>>1679991It was pretty much a soft reboot, the soul of the show was already waning once they stopped adapting the Rev's Railway Series books, but it still had David Mitton and Allcroft on it. But once they left too and Thomas was sold to HiT entertainment, the show was dumbed down from a children's story that never talked down to its audience, to a generic pre-school show aimed with the expectation of getting drooling children to buy toys. No longer did the show have the passion of Awdry's stories, or Mitton's direction/style or the original music composition of Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell.
It was a shadow of its former self, and looking back on it, people are a lot more forgiving because of BWBA and the hard reboot, even though it was the start of a soulless merchandising show that only cared about toddler's wallets, instead of entertaining them with stories about a functioning railway on an island full of working trains. Not to mention they chopped off every one of Awdry's characters lbar the main seven and some narrow gauge engines, the ones they did keep turned into caricatures.
