ThomasNATION Reviews - The Great Bubbly Build

Have you ever listened to all those times that the steam engines of The Island Of Sodor exclaimed "bubbling boilers" and thought to yourself "yeah, that would make a good Thomas episode"?  Well, that's pretty much what HIT Entertainment thought as well when they collaborated with the Canadian 4D entertainment studio SimEx-Iwerks to create a special episode to be shown in 4D cinemas in the U.K. and U.S. simply called "Thomas & Friends In 4-D: Bubbling Boilers".  For those who don't remember, the plot of the special centers around Thomas being covered in a soapy liquid in his pursuit of being Really Useful for a big celebration. But because he is in too much of a hurry to be cleaned, he's soon slipping wildly out of control and going on the ride of his life. In all honesty looking back as an adult fan, the story was pretty dumb and unrealistic in regards to a steam engine running on bubble liquid.  But yet, I still really enjoy it and I could kind of excuse some of the dumb or basic parts of the story because the story isn’t the main focus. The action is, and it is easily amazing since the whole mine chasing scene was so fun to watch thanks in no small part to the shots, animation and just pure fun that comes from watching.  While I sadly didn't get to experience this special episode in a 4D cinema and had to settle with seeing it in 2D via YouTube back when the special first came out in 2016,  I’m sure it greatly improved the experience as the seats would vibrate and stuff from the screen would pop out.  While "Bubbling Boilers" may suffer in terms of story, the animation combined with the 4D experience makes it so much fun to watch that it's rather likable in some way.  Who knows, it might get your little engineers or man-child adult fans of the series excited to clean.

Now, you might be wondering "why am I talking about Bubbling Boilers when I should be talking about The Great Bubbly Build"?  Well, it seems like the folks at Mattel remembered that they made a 4-D special about bubbling boilers during the original Thomas & Friends series and decided to have another go at it in this new chapter of Thomas The Tank Engine history as everyone's favorite maintenance team Sandy and Carly learn to work together to build the ultimate train wash.  Now, stories regarding the engines of Sodor learning about working together is nothing new when it comes to Thomas The Tank Engine since they have been a thing for the franchise as far back as the original Railway Series books and television series.  But that doesn't mean it can't still be enjoyable if they can do something new with that concept and...remember the problem I had with the Train School mini-series short "The Art of Sharing" in regards to Mattel not treating these trains like machines anymore by having them make arts and crafts from recyclables with no aid of their drivers and firemen?  Well, it seems like the folks at Mattel heard our complaints and decided to try again but make it better by using characters that make much more sense to use in regards to making an art project together.  However, my problem with this special doesn't come from the characters but rather in the story itself in regards to this "ultimate train wash" concept because Carly and Sandy already built the ultimate train wash back in "The Big Skunk Funk" if I remember correctly.  But seeing as this special is more focused on Carly and Sandy's relationship rather than the train wash itself, I can let my problems slide this time because this is more about how different people or engines in this case view art.

I never understood why they didn't just upload the new episodes to the official YouTube channel weekly and throw a bunch of ads on them. Surely, that would have gotten them some traction. If the show had proper exposure in 2015-2016 or so when it was still good, we'd probably be in a much better place now and both "Big World, Big Adventures" and "All Engines Go" wouldn't have had to exist at all.  Mattel immediately concluded the show wasn't doing well because kids weren't responding to the more grounded fan-liked content, but that just wasn't the case.  Kids weren't responding because there wasn't an easy way to watch it!  Mattel's hubris and their inept management caused the Thomas ship to hit the iceberg years ago and it's been sinking slowly ever since.  "Big World, Big Adventures" and "All Engines Go" were the ship breaking in half.  It was going to sink regardless what they did.  But after that ship broke, it was all under the water within five minutes.  So, does that make "The Great Bubbly Build" bad just because of a new distribution technique? Honestly, I'd say no. While the story does come off as predictable and maybe even unnecessary if you know your All Engines Go history, the animation combined with the songs and relationship between the characters manage to save this special from being done dirty by corporate meddling.  And who knows, maybe the success of premiering on YouTube could see a positive direction for the franchise moving forward?  But until we know for sure, I'm gonna give "The Great Bubbly Build" a rating of a 3/5. It may miss a few spots, but it's still clean fun.