Why do so many liberal parents hate Thomas the Tank Engine? 

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Why do so many liberal parents hate Thomas the Tank Engine?

The apparently innocent world of talking trains is \'nasty\' and \'sinister\', say opponents

He\'s a British icon, beloved by generations of toddlers. Thomas the Tank Engine has gone from a character invented by one father for his two-year-old son, to an international brand worth $1 billion in sales per year.

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of the first ‘Railway Series’ book by the Anglican vicar Rev Wilbert Awdry. But while children, especially boys, love Thomas and all the other engines who inhabit Awdry’s fictional world, some parents take exception to the apparently harmless books and TV series.

Reviews of the programme on the Common Sense Media website, a non-profit group that focuses on the effects of media and technology on children, lambast the series for being “nasty”, “negative” and a “bad example” to youngsters.

“Thomas is a poor role model,” says one reviewer. “Lots of nasty competitiveness between the trains. Thomas (and others) frequently shirk their responsibilities [in order to] compete against each other or to show off.”

Another criticises the series for “modelling” bad behaviour such as jealousy and portraying “plain old mean-spiritedness”.

And users on parenting website Mumsnet have criticised the series, now called Thomas & Friends, for being sexist, with one mother, wokeupwithasmile, highlighting an episode in which a female engine is scolded for not doing the laundry in time.

“Is T&F always full of such stereotypical c--p?” she asks.

Such vituperative views will come as a surprise to those who have fond memories of Thomas the Tank Engine from their own childhood or who just assume that it’s nothing more than an innocent show about anthropomorphised steam engines. Former Beatle Ringo Starr leant his distinctive voice to the show in its early years.

But, in fact, the series, which is broadcast to more than a billion households in 300 territories each week, and prides itself on teaching children traditional values such as friendship, loyalty and resilience, has come in for regular criticism from Left-wing writers and academics for many years.

Several have attacked the plots, which normally revolve around an engine getting into trouble with the Fat Controller, the man who runs the fictitious railway, for selfish, lazy or thoughtless behaviour before eventually being forgiven and handed another chance to become a “really useful engine”.

Back in 1990, the commentator Mike Jarrett wrote in The Guardian: “Thomas resembles one of those preposterous idealised figures of Stalinist propaganda. Face radiant with a dream of heightened productivity.

“In fact, Stalin would probably have approved of Thomas, who always does what the Fat Controller tells him and strongly disapproves of other engines who step out of line.

Really useful: a Soviet worker and Thomas the Tank Engine

“Whenever one of Thomas’s fellow engines show signs of independent thinking and disobeys instructions, you can be sure that the troublemaker will, literally, go off the rails. The underlying message is simple: conform to society’s expectations and you will be rewarded, rebel and you can expect to be punished.”

More recently, the cultural critic Jessica Roake wrote an article for the American online magazine Slate - titled Thomas the Imperalist Tank Engine- in which she branded the series “sinister”.

“Something about Thomas & Friends gives liberal parents the creeps,” she claimed. “The conservatism of Thomas & Friends is not the conservatism of America. Key to the ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ mythos in the United States is the notion that anyone can rise to the top with hard work and initiative.

“The Thomas series glories instead in true ‘white man’s burden’ style British imperialism.

“Our hero Thomas, and his friends, jockey for positions just below that of the bullying aristocrat Sir Topham Hatt [America’s version of the Fat Controller] but never seek to rise to his level…The trains, complicit in maintaining this unjust system, humiliate each other for the small scraps of praise the little tyrant doles out rather than banding together.

“It’s nearly impossible to listen to lines like, ‘Being strong was only good if you were also really useful, and he had to be really useful’, without hearing something sinister.”

• Christopher Awdry: why sour Lefties are wrong about Thomas the Tank Engine

Thomas isn\'t the only popular TV character that some parents are concerned about - the CBeebies Facebook page is full of tongue in cheek posts written by frustrated parents hilariously discussing the poor on the job performance of Postman Pat and the amount of fire trucks sent out during episodes of Fireman Sam.

Postman Pat\'s antics don\'t impress some parents

But other experts have defended Thomas & Friends.

Dr Aric Sigman, a psychologist who has researched the impact of television on children, believes Thomas & Friends contains many valuable lessons for children.

“There is something traditional about Thomas the Tank Engine,” he said. “But whether that’s a bad thing or not is open to debate. I see a lot of young children and they like rules. Not to be treated in an authoritarian way, not at all, but children feel comfortable when there are boundaries and there is a construct. It makes them feel relaxed and it’s very important for child development.

“No programme is ever going to tick every politically correct box and, even if it did, children probably wouldn’t want to watch it.

“The fact is, the Island of Sodor [where the series is set] has many of the elements children like to see within their own homes and within their own communities. It’s a relatively safe world where there is camaraderie, natural justice, routine and structure.”

A scene from the first ever \'Railway Series\' book, in which \'disobedient\' Henry is bricked up in a tunnel

Dr Sigman also praised the show for its slow pace compared to many other children’s programmes.

“Fast-paced cartoons are not considered good for very young children, while things that have fewer characters, a single narrative, preferably only one or two voices, are considered better,” he said.

“The attentional systems of very young children are still in rapid transition and if they are flooded with too much novelty and variety, without the ability to settle on things and analyse them a bit more, we may be circumventing their later abilities to pay sustained attention.”

Rev Awdry, a vicar in the parish of St Nicholas, in Kings Norton, Birmingham, wrote his first story about an anthropomorphised train in 1942 to entertain his son Christopher who was ill in bed with measles. The following year, having written two further stories, he was encouraged by his wife, Margaret, to send them to publishers.

The resulting book, The Three Railway Engines, was published on May 12 1945 and was an instant success. Rev Awdry, who died in 1997, went on to write 26 Railway books and see his creation turn into one of the world’s most successful children’s brands.

• How Thomas the Tank Engine took over the world

In the UK alone there are now around 1,600 Thomas & Friends products – from lunchboxes and yoghurts to calendars, puzzles, duvet covers, walkie talkies, potties and iPad apps. A toy engine of some description – either Thomas or one of his many “friends” such as Gordon, Percy or Emily – is sold every two seconds somewhere in the world – from Japan to Mexico – and a DVD or Blu-Ray disc is sold every 10.

Rev Wilbert Awdry with his son Christopher (far right) and the rest of the family in 1948

Wendy Hill, director of brand activation at toy manufacturer Mattel, which bought the Thomas brand from the British company Hit Entertainment in 2011, said the long-running success of the series was testament to its positive ethos.

“The kids who are interacting with the Thomas brand are at the age when they are learning about socialisation, about the world around them, about having to give and take and share and Thomas really helps with that. Thomas gets into different scrapes along the way, but with his friends around him and the Fat Controller there to guide him, he always comes up with the right answer.

“Lots of brands come and go, especially in the world of children’s entertainment. Things may be flavour of the month one minute and gone the next. The fact that Thomas is still relevant today is testament to the brand.”

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