Thomas & Friends: Curious Cargo product reviews

Thomas The Tank Engine will always be a classic in my mind. I remember watching it as a child 15 years ago and it is amazing how far it has come, it looks AMAZING in high definition. I do love that they haven't really changed the style of the show over that time either, aside from the more "PC" name for the "Fat Controller" who is now the "Thin Controller".

My son is 3 and he doesn't really have the best attention span but Thomas & Friends: Curious Cargo really holds his attention well. The combination of his favourites (Thomas & Friends) and the bright interactive animals seems to really appeal to him. One of the messages that I really liked in Thomas & Friends: Curious Cargo was when Percy was too rough with the animals and had to learn how to treat them and be gentle. This is a good message in my opinion and I am sure our pets at home agree.

I really would recommend this to others with children of all ages, I love how every Thomas episode and movie really has a "Moral of the story".

Was happy to review this DVD as I remember Thomas from when I was young and it is always good when such a classic stays around for such a long time. I have to say I was impressed at how far the graphics have come from back in my day. The animals and people were definitely more 3 dimensional and realistic looking than the flat they used to be but the characters are still the same and haven't been altered which is great.

My son is only 10 months but is really getting interested in watching children's programmes but only for short periods of time as his attention doesn't stretch very far at the moment. I liked how the DVD was separated into episodes which you could play individually so we could just watch it a bit at a time. Cai loved the music of the theme song which played at the beginning and end of each episode and I thought it was really cool how they had the lyrics displayed on the screen so you could sing along as I have never really known exactly what the words were.

The episodes were really interesting for young children and had good lessons about listening to other people rather than thinking you know everything and then realising you have made a mistake and should of listened in the first place. The thing I liked about this was that the characters would make their mistakes but would then make up for their mistakes and apologise which I think is important for children to learn about.

I'm sure this DVD will be watched many more times as my son gets older and I am happy to let him watch it as it has nice themes for preschool aged children. It's definitely something I don't mind watching either as some children's programmes can be quite annoying like the teletubbies that were around when my daughter was younger which I couldn't stand to sit through.

We got this DVD to watch for the weekend. Given my eldest daughter's interest in trains and my youngest's interest in having the TV on, I thought why not. We are very familiar with Thomas and Friends. I use to watch it myself back when Ringo Starr narrated it. My eldest use to love watching Thomas when she was younger. I figured with the animals showing on the case, this would be a hit.

This DVD comes with 6 episodes of Thomas and Friends to watch. They largely involve stories where the cargo the trains are pulling is interesting in some way. They almost all involve trains not listening to instructions or thinking they know more than a person of authority does. So there are lots of "egg on face" moments. My daughter sat quietly for the first three episodes, with me. We gasped at the silly antics of the trains and laughed too. It was fun to share the stories with her.

However, after the three episode she got a bit bored and wanted to do something else. One thing that got to me with this DVD was the inclusion of the opening and closing credits for each episode. Its a pity that there couldn't have been a way to run the episodes together if you selected "play all". The main reason this was annoying was the theme song. You effectively have to hear it once on opening, karaoke style on closing and then an instrumental. It was okay the first couple of times, and we even sang along. But then it started to grate, and last night when I woke up to feed the baby I could still hear it playing on loop in my brain. That said, if you have a huge Thomas fan at your house, then you probably know all about the song and chances are, you love it.

We enjoyed the stories, but its not a DVD I could have on non-stop. We broke it down to several viewings over the course of the weekend and it was enjoyed. I love that its a classic, but its still got that fresh CGI to it. I do think it is best suited to pre-schoolers.