Thomas and Friends - Classic Collection - Series 12 [DVD] [2011]

This review is dictated by Tom who is 8, and typed by his Daddy.

Before I start this review, I also call this Thomas's Ultimate Box Set, because it contains all 11 series. There might be an even bigger box set one day with all 13 series, plus maybe the six films (counting the upcoming Day of the Diesels).

I don't want to be a stupid idiot and waste my time on this review, so here is the review:

It's five star and excellent, and shows more episodes than I can count. Every series is especially good in every way, especially the classic Britt Allcroft episodes. There is also a very high quality picture on the box set - I love it.

Series 1 is good because it seems calm and peaceful. Series 2 is good because it seems exciting and adventurous. Series 3 is my favourite series when we reach the golden age of thomas the Tank Engine. This one is fabulous because it is like a mixture of series 1 (calm and peaceful) and series 2 (exciting and adventurous). Series 4 is good because it tells many stories about the old-fashioned but still accurate narrow-guage engines and the episodes after that about standard guage engines. It is a very bright time of the Sodor times and there are no bad serious accidents with people or engines getting hurt, like in the previous series, series 2 in particular.

Serious 5 is the darkest series of Thomas, even darker than series 2. The storylines I have to admit are not as good as on some other series which were really awesome plotlines, but even more exciting and adventurous than series 2. I enjoyed this series very much as well. Series 6 was the last series to include Britt Allcroft and David Mitton. This is one of the ones which is really cool. I have to say these are excellent plotlines - Thomas and Friends get into scrapes and learn their lesson.

I don't want to waste any more time on this review. All I need to say now is that after series 7 things went downhill fast, but were still wonderful.

Now, I recommend this huge box set to Thomas fans old and young - it is unbelievable, it is wonderful. I think it is the best Thomas box set I have got.

As ever, the complete series releases of Thomas are great value. Series 12 is a nice mixture of old-fashioned live action model trains, mixed with some computer animation (trains' faces, for example) and - most importantly - this is the last series where the regular narrator supplied all the voices. So grown-up fans of the 'old' Thomas will still have plenty to enjoy. Personally, I don't plan to buy any later Thomas on DVD, but with 12 series to fall back on, our family certainly has plenty to choose from.
My toddler's favourite in Series 12 is "Tram Trouble" where we meet Flora the steam tram.

These complete series DVDs do have 2 small drawbacks:
1/ if you don't want to push "play all" and subject your child to a whole lot of TV in one hit, then you have to trawl through slightly annoying, slow menus to find the episode you want.
2/ for the technology-conscious adult viewer, the bit rate (ie. picture quality) is fairly low because a lot has been squeezed onto a single DVD. This makes the picture a little grainy if viewed on a larger TV. (The bit-rate is generally a little higher on the Thomas highlights discs, which contain just a few episodes, but they are not such good value for money.) Do the kids notice this? - absolutely not.

These are great for the kids and the first couple of series are great when the little rascal Thomas and his mischievous friends are playing tricks and annoying each other. However, the later series are beset with the heavy weight of political correctness and modern thinking towards childrens behaviour. In other words, everyone is best of friends and everyone works well as part of a team. It becomes quite sickening to watch, and my two boys prefer the older, cheekier versions of Thomas The Tank Engine with RIngo as the narrator.