Thanks to xkcd for the link to this soul crushing piece…

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-repressive-authoritarian-soul-of-thomas-the-tank-engine-and-friends

In the first book a train gets bricked up into a tunnel for not doing as it’s told….

edit: got further into the article and see they cover it.

edit edit: probably a spoiler….

To be honest a lot of animated children’s programmes content go unnoticed to the underdeveloped brain of children…

e.g. As much as I enjoyed Tom and Jerry and Roadrunner etc growing up, the violence in some of those cartoons could be questioned or is questionable.

However, at the same time I like to think it was made for simpler times and to be viewed as the parody it is.

I foresee an academic study relating the watching of Tom & Jerry and Roadrunner etc etc by a young Donald J Trump and its effect on his personal philosophy and world viewpoint.

Watership Down stuff of nightmares.

Yeah I can’t imagine Paw Patrol going at each other with frying pans etc… mores the pity.

I had read about the naughty train being bricked up before, they didn’t hold back either, bit of a time lapse of it rusting to ‘death’ or something, the UK version was always darker than the US.

Has anyone seen ‘Adventure Time?’ I guess you’d need kids about teenage years to have seen it – brilliant, but Dark AF.

Wind in the Willows. Those weasels.

written in 1945.

Train crash every episode. And we think our privatised rail network is shit!!

Dark? Pfffft.

One word……

Noseybonk.

Mr Men is messed up too. Especially the Mr Scruffy story where it basically ends with him being forced to conform with the expectations of others. The original Moomins was pretty dark too.

Thankfully Funk Jr has shown no interest in Thomas and his island of evil, where diesels are treat like second class citizens and you have to perform your one duty or risk being buried alive.

Thomas and his island of evil, where diesels are treat like second class citizens

And quite right too! Just look at the environmental damage diesel has caused!

Watership Down should have been banned – messed my head up as a kid !   I’ve never watched it since.

The stuff now is really nothing. But .. parents……

Watership Down should have been banned

Cant wait for my kids to see it. They too shall suffer the horrors of watching Bigwig get caught on a fence and……..

in my little pony they are ruled by an immortal god-horse who forces them into defined roles, controls the weather and refuses to accept any form of dissent.

That article is quite interesting! I loved Thomas, have watched some with my son, and the slightly bleak undertones weren’t lost on me on rewatching!

I’m still scarred by the hedgehogs and the butcher bird from animals of farthing wood. I defy anyone not to be.

*SPOILER ALERT* Henry got out of his brick prison in the very next episode *SPOILER ALERT*

I bought the first three series of Thomas on dvd for my boy and unfortunately he’s become rather obsessed with all things Thomas. The Henry episode was a very early one and it certainly took me aback watching it as an adult! Not as much as the first episode to feature a female engine, Daisy the railcar who could only appear with an accompanying tune that sounded like some stripper soundtrack. She couldn’t do any hard work as she was “highly sprung” and hard work was “bad for her swerves” whatever that means. I suppose it wasn’t out of the ordinary for something made in the ’80’s and I’d never get the subtext as a child but watching them as an adult has been a bit of an eye opener.

I remember watching Thomas the Tank engine as a child and thinking that all of them engines and  people were total arseholes. Then I saw this and it cheered me up on the whole subject. https://youtu.be/w8qaGcq8Ruk

Toot toot.