friends - Engines & Escapades 5 spotlights out of 5 - go pick it up!
Recently:
- Contests, cleaning, allergies, and air
- Book Review: Earthly Pleasures
- Even the police need to outfit themselves
- Science, Fun, and the Sun - a great mix!
- A Trip down Memory lane
- Book Review: Playing with Fire
- Playing Rapelli with Rapt Attention
- Have a ball outside with Boochie!
- MomCentral tour: LiceMD
- Kinzin - share photos with your kin
