What a gimmick!

This weekend, we went for the 'Inaugural Thomas & Friends Family Fun Day' - organised by politicians! It certainly was a clever crowd drawer on their part because hundreds of little kids, their parents and grand parents turned up. I didn't see much 'political' stuff there and there weren't any speeches or anything like that. In fact, I'm not really sure what the whole message of the day was which makes me wonder how they are measuring the success of the Thomas gimmick. Although.....I do remember the name of the MP that organised the thing so, maybe that was all he was after.

The bulk of the crowd there were all under six years old! Many were dressed in their 'Thomas' clothes, wearing their 'Thomas' hats and carrying their 'Thomas' backpacks. It wasn't a huge event but I can fully understand that to the target market (and their parents), this was a big day.

They organised for a live sized Thomas to be there. Even though it was a stationary model (that didn't talk, whistle or chug along the tracks), I saw little face after little face light up as they noticed it. The Fat Controller was there for storytelling every 30 mins. They also had a jumping castle and a 'train' that drove around the park.

Aaron got there at 9.30am, 30 mins before it officially started, and we stayed until about 1.30pm. This was way past his nap time and he had woken up extra early at 5.30am so the poor little guy was completely crabby, hot and sweaty by then. The amusing thing was that at around the same time we left, I heard lots of other little kids starting to have breakdowns. Guess they all missed their naps for Thomas. And as we drove out, we saw the next batch of littlies arriving - the after-nap crowd I guess.

Here are a few photos:







This final picture is of the park that the event was held at. I can never get enough of seeing beautiful parks like this after having lived with no parks to go to for so long.