[dTal]

There's an undercurrent of existential horror entirely intrinsic to Thomas the Tank engine which already contrasts with the superficially happy and brightly-colored children's show. Putting Thomas in incongruous or unsettling situations throws this into sharp relief. Just what is Thomas?

tl;dr trains with faces are creepy

[new4thaccount]

I've been watching a lot of Thomas with my kid and yea it seems to somehow be a nightmare dystopia underneath even though nobody can explain why.

Stephen King's The Dark Tower spoiler below:

Stephen King's masterpiece "The Dark Tower" series has an intelligent AI in the third book called "Blain the Train". The dark tower series starts off as a kind of medieval Western in some barren dessert world and pretty soon there are doorways to parallel worlds and times like New York City. One parallel world was once populated by a society that is probably a few hundred years ahead of us technologically speaking, but they were warlike and killed themselves off. All that is left is Blaine the Monorail and Patricia the Train and they are super homicidally insane. I've been scared of Thomas ever since.

https://darktower.fandom.com/wiki/Blaine_the_Mono

[dTal]

The article touches on why:

"Part of it, perhaps, is that Thomas and his world are innately horrendous, and there’s something horrendous about taking all that off the rails and into a digital space. The original books, penned in the 1940s by the Anglican reverend Wilbert Awdry, now read like an enthusiastic allegory for bigotry and exploitation. The New Yorker, among other publications, has a ghoulish piece of essayistic fiction on the drizzly dystopia that is Thomas’s Island of Sodor, where cheerful anthropomorphic machines are torn apart, worked to death or bricked up in tunnels at the whim of a well-heeled Fat Controller. For all its dark corners and clutching cadavers, Resident Evil 2’s setting can seem almost benign by comparison."

Cracked also articulated it well:

https://www.cracked.com/article_19673_6-insane-but-convincin...

(Another show with cheery, brightly colored human-machine hybrids existing in a highly regulated totalitarian structure is Teletubbies, although it's more of a Brave New World to Thomas's 1984. You do see creepy Teletubby "cursed images" from time to time...)

[new4thaccount]

The bricked up in tunnels example was pretty horrifying. Like I know they want to convey the value of hard work, but that is some Cask of Amontillado level crazy.

[boyce]

My toddler asks to watch that one most days and it is just horrible! Especially when the episode ends with Ringo saying "I think he deserves his punishment, don't you?"

[Nition]

Not to forget Charlie the Choo-Choo.

[samplatt]

>Just what is Thomas?

This reminds me of one of my favourite Cyanide & Happiness comics:

A Gingerbread man lives in a Gingerbread house. Is the house made of him? Or is he made of house? He screams, for he does not know.

[afiori]

That feels more in SMBC style than cyanide and happiness

[samplatt]

It does, but it's not: http://explosm.net/comics/4154/

[sdrothrock]

https://youtu.be/iO6qIM2WO6k?t=185

https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sad_Story_of_Henry

This particular episode horrifies me; I feel like kids will grow up and as adults, look back on this and wonder how they didn't realize how dark it was, much like I do with some parts of things like The Brave Little Toaster.

[NeedMoreTea]

Yet entire generations of Brits have grown up reading that story, apparently unconcerned, as it's one of the very early ones.

Edit: Oh, it's actually from the very first book published 1945.

[Angostura]

It reads to me me like wish fulfilment for parents of stubborn toddlers :)

...speaking as a father who used to take a book with me to read when my daughter used to throw herself to the ground and refuse to walk any further.

[jacobush]

Wow... that’s really somber

[blattimwind]

The clue is at the end

"But I think he deserved his punishment. Don't you?"

[jacobush]

I don’t, no. Solitary confinement for life is cruel and unusual punishment. Plus some public ridicule, too.

[pureliquidhw]

My son has a Thomas the Tank Engine megablocks set, and he recoiled in terror when he first unearthed the Thomas-face block. Like, inconsolable crying @ 18 months. There is clearly a instinctual aversion to those out of place human features. Reminded me of the scene in Alien Resurrection with the failed clones.

He still has the blocks, but poor Thomas is no more.

[C1sc0cat]

And the subtext of be good or we will wall you up in a tunnel