ThomasNATION Reviews - Learn with Thomas
November 21, 2020
Thomas The Tank Engine sure does have a history behind him, doesn't he...appearing in almost any form of media you can imagine and when you realize it all started with a vicar reading made-up stories to his sick son. It's kind of amazing and this year is the seventy-fifth anniversary of 'Thomas & Friends', so the team at Mattel decided to go all out in making this celebration the biggest in the franchise's history from the annual twenty-episode season along with three half-hour specials to teaming up with Nitro Circus for an epic stunt for their series on Quibi to the releases of both a brand new story-time podcast as well as a special birthday album and not to mention the loads and loads of celebratory merchandise from books to toys for all ages.
But one of their other plans to celebrate this special occasion in Thomas' seventy-five year history was the supplement of four all-new series of videos for YouTube and after the creative yet controversial mini-series 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes' having officially wrapped up in August, it's time that we move on to the second of our four video mini-series for the seventy-fifth anniversary simply known as 'Learn With Thomas' continuing the weekend premiere tradition from last time while aimed at a much younger audience which I know is not gonna please the older fans considering that these videos are pretty much the only Thomas & Friends anything that we're gonna be getting for a while at least until we officially get word of a twenty-fifth season in development yet you can never really tell anymore given the current state of the world...but can an educational mini-series aimed at a much younger audience still make tracks to great destinations? Well, let's take a look at each of the shorts in this next episodic mini-series of web videos and find out...all aboard for a big adventure because it's time to 'Learn With Thomas'!
But one of their other plans to celebrate this special occasion in Thomas' seventy-five year history was the supplement of four all-new series of videos for YouTube and after the creative yet controversial mini-series 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes' having officially wrapped up in August, it's time that we move on to the second of our four video mini-series for the seventy-fifth anniversary simply known as 'Learn With Thomas' continuing the weekend premiere tradition from last time while aimed at a much younger audience which I know is not gonna please the older fans considering that these videos are pretty much the only Thomas & Friends anything that we're gonna be getting for a while at least until we officially get word of a twenty-fifth season in development yet you can never really tell anymore given the current state of the world...but can an educational mini-series aimed at a much younger audience still make tracks to great destinations? Well, let's take a look at each of the shorts in this next episodic mini-series of web videos and find out...all aboard for a big adventure because it's time to 'Learn With Thomas'!
Before we get started, I just want to make something clear: this mini-series review will only be covering the episodic shorts and not the songs made from the shorts since there really isn't much to talk about with the songs other than the fact that they pretty much describe every single thing that happens in the shorts you've already seen while they play out with lyrics that feel like they still haven't ascended past 'Sesame Street' levels of intelligence in the eyes of many longtime fans of the franchise including myself. I know that Thomas The Tank Engine is a franchise made for kids, but I just don't see the point in making songs of the shorts that we've already seen because these incredibly childish songs which are honestly on the same level as those from the Baby Einsteins series not only fail in using the method of 'show, don't tell' for their audience young or old but in all honesty feel more like they're talking down to the kids rather than with them like any good piece of children's entertainment should. With that said, on with the show!
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THOMAS & PERCY LEARN ABOUT MIXING COLORS
THOMAS AND PERCY'S BEDTIME ROUTINE
So here we go with the start of a brand new series and with the theme of this particular short being about colors, I might as well start off this review by addressing what everyone has been talking about since the premiere: the backgrounds...unlike last time where the backgrounds were completely blank apart from the building and trees as well as the engines themselves, the lighting now matches the sunnier tone of the main series much more and the scenic backgrounds are much more detailed. Now a majority of people within the fandom have said that the backgrounds in this mini-series do reinforce that 'PAW Patrol copy' feel that they claim Mattel is going for with the franchise nowadays of which I am getting really sick of hearing the same complaints over and over again ever since the initial launch of the 'Big World, Big Adventures' revamp, but I'm gonna be that guy who will more than likely get lynched by the fandom for saying this but I am not only happy that we have actual backgrounds in these mini-series videos this time but I actually like the design aesthetic of the backgrounds as well as it gives the illusion that you're a part of your very own Thomas The Tank Engine toy train set as the way that the sky is painted along with how some of the trees are shaped remind me a lot of all the model railways that I've seen in my life and how some model railroaders will sometimes go for a more kiddie approach to their layouts if they are basing them around popular children's characters especially with the likes of Thomas The Tank Engine himself as he is pretty much a kid's introduction to the world of trains in general.
But what about the short itself, was it overall a decent start for a new series? While I will admit that I am not the primary audience for this particular series in general as it is definitely made for much younger kids seeing as preschoolers are Thomas' main demographic aside from all the adult man-children in the fandom, that doesn't mean that I can't still find some enjoyment out of whatever comes out of Thomas The Tank Engine nowadays considering how these mini-series videos are pretty much the only Thomas anything that we're gonna be getting at least until the twenty-fifth season...but given the current state of the world, you can never really tell anymore yet I actually like how the structure for this series is a new take on both the 'Learn With Thomas' segments made between the nineteenth and twenty-fourth seasons of the television series as well as the 'Playing Around With Thomas & Friends' segments made for the official Thomas & Friends YouTube channel as a promotion for the My First Thomas range of merchandise and not to mention the creative way that it teaches kids for this short in particular about how what many would perceive as a mess when the painter accidentally mixes two colors together can end up making a brand new color if you look at it in the way that an artist would which reminded me a lot of how 'Barney & Friends' taught this similar lesson during an episode that was included on the HIT Extras for the 'Songs From The Station' DVD that was released fifteen years ago as we see Sir Topham Hatt in this short finding a way of making new colors to paint some coaches for a parade which will more than likely be the running theme of this mini-series with the help of Thomas and Percy who even get to quite literally 'taste the rainbow' when they find a fun way to clean up all the spilled paint although it looks more like they lost an intense game of paintball.
While it is true that this mini-series unfortunately continues the trend from last time of Rob Rackstraw voicing all the male roles apart from John Hasler as Thomas, his performance here was actually much better compared to what we saw in 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes' and I can only wonder if Rachael Miller will knock it out of the park as well when voicing the female characters for this series...so yeah, a creative background aesthetic making its comeback along with a creative method of educating children and the voice-work having improved quite a lot since the last mini-series helped get the 'Learn With Thomas' series on the right track for the start of its online journey and thus gets a rating of a 4 out of 5.
While it is true that this mini-series unfortunately continues the trend from last time of Rob Rackstraw voicing all the male roles apart from John Hasler as Thomas, his performance here was actually much better compared to what we saw in 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes' and I can only wonder if Rachael Miller will knock it out of the park as well when voicing the female characters for this series...so yeah, a creative background aesthetic making its comeback along with a creative method of educating children and the voice-work having improved quite a lot since the last mini-series helped get the 'Learn With Thomas' series on the right track for the start of its online journey and thus gets a rating of a 4 out of 5.
THOMAS AND PERCY'S BEDTIME ROUTINE
Insert 'Dirty Percy' meme here and we're done...I'm kidding, but this recently beloved meme was seriously the one joke that a majority of the fandom couldn't stop making even before this short was officially released when all we had to work with was the thumbnail-heck, even I made a reference to the meme as well when the short was released-and I was actually surprised that the next short of this mini-series wasn't about learning shapes or numbers or letters like the title card of each episode leads you to believe but rather about how having a bedtime routine of doing the same things every day is an important part of falling asleep as we see a very dirty and tired Percy returning to his friends Thomas and Emily at Tidmouth Sheds of which is great to see our first Sodor location in the mini-series after seeing the Mainland Station in the last one after making deliveries in the muddy countryside all day who help him get ready to go to sleep by getting cleaned up as well as being told a story and taking deep breaths to help your body relax.
Not only did this week's short confirm what I had predicted about the previous one where Rachael Miller voices for the female roles for these mini-series videos like she did here with Emily after having done an amazing job in doing so previously in 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes' while Rob Rackstraw voices the males again like with Percy here apart from John Hasler as Thomas, but the way that both Thomas and Emily present the bedtime routine for Percy to follow was actually very relatable for me since I actually have a very similar routine when it comes to going to sleep every night starting off with a shower to clean up from a busy day of hard work-heck, I tend to take two during the hot summer season-which is then followed usually by watching one or two of my favorite 'Thomas & Friends' episodes before taking a few deep breaths in order to help relax my body before drifting off to sleep...I may not have expected much from these mini-series videos made to celebrate the anniversary, but I never expected that 'Thomas & Percy's Bedtime Routine' as part of an educational mini-series for much younger kids to be as relatable as it was for the older fans as well as for adults as well and that is why it gets a rating of a 4.5 out of 5.
THOMAS AND PERCY LEARN ABOUT EMOTIONS
Not only did this week's short confirm what I had predicted about the previous one where Rachael Miller voices for the female roles for these mini-series videos like she did here with Emily after having done an amazing job in doing so previously in 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes' while Rob Rackstraw voices the males again like with Percy here apart from John Hasler as Thomas, but the way that both Thomas and Emily present the bedtime routine for Percy to follow was actually very relatable for me since I actually have a very similar routine when it comes to going to sleep every night starting off with a shower to clean up from a busy day of hard work-heck, I tend to take two during the hot summer season-which is then followed usually by watching one or two of my favorite 'Thomas & Friends' episodes before taking a few deep breaths in order to help relax my body before drifting off to sleep...I may not have expected much from these mini-series videos made to celebrate the anniversary, but I never expected that 'Thomas & Percy's Bedtime Routine' as part of an educational mini-series for much younger kids to be as relatable as it was for the older fans as well as for adults as well and that is why it gets a rating of a 4.5 out of 5.
THOMAS AND PERCY LEARN ABOUT EMOTIONS
As Mister Rogers once said, 'it's okay to feel sad sometimes'...although I will admit that I am once again surprised to see that the next installment of 'Learn With Thomas' doesn't have to do with numbers or shapes like the title card leads to believe and is instead focusing on something entirely different as we see Thomas helping Percy understand what he is feeling about his special delivery by making different faces and also using Nia's interactions with a butterfly as an example. Fun fact for all of you, I struggled to learn emotions due to my disability when I was the age of Thomas' primary preschool demographic and it was actually through the televised adventures of Thomas The Tank Engine himself that I was able to learn so quickly thanks to the face masks being used during the live-action model animation whether it be on the engines and their vehicle friends or the humans...this is honestly why I find the classic series and early Hit Entertainment seasons before the CGI switchover to be far superior in terms of animation style since it was easier to understand what each of the characters were feeling on screen in each moment of the stories whereas the facial expressions while still able to be identified sometimes tend to change a bit too quickly in the CG-animated seasons and the animation while amazing can just make the series just look like a pretty cartoon a lot of the time, it's just the truth of it all.
But as for the short itself, many of us fans had originally thought that Nia would play a huge role in this short of the mini-series especially since she was displayed front and center on the thumbnail for both the official YouTube channels in the U.K. and U.S. and that this short would be the first time in this mini-series that we would hear Yvonne Grundy reprise her role as Nia like she had done with 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes'...so when we eventually found out that Nia's role in this short was nothing more than another cameo appearance like she was with 'Thomas And Percy Learn About Mixing Colors', many of us felt very underwhelmed as this entire short is basically just Thomas and Percy without any other characters to interact with thus it does kinda hinder the overall quality of the short in terms of the character aspect yet here's the ironic thing: everything else about this short actually worked out pretty great since even though I already know my emotions, it's great to see this short being so open with the fact that all your emotions are healthy yet you just have to know how to keep them in check and this short shows it's okay to feel however you feel. There's no shame in feeling sad, there's no shame in feeling angry-if anything by confronting them, you create new emotions and new moments and the best thing is that it sticks to the choices they make. While I may still believe that other shows and movies like 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' and 'Inside Out' have tackled the subject of emotions much better, it's great to see Thomas tackle this as well and for that earns this short a rating of a 4 out of 5.
But as for the short itself, many of us fans had originally thought that Nia would play a huge role in this short of the mini-series especially since she was displayed front and center on the thumbnail for both the official YouTube channels in the U.K. and U.S. and that this short would be the first time in this mini-series that we would hear Yvonne Grundy reprise her role as Nia like she had done with 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes'...so when we eventually found out that Nia's role in this short was nothing more than another cameo appearance like she was with 'Thomas And Percy Learn About Mixing Colors', many of us felt very underwhelmed as this entire short is basically just Thomas and Percy without any other characters to interact with thus it does kinda hinder the overall quality of the short in terms of the character aspect yet here's the ironic thing: everything else about this short actually worked out pretty great since even though I already know my emotions, it's great to see this short being so open with the fact that all your emotions are healthy yet you just have to know how to keep them in check and this short shows it's okay to feel however you feel. There's no shame in feeling sad, there's no shame in feeling angry-if anything by confronting them, you create new emotions and new moments and the best thing is that it sticks to the choices they make. While I may still believe that other shows and movies like 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' and 'Inside Out' have tackled the subject of emotions much better, it's great to see Thomas tackle this as well and for that earns this short a rating of a 4 out of 5.
THOMAS AND PERCY LEARN ABOUT DIFFERENT VEHICLES
Oh wow, not even ten seconds in and I already hate it...Percy, you've known Flynn for a decade now and you seriously cannot tell what kind of vehicle he is or even what the word 'vehicle' means after you previously knew what it meant back in the nineteenth season of the television series?! Okay, I'm being a little too harsh here...I don't have a problem with teaching kids about different types of vehicles whether they drive or fly or sail especially since they do it in a fun way by having Thomas and Percy using cloud shapes to learn about the different types of vehicles, but it's the fact that they had to dumb down certain characters so much in order to make the concept of the video work since Percy somehow forgot that his friend Flynn is a fire truck yet after all these years yet he remembers the types of vehicles that some of his other friends are like Harold The Helicopter and Skiff The Sailboat who were seen previously in the 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes' mini-series which honestly kinda rubbed me the wrong way since I know that Percy is supposedly the youngest member of the Steam Team but many fans including myself know that he's acted smarter than this before throughout the past seventy-five years of the brand.
But while we're on the subject of the characters who make their appearances in these shorts, the one that really caught me off-guard was seeing Monty The Dump Truck making his debut in these mini-series videos and without his twin Max which was not only a pleasant surprise but also kinda shocking at the same since I had thought they'd either use Max since he's the more recognizable one of the two dump trucks or just use both of them together yet they more than likely used Monty as a way of paying homage to his twenty-third season episode 'Deep Trouble' which in a way makes sense when you really think about it. As for the short itself while I feel like it had good intent in teaching the kids about different types of vehicles, I feel that it didn't need to be at the cost of dumbing down the characters in order to make it possible since it made the short feel more like that one Impractical Jokers challenge 'Do You See What I See?' where they had to get people to see what they saw in the clouds of which I ended up turning into a parody video using Q's 'cauliflower with tits' cloud sighting from the moment that we saw the video thumbnail for the first time...so while the short itself is not necessarily terrible, it is so far the weakest out of all the ones that we have received so far and for that ends up giving itself a rating of a 8.5 out of 10.
But while we're on the subject of the characters who make their appearances in these shorts, the one that really caught me off-guard was seeing Monty The Dump Truck making his debut in these mini-series videos and without his twin Max which was not only a pleasant surprise but also kinda shocking at the same since I had thought they'd either use Max since he's the more recognizable one of the two dump trucks or just use both of them together yet they more than likely used Monty as a way of paying homage to his twenty-third season episode 'Deep Trouble' which in a way makes sense when you really think about it. As for the short itself while I feel like it had good intent in teaching the kids about different types of vehicles, I feel that it didn't need to be at the cost of dumbing down the characters in order to make it possible since it made the short feel more like that one Impractical Jokers challenge 'Do You See What I See?' where they had to get people to see what they saw in the clouds of which I ended up turning into a parody video using Q's 'cauliflower with tits' cloud sighting from the moment that we saw the video thumbnail for the first time...so while the short itself is not necessarily terrible, it is so far the weakest out of all the ones that we have received so far and for that ends up giving itself a rating of a 8.5 out of 10.
THOMAS AND PERCY LEARN ABOUT OPPOSITES
I didn't know Percy spoke bird...or is it Italian, it's still a mystery yet I still find it surprising how we keep getting more and more shorts in this mini-series that feature new concepts than what the title card of each one suggests since the team behind the scenes still have yet to make a short based around shapes and numbers as presented on the title card. But speaking of the title card when you look at a certain set of pictures, it will probably give you a clue as to what this week's short is about as Thomas decides to show Percy the meaning of opposites after he accidentally scares a bird-oh no, it's 'Percy's New Friends' all over again! Thankfully, it doesn't go that direction of the atrocious fifteenth season episode and it instead goes in a direction that makes this particular short a bit better than the previous installment...but not by much, let me explain: when I found out that this particular short was about opposites, I grew excited at the thought of making a SpongeBob Squarepants parody based around the episode 'Opposite Day' yet an opportunity to make that idea come true for content on my channel never arose and all that did was a parody from the episode 'Wormy' when Percy is seen whistling with the bird and a reaction featuring Squidward Tentacles explaining opposites when Percy asks what they are...ah well, maybe the next one will have more content opportunities compared to the last few ones.
While I think the concept of Thomas and Percy teaching their target demographic about opposites is a great idea especially considering how different people are in terms of their views and interests, I don't know what it is that made this short a bit of a bore to get through because again I'm not the target demographic when it comes to these mini-series shorts in particular and it could also be the fact that there is a severe lack of characters in this short compared to previous ones as we're just sort of watching Thomas and Percy talk to each other throughout the entire short which can be enjoyable for the kids and maybe for the dedicated fans yet a bit of variety isn't a bad thing since I always enjoyed seeing all of the different characters appearing instead of just the same ones over and over again. This actually got me thinking: if they ever do a short in this mini-series where Percy has to learn about numbers, it could be a great opportunity to have Nia help Thomas in teaching his friend as it would be a great callback to the twenty-second season episode 'Counting On Nia' where she had trouble reading numbers due to coming from Kenya and it could be a situation where the former student has now become the teacher...but until we find out what the next short is, one can only dream at this point because this short in particular while an improvement from last time didn't really offer that much in terms of characters or potential and that is why it ends up getting a rating of a 4 out of 5.
While I think the concept of Thomas and Percy teaching their target demographic about opposites is a great idea especially considering how different people are in terms of their views and interests, I don't know what it is that made this short a bit of a bore to get through because again I'm not the target demographic when it comes to these mini-series shorts in particular and it could also be the fact that there is a severe lack of characters in this short compared to previous ones as we're just sort of watching Thomas and Percy talk to each other throughout the entire short which can be enjoyable for the kids and maybe for the dedicated fans yet a bit of variety isn't a bad thing since I always enjoyed seeing all of the different characters appearing instead of just the same ones over and over again. This actually got me thinking: if they ever do a short in this mini-series where Percy has to learn about numbers, it could be a great opportunity to have Nia help Thomas in teaching his friend as it would be a great callback to the twenty-second season episode 'Counting On Nia' where she had trouble reading numbers due to coming from Kenya and it could be a situation where the former student has now become the teacher...but until we find out what the next short is, one can only dream at this point because this short in particular while an improvement from last time didn't really offer that much in terms of characters or potential and that is why it ends up getting a rating of a 4 out of 5.
THOMAS AND PERCY LEARN TO COUNT TO 20
I find it so ironic how I just got done talking about an idea that this mini-series could do when learning about numbers and our next short is actually on learning about numbers but more specifically how to count to twenty and...for what we could've gotten from this short versus what we actually ended up receiving, it's both an improvement and a bit of a letdown from the previous short as we see Thomas help Percy learn to count to twenty in order to retrace Emily's steps and help find her friendship chain. While it is nice to see Emily again in this series considering that she only had a one-short speaking role during 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes', I really wish we didn't use the same characters over and over again and that we instead had some variety because that was a mistake that the previous mini-series made by using James twice in both the 'Super Bubble Thomas' and the infamously hated 'Thomas The Rubber Band' shorts and I would really hate to see this same mistake repeated twice. On top of that, there is the weird yet interesting addition of the engines wearing friendship chains in the style of friendship bracelets: now this isn't necessarily a bad thing in my opinion as we saw Lily and Burnett Stone wearing friendship bracelets in 'Thomas And The Magic Railroad' and we even saw the engines wearing bracelet-esque things before like when Lorenzo wore a corincello in the twenty-fourth season episode 'Thomas' Not-So-Lucky Day', but friendship bracelets were something that I always associated more with people...maybe there will be an episode in the future of the television series where the engines have friendship chains made in order to bring relevance to this, who knows?
As for the short itself, it's cute and simple and easy to follow when it comes to these mini-series shorts especially when teaching their target demographic basic skills that they will need in life when they get older even if I'm not in that preschool age group...but again I feel like there was a huge missed opportunity to have Nia help Thomas teach Percy how to count as it would be a great callback to the twenty-second season episode 'Counting On Nia' where she had trouble reading numbers due to coming from Kenya and it could be a situation where the former student has now become the teacher. I know that when it comes to any franchise in entertainment with Thomas The Tank Engine included, it's not the writers who get the final say but rather it is that of the executives' decision yet it gets frustrating when they don't take advantage of what could potentially be a gold mine of an opportunity that is staring them right in the face which seems to be a regular occurrence within the franchise. Ah well, all we can hope for is that we get another short within this mini-series along the lines of 'Thomas And Percy's Bedtime Routine' that really knocks it out of the park at some point before this series wraps up...but for now, we can at least count on this short to keep this series on track as well as receiving a rating of a 4 out of 5.
As for the short itself, it's cute and simple and easy to follow when it comes to these mini-series shorts especially when teaching their target demographic basic skills that they will need in life when they get older even if I'm not in that preschool age group...but again I feel like there was a huge missed opportunity to have Nia help Thomas teach Percy how to count as it would be a great callback to the twenty-second season episode 'Counting On Nia' where she had trouble reading numbers due to coming from Kenya and it could be a situation where the former student has now become the teacher. I know that when it comes to any franchise in entertainment with Thomas The Tank Engine included, it's not the writers who get the final say but rather it is that of the executives' decision yet it gets frustrating when they don't take advantage of what could potentially be a gold mine of an opportunity that is staring them right in the face which seems to be a regular occurrence within the franchise. Ah well, all we can hope for is that we get another short within this mini-series along the lines of 'Thomas And Percy's Bedtime Routine' that really knocks it out of the park at some point before this series wraps up...but for now, we can at least count on this short to keep this series on track as well as receiving a rating of a 4 out of 5.
THOMAS AND PERCY LEARN WHY IT'S GOOD TO CLEAN UP
Man...it's been quite a while since we had a short in this mini-series that was actually really good since the last several we have received have ranged from being alright to just good but thankfully this short comes to the rescue as we see Thomas and Percy accidentally knock over crates while racing at Brendam Docks thus Cranky gives them a lecture of how cleaning up is always the right thing to do and can even be fun when helping them clean up the mess by singing a little song. Now, I know that there are gonna be numerous of people within the fandom saying that this is one of those 'protect the environment' eco-friendly type of shorts which can be very hard to do in general without coming off as preachy much like what we saw with those Global Goals videos back when the 'Big World, Big Adventures' era first began particularly with the one which talked about reducing waste and increasing recycling...but thankfully this short strayed away from that in showing that making a mess and not doing anything about it can create problems for others whether not being able to get past a blockage or can even get hurt thus cleaning up is the right thing to do and what may look like a lot of work can be made fun too when singing a song.
What really took me by surprise with this short in particular is that Thomas isn't the one teaching Percy these life lessons but rather it's Cranky himself in his first speaking role of this series that teaches both Thomas and Percy about the importance of cleaning up after ourselves...and while I know that are gonna be people complaining about Rob Rackstraw's performance when voicing the male characters like Cranky again, I will say that I thought his performance for Cranky in particular was quite interesting in how it sounds like a British version of the American dub normally heard in the television series in capturing the gruff but gold-hearted personality that sums up the character of Cranky in a nutshell. As for the song 'Cleaning Up' while it does give off that reminder for the older fans that this is a series made for little kids which may anger most of them when compared to a lot of the previous songs heard in the franchise, I will admit that the song is quite cute and catchy despite being extremely short and even gave me nostalgic vibes of 'Whistle While You Work' from Disney's 'Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs' along with unfortunately 'Clean Up Song' from the infamously hated Barney The Dinosaur in what can be described as the Thomas The Tank Engine equivalent of the Ten-Second Tidy sequence from 'The Big Comfy Couch'...does anybody even remember that show? No? Just me? But anyways, this short has quickly risen up to be one of the best of this mini-series overall and just the pick-me-up that it needed in order to get back on track thus I'm gonna give this short a rating of a 4.5 out of 5.
THOMAS AND PERCY LEARN ABOUT SHAPES
My, how the tables have turned dramatically...we went from one of the best shorts in this educational mini-series in learning about why it's good to clean up to what is easily the worst one of these so far as we see Thomas and Percy helping Cranky fit different shaped cargo into different shaped crates. Look...I have no problem with this mini-series being educational for little kids in teaching them things like different shapes since little kids are this franchise's target demographic and I don't even have a problem with the visual aesthetics either since it captures that model railway feeling to the world beautifully and it looks a hell of a lot better than what we saw with 'Thomas' Magical Birthday Wishes' as a whole, but what I have a problem with is that the characters and settings being used this time are the exact same ones as last week with no change whatsoever and what's worse is that the roles seem to have been perplexingly reversed where Cranky is now the one playing stupid by trying to fit a rounded piece of cargo into a square hole which reminded me of that one 'Fairly Oddparents' episode where Cosmo and Timmy's Dad did the exact same thing while Thomas and Percy are the one teaching him about different shapes and yet Percy somehow actually knew some of these shapes on the first try-hey, at least it's better than thinking that Flynn was a tank engine when he was learning about vehicles!
The only real positive that I can say about this short in particular is that the concept of matching different shaped cargo into different shaped crates reminded me and many older fans within the community of that one game from Thomas' first ever CD-ROM 'The Great Festival Adventure' where you had to help Cranky match the different colored shape cargo that Bulstrode had brought for the festival into the Troublesome Trucks for Thomas and Percy to deliver-heck, I even made a parody video of that part of the game itself when the short was first released! It's honestly sad when the only real enjoyment that I seem to be getting from these shorts lately is the variety of content that has spawned from them for my channel whether they be parodies or custom reactions...but like I said, the reusing of characters and settings in order to teach another new thing to the kids in this mini-series really brought this short down for me in terms of giving it a proper rating and thus it unfortunately hurts me to give it a rating of a 3 out of 5.
THOMAS AND PERCY TEACH DIESEL TO SHARE
For being an educational mini-series made for kids, it has proven that it is certainly 'full of surprises'-see what I did there-and this week's short is no different as we see Thomas and Percy teaching Diesel how to share and take turns when playing with friends...and right from the first shot of Thomas and Percy playing with their red rubber ball, I know that a majority of the fandom who value railway realism above everything else in 'Thomas & Friends' is gonna hate this short immediately as it will end up giving them flashbacks to the twenty-third season episode 'Grudge Match' which I get why because of the bouncing and movement of the engines especially in some scenes of this short where their bodies are practically rising off their chassis and some are even raising up off their axles but what the fandom needs to realize is that not everyone who watches this series would have the knowledge of railways and there have been so many unrealistic moments that the series has given us over the past twenty years that some fans just need to accept at this point whether they like it or not for both themselves and the good of the fandom.
But now let's get to what everyone will be talking about in regards to this short: Rob Rackstraw's performance as Diesel. Now, Diesel has had quite an interesting range of voice actors ever since the television series first switched over to CG-animation whether being voiced by the narrator himself giving him a gruff voice as well as being voiced by some of the original actors or longtime veterans from the series giving him an array of different accents whether it be from New Jersey or a faint hoarse Cockney accent but I was curious as to how Rob Rackstraw would offer to the table with his take on Diesel considering that he's the voice of all the male characters in these mini-series videos and...while I can understand the common complaint that Rob's voice for Diesel reminds longtime fans within the community of his voice of Spud The Scarecrow from 'Bob The Builder', you can tell that he's at least trying to emulate that of Kerry Shale even if it isn't entirely perfect. Apart from Rebecca and James making their official debuts in this mini-series of whom I hope that we get to see more of them as we near the end of this mini-series, there's not much else to say about this short since the concept of learning to share was something that I used to struggle with but have since learned to accept as time has passed thus this short as well as this entire series would probably appeal more to little kids than someone who has been a longtime fan yet I will say that this short was a bit of an improvement over last week's ridiculously stupid installment about learning shapes thus I'm gonna give this a rating of a 4 out of 5.
THOMAS AND PERCY LEARN WHAT FOOD ANIMALS EAT
Man...all this discussion about the shorts in this educational mini-series has made me hungry, what do you say we grab something to eat with the escaped animals that Rosie was delivering to the animal park as Thomas and Percy help her lure them back with the foods that they eat? As many of you remember from back in the twenty-fourth season of the television series, Nia was given an official line of work at the animal park as a reward for her hard work when dealing with a troublesome elephant who didn't like steam engines and the concept of this particular short dealing with animals excited me with the thought that we would finally get to hear Nia speak in this mini-series after several times of just making cameo appearances...but when we eventually saw that Rosie was the damsel in distress, I can understand why they went in this direction instead of going for the obvious with Nia but I'm at the same time also feeling underwhelmed. I mean, I'm happy that Rosie is getting more screen-time especially since she was a main selling point for the series back in the twenty-first season even if we never got to see the reasoning behind her new look...but when you have a character like Nia who was created in order to bring gender equality to the Steam Team while at the same time writing off a legendary character like Edward and needing to try hard in order to make audiences accept her as a main character of the series, you just can't do that if you don't actually take the time to develop the characters which makes it sad that Nia had a whole movie that successfully developed her as a character and yet the writing team seem to have forgotten what made Nia such an interesting character the moment that she decided to live on Sodor. In other words, why fix what wasn't already broken?
But what about the overall conflict of the short, is that enough to make up for the missed opportunity in characters...surprisingly, yes it did: while I do admit that there was a missed opportunity to have Nia finally speak in this mini-series, I actually did enjoy learning about the different types of foods that animals eat in order to be healthy like koalas eating eucalyptus leaves and elephants eating apples of which I never knew myself even if I already knew that monkeys ate bananas and that pandas ate bamboo...even if this had previously been shown within the franchise whether through other mini-series videos or within the television series itself, I thought it was pretty cool to see some continuity with the 'Big World, Big Adventures' era of the brand presented here with this short. Not only was this short an educational one, but it also gave me a couple of creative content ideas as well-I mean just from the thumbnail alone back before the video even premiered, I knew that I was making a parody of Sal's 'panda balls with almond milk' moment from the Impractical Jokers challenge 'Interview With A Joker' as well as making a parody tribute to the iconic Sesame Street song 'Healthy Food' sung by the lovable Cookie Monster...so yeah, this short about different foods that animals eat was a delicious delight despite its missed opportunities and for that earns a rating of a 4 out of 5.
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While the tracks may have been bumpy with this mini-series and while it is true that this series is clearly made for a much younger audience much like last time, the adventures of 'Learn With Thomas' were still a lot of fun: they're a great way to fill in the void while the television series isn't in broadcast with new episodes but also a good way to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary and it's just good that we have something to keep us entertained in the meantime especially during the lockdown caused by the global pandemic. They're also good to keep children entertained while being something that families can put on when children have seen too many of the same episodes over and over constantly and for that earns 'Learn With Thomas' a rating of a 4 out of 5.
Final Score: 4/5
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