Thomas the Tank Mail Delivery Loader withHarold The Helicopter Review

My 5 year old has been in love with Thomas the Tank engine ever since he could point at a television.  His love for Thomas has not stopped yet, and as I write he is playing with his Thomas Toys right now.  We thought that a couple of Christmas's ago that he would love Thomas the Tank Mail Delivery Loader with Harold The Helicopter set.  This set is not to be confused with a Thomas and Tank and friends set, which is a bit different. 

Thomas the Tank Mail Delivery Loader w/Harold the Helicopter is a Thomas theTank set based off of the television series. This is one of those sets where you have to put it together before it can be played with. Basically it is a small scale train set.

This set took us about 30 to 45 minutes to put together it may take other people less. Once it is constructed it works a bit like a mouse trap game where one thing moves and activates another, which activates another. You will not only have to assemble the tracks, but you will also need to do a little assembly on the buildings, and get Harold the Helicopter going properly. The tracks are like most of the Thomas set tracks, they kind of slide in to one another. Of course you not only have to put the tracks together but you have to put everything together properly or the set will not work.

Basically once it is put fully together you have two trains Thomas and Percy. One train goes up into the switching station and picks up the cargo, then goes back down and drops the cargo(mail) in to the other train which takes the mail to the mail station. When it dumps the cargo in to Harold's bucket Harold will spin around, the mail is then taken back to the switching station and you repeat this process over and over again. It is actually pretty neat once it gets going.

The set comes with the tracks as well as Thomas the Tank Engine mail delivery big loader, Harold the Helicopter, Percy, switching station, mail chute, post office, and mail.

In order to get this going you will need 1 AA battery. There is no battery included with the set.

The entire set does not take up as much space as a lot of train sets do. All the way around the train set would fit in a space about 2 feet by 2 feet squared. It is not tiny, yet it is not big either.

Thomas the Tank toys are not really cheap, just one train will normally cost you at least $9.99, this set costs around $22.00 which in not bad when you consider the price of these toys.

The set is kind of difficult to put together and it has to be put together correctly in order to operate correctly.  When it is all put together it is really cool the way it all functions together and how each thing that happens on the track affect other things that happen on the tracks. 

But as cool as it is to watch it doesn't really leave much for the child to do other than turn it off and on.  Other than that they can just sit there and watch as everything happens.  My son was thrilled with this the first couple of days after we put the set together, but soon he was taking it apart and combining the parts with parts from other sets to make it in to something else. 

I think this would be a great set for a working Thomas the Train display, but not so much fun for actually playing with.  It's neat, but I think the child just kind of feels left out.