Hornby to end the Thomas the Tank Engine range

[Dunsignalling]

 

Will Bachmann make the leap and officially bring their range to the UK?

 

It would be a logical move for Bachmann, as they don't have the relatively immediate need to retool which was probably what forced Hornby's hand, coinciding (I'm guessing) with a renewal of the licence falling due by the end of this year.

 

All will depend on how much it will cost them to do so and whether they also think the days of "Peak Thomas" are past..........

 

John

Edited April 23, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[Keep the Faith]

As Hornby PLC has not published an RNS to the AIM it is reasonable to assume that the ending of the Thomas license is not expected to have a material effect on the PLC's performance - this indicates that the range is not a major part of their sales.

 

On the surface it does seem very odd to be making such public statements about the expiration of a licensing agreement.  

 

As part of the license Hornby will have a "selling off" period once the agreement ends.  This will give them a short period of time to sell all remaining stock after the license expires.  Once the sell-off period is over they are obliged to scrap the stock. 

 

I suspect one of the bean-counters has spotted that the license is about to expire but they have a few year's worth of stock.  Most items are in-stock on the website and I bet that they are sitting on a lot of inventory and are using these announcements to create an artificial sense of urgency to drive sales out of the warehouse at full cost before it has to be binned or massively discounted in a fire-sale.

 

This doesn't look like a company in control of its own destiny.

 

If I am right then retailers should sit tight and wait for the panic.  There could be some bargains on the way.

[tomparryharry]

Except in non-steam where for every leap forward (HST, Class 87) there are several stumbles backward (Mk3s and Mk2e coaches)

Sorry Mark, I can't comment on D&E models. Outside of my area of interest.

 

That said, Hornby haven't done a real steam howler since the 42xx, and even there they improved on the original releases.

 

Cheers,

 

Ian.

[Dunsignalling]

As Hornby PLC has not published an RNS to the AIM it is reasonable to assume that the ending of the Thomas license is not expected to have a material effect on the PLC's performance - this indicates that the range is not a major part of their sales.

 

On the surface it does seem very odd to be making such public statements about the expiration of a licensing agreement.  

 

As part of the license Hornby will have a "selling off" period once the agreement ends.  This will give them a short period of time to sell all remaining stock after the license expires.  Once the sell-off period is over they are obliged to scrap the stock. 

 

I suspect one of the bean-counters has spotted that the license is about to expire but they have a few year's worth of stock.  Most items are in-stock on the website and I bet that they are sitting on a lot of inventory and are using these announcements to create an artificial sense of urgency to drive sales out of the warehouse at full cost before it has to be binned or massively discounted in a fire-sale.

 

This doesn't look like a company in control of its own destiny.

 

If I am right then retailers should sit tight and wait for the panic.  There could be some bargains on the way.

 

Or not, depending on how many/few they have in stock at Hornby..........

 

Of course, if they have loads of the stuff and it hasn't been selling well for a while, that would be a strong driver for not renewing the license.

 

Perhaps a good buy for dealers if stocks are low but not if they are too plentiful? I remember Hatton's taking many years to clear the leftover stocks of old HD Co-Bo's.

 

Trouble is, if Bachmann do step in, their US TTTE stuff is nicer and that might make it difficult to shift the Hornby items profitably, if at all. 

 

John

Edited April 23, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[Jonboy]

I suspect they are simply planning to wind down stocks over the coming months and don’t wish to have rumours flying round that they have issues obtaining stock when retailers find they can’t reorder. Far East production lead times can easily hit six to nine months and so they almost certainly won’t be ordering any more now.

[Timsouth47]

This stinks of the ridiculous attitude of the nanny state wanting to protect everybody from everything & labelling everything as potentially hazardous.

Young kids have always played with things they don't understand because that's how they learn (by mistakes & achievements).

For Hornby to do this ( supposedly under the banner of Health & Safety) is wrong in many ways.

Why deprive a child of the right to explore their imagination by building & playing with model trains.

Thomas was the one way many children could connect directly with the real physical world, by holding the model in their hands & reconstructing the stories from the books & videos into actual working model worlds, in which they could interact with.

This kind of physical & mental stimulus is essential             

for a healthy mind to evolve into a healthy & productive adult.

I don't have any kids, but if i did, i would be straight onto my MP to stop this farcical behaviour.

Undoubtably this move will help the "collectors"

( who never actually play with their trains) thus increasing the "so called" value of their models.

The next step will be an age limit to the purchase of trains & train sets ( to protect the kiddywinks).

Black market Thomas & Friends Sets will be popping up on eBay very soon (& they won't be the genuine Hornby approved one's either).

Counterfeit toys are far more dangerous to kids than the genuine article.

SHAME ON YOU Hornby.

[GreenGiraffe22]

Melodramatic much? ^ It's just not financially viable for Hornby to continue paying out for the licence to sell Thomas products, chill. If you wanna yell at someone, yell at whoever owns the rights to Thomas these days...

 

'SHAME ON YOU Hornby'... really?

[John M Upton]

It was probably a combination of the licence coming up for renewal (expensive!) the ancient tooling used for the range also probably life expired and requiring replacement (expensive!) and the return on any such investment being probably not very much when those financial and manufacturing resources could be put to better use for the company's core business.

 

Also let us not forget that Hornby are - financially speaking - serenely sailing up the proverbial excrement polluted waterway with a distinct lack of propulsion at the moment and its only the good grace of their bank manager that is keeping them going,

[Dunsignalling]

 

This stinks of the ridiculous attitude of the nanny state wanting to protect everybody from everything & labelling everything as potentially hazardous.

Young kids have always played with things they don't understand because that's how they learn (by mistakes & achievements).

For Hornby to do this ( supposedly under the banner of Health & Safety) is wrong in many ways.

Why deprive a child of the right to explore their imagination by building & playing with model trains.

Thomas was the one way many children could connect directly with the real physical world, by holding the model in their hands & reconstructing the stories from the books & videos into actual working model worlds, in which they could interact with.

This kind of physical & mental stimulus is essential             

for a healthy mind to evolve into a healthy & productive adult.

I don't have any kids, but if i did, i would be straight onto my MP to stop this farcical behaviour.

Undoubtably this move will help the "collectors"

( who never actually play with their trains) thus increasing the "so called" value of their models.

The next step will be an age limit to the purchase of trains & train sets ( to protect the kiddywinks).

Black market Thomas & Friends Sets will be popping up on eBay very soon (& they won't be the genuine Hornby approved one's either).

Counterfeit toys are far more dangerous to kids than the genuine article.

SHAME ON YOU Hornby.

 

Bachmann do the Thomas stuff for the USA. Presumably, Bachmann Europe (or even Bachmann USA) could start selling it over here but will need to buy the licence currently held by Hornby.

 

Hornby's licence runs out at the end of this year and the tooling for much of their TTTE range is in need of replacement. That represents an investment they either can't afford or is not commercially viable once the cost of renewing the licence is added on top. 

 

More logical to invest in new models that won't see a hefty slice of the profit creamed off by others. 

 

It will be interesting to see if the cost of acquiring the UK licence puts Bachmann off, too.

 

John

 

EDIT: Hornby's Thomas toys have had to carry a legal disclaimer (approved/imposed by HMG) stating they are not suitable for (IIRC) children under 8 for many years (for their detailed models, it's 14) so any H&S argument is redundant.

Edited May 8, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[jjb1970]

Is Hornby TTTE one of those hallowed institutions that people think should be preserved just as long as it is somebody else that buys the stuff?

[Dunsignalling]

Is Hornby TTTE one of those hallowed institutions that people think should be preserved just as long as it is somebody else that buys the stuff?

Almost certainly. The licence renewal and retooling requirements will not be the only reasons behind Hornby's decision.

 

I suspect that sales levels passed their peak sufficiently long ago to indicate a long-term decline.

 

The "Thomas" demographic is really 3-to-5 years now and the wooden toys are far more appropriate.

 

John

Edited May 8, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[Dan Griffin]

Bachmann do the Thomas stuff for the USA. Presumably, Bachmann Europe (or even Bachmann USA) could start selling it over here but will need to buy the licence currently held by Hornby.

 

Hornby's licence runs out at the end of this year and the tooling for much of their TTTE range is in need of replacement. That represents an investment they either can't afford or is not commercially viable once the cost of renewing the licence is added on top. 

 

More logical to invest in new models that won't see a hefty slice of the profit creamed off by others. 

 

It will be interesting to see if the cost of acquiring the UK licence puts Bachmann off, too.

 

John

 

 

 

Bachmann already have some rights to sell Thomas in the UK, as they sell the G Scale train sets, so maybe it'd just be a case of extending it now to cover HO/OO models. Bachmann as a whole is a very much larger company than Hornby and can maybe absorb more of the financial hit imposed by the licensing fee's.

 

Personally speaking the Bachmann models are in a league of their own compared to the Hornby products of old. for a start the actually look like the characters, and are easily dcc fitted. My kids have loads that I have picked up from various places.

[jjb1970]

I think TTTE suffers from something that affects a lot of toys, the gap between expectation and reality. Kiddies see advertisements of wonderful toy train set ups with lots of trains chugging around, lots of splendid accessories, scenery etc etc and then when theyput an oval of track on a carpet with a loco and two coaches or wagons which just go round in circles it is all an anti-climax and disappointing. Hardly unique to TTTE as many toys suffer from it to an extent. Then they find out that mummy and daddy think all those extra wagons, pieces of track, accessories etc are frightfully expensive and that there are better or more important things to buy and that they don't want to build a fixed layout on a board which means the thing is not going to move much beyond an oval on a carpet. I think the Trackmaster system does it a lot better than Hornby or Bachmann, it is simple, robust, offers loads of fun working features and play value and is more affordable. And being battery powered with plastic clip together track means it is safe enough for young children. My boy had it and loved it.

[andyram]

I think TTTE suffers from something that affects a lot of toys, the gap between expectation and reality. Kiddies see advertisements of wonderful toy train set ups with lots of trains chugging around, lots of splendid accessories, scenery etc etc and then when theyput an oval of track on a carpet with a loco and two coaches or wagons which just go round in circles it is all an anti-climax and disappointing. Hardly unique to TTTE as many toys suffer from it to an extent. Then they find out that mummy and daddy think all those extra wagons, pieces of track, accessories etc are frightfully expensive and that there are better or more important things to buy and that they don't want to build a fixed layout on a board which means the thing is not going to move much beyond an oval on a carpet. I think the Trackmaster system does it a lot better than Hornby or Bachmann, it is simple, robust, offers loads of fun working features and play value and is more affordable. And being battery powered with plastic clip together track means it is safe enough for young children. My boy had it and loved it.

Totally agree with your comments here. Let’s not forget that even a wooden push a long Brio type set or the battery operated Trackmaster products can still do the same job as the Hornby TTTE range. They are still model trains at the end of the day and may still inspire the modellers of the future.

[andyman7]

I think TTTE suffers from something that affects a lot of toys, the gap between expectation and reality. Kiddies see advertisements of wonderful toy train set ups with lots of trains chugging around, lots of splendid accessories, scenery etc etc and then when theyput an oval of track on a carpet with a loco and two coaches or wagons which just go round in circles it is all an anti-climax and disappointing. Hardly unique to TTTE as many toys suffer from it to an extent. Then they find out that mummy and daddy think all those extra wagons, pieces of track, accessories etc are frightfully expensive and that there are better or more important things to buy and that they don't want to build a fixed layout on a board which means the thing is not going to move much beyond an oval on a carpet. I think the Trackmaster system does it a lot better than Hornby or Bachmann, it is simple, robust, offers loads of fun working features and play value and is more affordable. And being battery powered with plastic clip together track means it is safe enough for young children. My boy had it and loved it.

 

 

Totally agree with your comments here. Let’s not forget that even a wooden push a long Brio type set or the battery operated Trackmaster products can still do the same job as the Hornby TTTE range. They are still model trains at the end of the day and may still inspire the modellers of the future.

Of course today kids have access to computer games on their tablets with fantastic graphics, The days when you could walk in to a toyshop and see fantastically illustrated boxes showing all sorts of exciting pictures of action packed scenes, only to find inside the box a few pieces of plastic, wood or metal that bore no relation to the contents are long gone - the Trade Descriptions Act saw to a lot of that! I'm reminded of the old Hornby tin trains, with box lids showing a magnificent Flying Scotsman as the head of a majestic express, only to find an 0-4-0 and three four wheel wagons inside

[PatB]

Cough... Meccano No1 Set with pic of Giant Blocksetting Crane on box... Cough.

[JDW]

I'm not sure what I find more worrying, the dropping of Thomas or the fact that people employed to write advertising can't spell the important words right (and that no one else corrected them)...

[DLPG]

Bought my kids the Bachmann versions via EBay and US sellers. Much better with their moving eyes.

Edited May 8, 2018 by DLPG

[Jeff Smith]

I'm not sure why anyone cares about a business decision announced by Hornby. Surely most RTR buyers would see this as a positive move that is more likely to divert funds to something they might actually want to buy. Any really serious TTTE purchasers would find a way of acquiring Bachmann products which most reviewers rate much better than the Hornby products.

[HonestTom]

I'll be sad to see it go (I've still got my old Thomas from 1985), but I'm not entirely surprised. The last re-release of the Thomas range seemed pretty half-hearted - nothing new apart from some reliveries. Bachmann would be a better bet to take over the range. Apart from the cost of the licence for the UK and Europe, they've got all the tooling, so development costs are minimal. They also have a range of kiddie-friendly accessories and the push-together EZ track. And they know there's a market for a lot of their models in the UK which could potentially get even bigger if consumers no longer have the hassle and extra cost of importing. Their models look a lot more like the TV characters than the Hornby ones and are cheaper to boot.

 

When Hornby got the licence, Thomas hadn't made it on to TV yet and was regarded as a risky proposition for merchandise. After all, what kind of madman produces a TV series based on a 40-year-old series of books about obsolete trains? Britt Allcroft wasn't in the position of power that Mattel is, where they can basically dictate terms. The initial plan Hornby had was to simply relivery the standard clockwork 0-4-0 for Thomas and the Caledonian Pug for Percy - Allcroft nixed that, but it gives you some idea of the level of faith people had in the brand back then. As a result, Hornby produced a range that includes a lot of compromises, where many of the characters bear little resemblance to their TV counterparts - I'm thinking of Dart, Henry, Annie and Clarabel, Diesel, even Thomas looks "off" proportionally compared to the TV character. Their models occupy a strange position in the market, where they're too expensive to be toys, but too compromised to be premium models (plus, they're for kids).

 

A while ago, if we ordered a cup of tea or coffee, we "expected" it to be hot and in most cases would complain if it wasn't. For someone to be able to sue for damages because she, by her own fault spilt it and managed to claim damages because she was not warned it was hot is crazy.

In that particular case, the woman required skin grafts for the scalding sustained. It's a lot more complex than "health and safety gone mad." This page sums the case up quite well: https://www.caoc.org/?pg=facts

Edited May 9, 2018 by HonestTom

[Steamport Southport]

I'll be sad to see it go (I've still got my old Thomas from 1985), but I'm not entirely surprised. The last re-release of the Thomas range seemed pretty half-hearted - nothing new apart from some reliveries. Bachmann would be a better bet to take over the range. Apart from the cost of the licence for the UK and Europe, they've got all the tooling, so development costs are minimal. They also have a range of kiddie-friendly accessories and the push-together EZ track. And they know there's a market for a lot of their models in the UK which could potentially get even bigger if consumers no longer have the hassle and extra cost of importing. Their models look a lot more like the TV characters than the Hornby ones and are cheaper to boot.

 

When Hornby got the licence, Thomas hadn't made it on to TV yet and was regarded as a risky proposition for merchandise. After all, what kind of madman produces a TV series based on a 40-year-old series of books about obsolete trains? Britt Allcroft wasn't in the position of power that Mattel is, where they can basically dictate terms. The initial plan Hornby had was to simply relivery the standard clockwork 0-4-0 for Thomas and the Caledonian Pug for Percy - Allcroft nixed that, but it gives you some idea of the level of faith people had in the brand back then. As a result, Hornby produced a range that includes a lot of compromises, where many of the characters bear little resemblance to their TV counterparts - I'm thinking of Dart, Henry, Annie and Clarabel, Diesel, even Thomas looks "off" proportionally compared to the TV character. Their models occupy a strange position in the market, where they're too expensive to be toys, but too compromised to be premium models (plus, they're for kids).

 

 

Are you sure? She was the one that banned heritage railways from using Thomas The Tank Engine without direct permission from her and then paying a substantial amount of money (thousands of pounds), something they had done for years with direct permission from Reverend Awdry himself.  I also doubt he got paid much for the rights. Money grabbing b@&%# isn't even close.

 

If anything Mattel has been a lot more tolerant since they are mainly only interested in their own events and theme parks such as Thomas Land and Mattel Play centres.

 

 

Besides Thomas is virtually finished and I think Hornby are getting out at the right time. Kids are more interested in Paddington and Peppa Pig at the moment. TTTE events are poorly attended in comparison.

 

 

 

 

Jason

Edited May 9, 2018 by Steamport Southport

[pheaton]

That's the whole idea of purchasing rights....you control how it operates...

 

You wouldn't buy a car and then let people use it without permission....why would you do the same with IP rights.....its all about protection of your intellectual property.....lets say Thomas suffers a boiler explosion and injured lots of people, or starts following themes that wasn't in keeping with the brand.....the brand suffers so of course your going to protect it....

 

Thomas went from a bed time story to a money making machine end of story......pun intended.

 

As for the money that changed hands that's up to the seller isn't it....going on the car theme do you go to the car dealership i mentioned earlier and pay more for the car then you need to?

 

As a brand its day is done....... Good move by Hornby in my opinion....think back a few decades about the brands that have come and gone....had a resurgence and gone again.....the Gerry Anderson series spring to mind....

Edited May 10, 2018 by pheaton

[Craig Watson]

Are you sure? She was the one that banned heritage railways from using Thomas The Tank Engine without direct permission from her and then paying a substantial amount of money (thousands of pounds), something they had done for years with direct permission from Reverend Awdry himself.  I also doubt he got paid much for the rights. Money grabbing b@&%# isn't even close.

 

If anything Mattel has been a lot more tolerant since they are mainly only interested in their own events and theme parks such as Thomas Land and Mattel Play centres.

 

 

Besides Thomas is virtually finished and I think Hornby are getting out at the right time. Kids are more interested in Paddington and Peppa Pig at the moment. TTTE events are poorly attended in comparison.

 

 

 

 

Jason

I think the comment re Britt Allcroft refers to when Hornby obtained the licence in the mid 80's, Thomas wasn't anywhere near as popular as it then became, you could probably say Hornby initially helped increase it's popularity, along with the original TV series.

[John M Upton]

Riddle me this...

 

The latest edition of Hornby Magazine just hit my iPad this morning and in it is a full page Hornby ad for TTTE!!!

 

I am guessing here they may have quite a bit of stock to shift fairly sharpish...

[40F]

Riddle me this...

 

The latest edition of Hornby Magazine just hit my iPad this morning and in it is a full page Hornby ad for TTTE!!!

 

I am guessing here they may have quite a bit of stock to shift fairly sharpish...

 

 

Or the ad was placed before the decision to stop TTE was taken and it was to late to cancel