I just went through my Annie and Clarabels and I only saw creamer colors in 2002+ A&C (aside from obviously sun faded/damaged ones)

Pre-2002, all normal brown

Post-2002, mostly brown but the bottom row is "creamier"

The range of faces on the "creamy" trucks... I think the faces might be more down to sun damage, or I just haven't come across that particular batch.
Here's the closest I have to the blonde faces (bottom, both on normal brown carriages) but these seem obviously damaged, I think they were brown originally.

For the record, none of my (admittedly limited) selection of made in Japan A&C are cream either, definitely seems like a post-2002 thing (if its a real thing at all)

I checked my boxed sets and none of them were creamy, for what that's worth.