UPDATE:
Mattel has released the trailer for Really Helpful Engines, the pilot and first special for this reboot. The show itself won’t be titled simply Thomas & Friends, but will have the subtitle Railway Stories like the audiobooks for the original Railway Series books. In addition to the voices, other characters and locations, it reveals the designs for the humans (who look nearly the same as they did in the previous CGI eras) and one of the new “crane trucks”; probably Deepak, who turned out to be a heavy construction crane and not the type I imagined.
This trailer makes it very promising and I can tell it’s clearly being made with the same love, effort, care and devotion that went into (at least) the Brenner seasons of the first show. The new voice cast sounds equally as good as the visuals and I don’t mind Thomas and Percy being voiced by children again; in fact, I even predicted the main trio sounding like that of Chuggington and it works well for them, IMO. Sir Topham Hatt’s more gruff voice reminded me of Kerry Shale’s but with a British accent and toned down a bit. Like in the BWBA theme song, the first six notes of the O’Donnell-Campbell theme can also be faintly heard at one point.
Unlike All Engines Go, they’ve successfully made me want to try the first few (regular) episodes when they hit the screens.
