Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27103 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-02-25
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 38 minutes

Amazon.com
As the title suggests, chocolate is involved in the main story's obligatory train crash. Because of a water shortage, Sir Topham Hatt's motto is "Usefulness before cleanliness," but when Bon Bon Percy plows through a factory wall and ends up doused in dessert topping, he earns himself a washdown. The other 5 stories involve Bill and Ben, the buffer brothers; self-important Gordon and his rivalry with Salty; Petersam losing two whistles; and resolving the question of who gets to transport the mouse-fearing opera singer Allicia Botti. The stories deal with the frequent "Thomas" theme of how jealousies, petty fights, and rivalries keep trains from working together. The use of anthropomorphic vehicles somehow makes the message more subtle--and thus more palatable--than many other children's series. A music video sung by children lauding the virtues of small engines wraps up this 38-minute program. (Ages 3 to 7) --Kimberly Heinrichs

Customer Reviews

Another Thomas Success
As usual you cannot go wrong with Thomas - Kids learn morals and manners in an easy to listen and view forum.

What happened to Gordon's voice??
We got this DVD after our 3 year old saw the cover and became fixated on learning the story. I was glad to be getting another disc narrated by Alec Baldwin, since our first two were Make Someone Happy and Races, Rescues and Runaways, and as a result the voicings by George Carlin, Ringo Starr, and whoever it is doing the current series on PBS just don't sound right. So strong is our association of the Baldwin voices with the Thomas characters that when I thought I saw Baldwin at the theater last week, I wanted to go up and tell him how much I appreciated his work on Thomas - the engines are all very distinctive and characterful.

Imagine my shock, then, when Gordon first speaks - and he has an average voice, not the unmistakeable deep bass of our earlier DVDs. My whole problem with Carlin is that he doesn't realize that Gordon has a deep voice, and now it seems like Baldwin doesn't either. Worse still, instead of his (obviously correct) clipped air-traffic-controller voice, Harold now speaks like some weird British eccentric - ridiculous!

I can only guess these are some of the first episodes Baldwin recorded, before he figured out the engines' *true* voices. So, be warned - if you want to know what the engines really sound like, go for Races, Rescues and Runaways!

-- Nathandaddy.

Very good Thomas Video
Great Thomas Video. I liked all of the stories very much(They include: Percy's Chocolate Crunch, Thomas, Percy & the Squeak, Gordon Takes A Tumble, Buffer Bother, Middle Engine, Faulty Whistle) I'd say Gordon Takes A Tumble is one of the funniest stories of all time. The first time I saw this story, I was in tears(laughing, not crying) when Gordon fell of the rails and crashed into a pile of tires, a shed, and a giant mound of dirt and stops right in front of a scare crow. Now this is a story you'll want to see over and over again. Very good, 9 out of 10.