[jonny_noog]

That's both amusing and concerning at the same time. I have always felt a little unsettled when I have happened to watch Thomas the Tank Engine, both as a child and as an adult.

There does seem to be something of a history of rather severe children's tales. Look at Roald Dahl or the Brothers Grimm. Not that I'm directly equating Roald Dahl or the Brothers Grimm (whom I generally like) to Thomas and friends (whom I generally do not like) but there does seem to be some strand of commonality in terms of the extremes of the underlying messages in long surviving children's tales, even if the lesson/message is not necessarily pointing in the same direction in all cases.

A little severity in ones entertainment as a child is a good thing in my mind (though lessons enforcing conformity do not fall into this "good" kind of severity for me). I remember watching Star Wars as a young child and being freaked out by that scene in the bar where Ben Kenobi cuts the alien's arm off with his light sabre. But it was moments like that which made the movie memorable to me, gave it impact and helped to make it more than just a series of movies, it became it's own mythology in my mind.

Conversely, I believe the lack of this was primarily what made the new Star Wars films crap by comparison. With the new movies, they made the mistake of trying to make them "kid safe" and easily digestible to as wide an audience as possible. In doing so, they ruined any chance of a new generation having a similar experience with the new movies as I did with the old, and of the the new films ever having any true soul.