The demographic for Thomas is about 4 to 7 years old. This is about what we see when the Day out with Thomas visits Boothbay Railway Village every August (a word from out sponsor: tickets are on sale now http://www.railwayvillage.org/main.html) It’s a fun event as long as you like crowds of young people who are about 3 or 4 feet tall who tend to get a bit cranky when nap time apporaches.
The train shows I go to have a certain number of old people around 6’ tall who also get cranky when nap time comes along. (In fact, I think I’m one of them!)
[(-D]
This a little off the OP’s original question but I also made a Thomas the Train layout for my kids using the wooden track components. They had hours and hours of fun with it.
Looking back though I think there was one mistake I made, and that was to make the layout arrangement permanent. By doing so I eliminated the important aspect of them being able to design their own layouts which is obviously one of the benefits of play - learning and being creative. Next time I will know better (no - I’m not planning on having any more kids but I hope there will be grandchildren).
And I will absolutely run whatever characters are current at the time when my grandkids visit.
Dave
Neither of my older boys is much into trains.
The youngest one, however, started with the wooden Thomas / Brio trains, moved up to Bachmann"s HO scale Thomas stuff, and now runs a Conrail layout (with a couple of New Haven and NYC locos left over from the Penn Central merger).
As someone said, if it gets children into model railroading, how can it be a bad thing.
Just to note, though, my youngest, who turns 9 in two weeks, now thinks Thomas is “stupid”. (the trains, that is, because his name is – coincidentally – Thomas). I’ll probably hang on to the other stuff, though. There will be grandchildren some day.