Ttte Hit Era - Tumblr Posts

also ive compiled a list of hit era episodes i would call good :] please lmk if i missed any lakfdkasjl SEASON 8 Emily’s New Route Edward The Great Squeak Rattle Roll Halloween You Can Do It, Toby! James Goes Too Far Chickens To School SEASON 9 Percy And The Oil Painting Molly’s Special Special Respect For Gordon Duncan And The Old Mine Keeping Up With James SEASON 10 It’s Good To Be Gordon Emily And The Rubbish Thomas And The Birthday Mail (UK Version Only) Duncan’s Bluff SEASON 11 Thomas And The Storyteller Emily And The Special Coaches Hector The Horrid! Gordon And The Engineer Cool Truckings SEASON 12 Rosie’s Funfair Special Excellent Emily

KDEHBAJKBKANK WHAT HAPPENED HERE I- IM SCREAMING SKARLOEY WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!!?? i do have a bias for michael brandon bc i grew up w his narrations but pleasse sir why did you do skarloey like this NASKJADFLJ

HEEEEEEELP

yknow now that i think about it, there are a number of characters described as wise/clever/smart (like toby, skarloey, mavis, rheneas, emily, etc,) so why is it that edward is like the only one who explains to thomas what a rainbow is??? do they not know too??? hit era as much as i have nostalgia for you (and some actually gems of episodes) you really made everyone (barring edward, toby, gordon, duck, and emily on a few occasions) really fucking stupid.

oh cool now Thomas doesn't know what a rainbow is

🙄

i- did they really?? thats so. strange /neu i really dont know how to feel about this??? what exactly did thomas do?? /genq

heads up! thomas just got an end-of-episode fat-controller-commendation upgrade

tired: "You, Thomas, are a Really Useful Engine™"

wired: "Thomas, you are the Most Reliable Engine on the Entire Island of Sodor™"

PEMAKLNFLKDN plot twist the hit era was a conspiracy by the engines to make everything look incredibly dumb, leaving sir topham hatt confuddled and thomas somehow even dumber. /j

oh cool now Thomas doesn't know what a rainbow is

🙄

i redesigned sodors flag bc i thought the original one was boring

the nostaligia of the HiT era really does slam into me like a truck like about once every few months. i do not think about it then for a week i cannot be normal and binge the episodes, play the bad flash games, and windowshop on ebay for merch. like objectively the HiT era is painfully mediocre but like also i kinda love it?? yes molly pull those empties <33333 yes emily roast thomas' ass for being an idiot :))))) percy u be such a little guy :>>>>>

i also love the “you can toot at him if you like bUT IM NOT GOING TO >:(” just before this

the only times where I’ll accept a wrong sounding whistle are when they’re FUNNY

molly is such a fascinating character to me. and surprisingly, not because of her content in the show. but her lack of content. molly really felt like to me she was supposed to be the break-out star of the HiT era. let me explain why.

in short, it's all down to marketing and merchandise. i'm a massive HiT era apologist, mostly because it's the era of ttte i grew up with, but as i was looking through my catalogue of merch, i noticed something...molly was popping up. a lot. weirdly so.

i have a good amount of those briarpatch ttte board games, and typically they were for 4 players, and as such 4 engines were provided to play as: thomas, percy, james, and...molly? at first it seems weird, but when you think about it, it makes sense. molly rounds out a quartet themed around red, green, blue, and yellow, and also adds in a female character. i think that last bit is important, but i'll get to it later.

so i went digging, and the 4 player briarpatch games pre-molly usually had mavis in her place, likely also to add female representation, just swapping yellow for black. there are a few exceptions, i recall seeing toby and harvey instead, but again, it was mostly mavis.

looking at more merchandise outside of board games in this era, molly got quite a bit of focus. she was part of a set of 4 bath squirters along with thomas, percy, and james, and what i find most shocking, she was one of VERY few engines to receive a trackmaster remote control engine. molly also was featured on a 2008 great discovery trading card, even though she only had one line in the entire movie.

after this, i went digging deeper into the world of the thomas microsites and online games, where molly also had a strong presence. the quartet of thomas, percy, james, and molly continued in the simon-says type memory game (i think it's called 'peep peep!'?) and molly also appeared in the emotions game, but this game featured 5 engines, and the fifth...was emily. remember my point theorizing that molly was focused on because she was a girl? here's where it's important.

this five engine ensemble of thomas, percy, james, molly, and emily is repeated again in the plug n' play game 'right on time', a game that i own and remember fondly. emily was chosen again to fill the fifth slot, and i think it's because HiT wanted to have a gender-equal ensemble a la bwba. and i think molly was chosen specifically not only because her yellow paint is unique and for her gender, but because she is probably the girl character at the time that had the most opposing personality to emily. as we all know during this time, emily was interesting and had flaws unlike SOME OTHER ERAS- portrayed as having a very strong and opinionated personality, which would easily contrast towards molly's more shy and sensitive personality. both have also been described as having sisterly attitudes towards other engines. i think HiT wanted to prove in this 5 engine ensemble that they had varied writing for their female characters.

for all of this, i think that molly WAS supposed to be a much more important character than she turned out to be, mostly because she was marketed so heavily and disproportionately than her screen time would lead you to believe. molly also appeared more often than the other HiT newbies (bar rosie), but that isn't really saying much with how little other characters like neville or billy appeared. i don't know why molly was dropped so suddenly when the set up for her seemed to be there? only thing i can think of is that emily had just been moved to tidmouth sheds right before series 9, and that they didn't want to repeat that process?? idk i'm just spitballing because i've been thinking about molly a lot recently. on a small related note, her basis is also very specific and her design is SUCH a standout compared to other new characters at this time, so clearly effort was put into her. i wonder how different the series would have been if molly was elevated to prominent secondary character status like salty or mavis, or even main character status!

tl;dr i think molly was originally going to be important but then she wasn't :(

GUYS

i am so smart. since everybody hates the old bridge (that one season 7 ep where skarloey is afraid of a bridge) i thought about re-writing it. because...i do think it could work with skarloey as a main character since anybody can get scared BUT. I AM TOSSING THAT OUT.

THIS SHOULD BE A NEVILLE EPISODE!

his literal first day, he dangles off the end of a bridge since no one liked him enough to warn him. definitely one of the worst starts any engine has had, but it makes PERFECT sense why neville would be afraid of of high bridges like the one in that episode. plus, this opens the door to pair neville up with a character that's willing to give him the time of day (first two that come to mind are edward and molly) and just. omg. i should write this. like actually.