Thomas & Friends Musical Thomas childs record player

As I child I loved my Fisher Price record player so when I saw this, I thought my son must have one! He got it in his Christmas stocking off his grandparents last Christmas and has played with it a lot since.

*** WHAT IS IT? ***
It's a 'Thomas the tank engine' train with 'Troublesome Truck' following behind that is recommended by the manufacturer for children 1-3 years of age. It has a volume control with three settings and an on/off switch which is always good! It's quite a bigish toy as when the truck is attached it's approximately 35cm long, 16cm high and 9cm wide. The train has six wheels in total and the truck, four. The truck contains four disks that are double sided and contain the music. The eight pieces of music are:

This is the way we load our freight
Merrily we roll along
Thomas theme tune
London Bridge is falling down
I've been working on the railroad
She'll be coming round the mountain
For he's a jolly good fellow
If you're happy and you know it

*** HOW DO YOU USE IT? ***
You open Thomas' cab roof to insert the chosen disk and side. The disk is placed horizontal over a circular peg and then the roof needs to be put back down. You then need to press the funnel to start Thomas moving along and playing the music. You hear a whistle and "all aboard". If you don't have a disk in, it'll just chug along quietly. To stop Thomas, you press the funnel again. 'Troublesome Truck' can be attached or detached: at the rear of Thomas is a peg facing downward and the truck has a circular-shaped attachment that slips underneath Thomas' peg. It requires 2 D sized batteries but also comes with 3 button batteries included.

*** WHO MAKES IT? ***
It is made by Tomy who are famous for making popular, quality, reasonably priced toys.

*** WHERE CAN I BUY IT? ***
We have seen this in independent toy shops as well as Toys'r'us and on Amazon. We purchased ours from Amazon and the current price they are selling it for is £18.99.

*** WHAT WE THINK ***
It is a lovely bright, hard wearing plastic toy with lovely cheerful music. The music is very syncopated so not always easy to sing along to. The tune is 'whistled' out with the accompaniment being very synthesised. HOWEVER… we do have a few issues with it which makes us disappointed with our purchase.

Firstly the train seems to be fixed to do a large semi-circle route and we can't change this. If it bumps into something light it either redirects itself or shoves the object out of the way. If Thomas gets stuck, he'll still play the music whilst stationary over and over and OVER and O V E R again!

The cab roof needs quite a bit of force to remove it and once you get the momentum going, both us and our two year old son sometime pull it so hard that the roof detaches itself. It does go back on but it isn't easy.

Finally, the music player itself is rather temperamental and sometimes doesn't play the disk or plays the tune on the opposite side of the disk which is a bit spooky!

*** TO RECOMMEND OR NOT RECOMMEND? ***
Maybe wait until Tomy upgrade it a bit as the faults can be a bit annoying. It's a lovely toy when it co-operates but a bit annoying when it doesn't. It is full of good ideas but the product needs a little tweaking here and there.

*** OTHER INFORMATION ***

www.tomy.co.uk
www.amazon.co.uk