>>6761107Having been a kid in the early to mid 90s I can absolutely attest to this. Thomas stuff was niche as hell, and almost none of it was in the major store chains, bar Toys R Us sometimes having some of the Ertl diecast at the end of their Hot Wheels aisle. My parents had to go out of their way to get any actual toys, let alone the wooden ones. They were always expensive, and several of the bigger accessories and sets were well over $100. Single characters could be something from $10 to $20 each, and this was in twenty something years ago's prices. It was definitely not something a lot of families could afford. The absolute cheapest stuff I remember was actually the Tomy battery powered toys, and even those weren't cheap. But at least when it came to the wooden line, you got really decent quality toys for the price. The stuff was large, heavy, and almost entirely wood with a minimum of plastic or other materials. There were no crazy action packed gimmicks, none of the crazy stunt track remote control flipping toys they've got sitting over at Walmart now. It was very much a plain train toy, and I enjoyed that.
I don't know if there were any others, but at least in the southern California area there was one dedicated store in the Brea mall that exclusively sold Thomas merchandise, and it was often where my parents went to get me the Wooden toys and accessories simply because there was pretty much no place else to get them. Pic related, dug it up from the Wayback machine. Maybe it's just because I'm an old fart now, but I just don't understand the need to try and turn trains into some kind of action-packed super toy. Some kids will always like just playing with trains because they're trains and plenty others aren't going to be interested, period. There's plenty of other toy lines that are better suited for the "exciting" role than Thomas is.
