class of amazing team animation drones & friends 2

Bell Station Train Set is a cute little thing that feels very 'generic train set' to my mind, if only because "Bell Station" isn't a historical Sodor location. I think that works in this set's favor though, because it sets a very good first impression for the Easy Connect system as a whole. The star of the show isn't an Iconic Location, it's The System Itself!

The Easy Connect track itself is great, a huge step up from the TM2 track. It feels like it's made of a similar material (I'm not sure what it is specifically, I want to say maybe Nylon or PVC?) but is far easier to put together. The cleverest thing about it is how they engineered the rails to snap together, so it retains one of the few good qualities the TM2 track had by making it possible to scoot your track around or even pick it up while remaining an intact layout. The re-railing function in the rails is a very smart design as well, but I haven't really interacted with it terribly much. I suspect it's mostly there for the Littlest Children who don't know how rails work yet, so it's nice that they've been thrown a bone.

My only issues with Easy Connect are the continued insistence on inconsistent track colors throughout a set (I miss the uniformity of Plarail blue or TM1 brown) and the use of 60° curved track instead of superior 45° curves. Neither of these points are indictments of the Easy Connect system, since they aren't fundamental aspects of the system where removing them would break the whole thing, but I do wish these were different.

Bell Station itself is an adorable building. It has nice color breakup and some very fun and expressive stickers, and the play feature where pushing the pressure plate rings the station's bell is cute. I'm certain kids are going to adore playing with that.

One thing about the station that piqued my curiosity was the fact it has a bunch of parking spaces on the sides of the station building. It struck me as odd at first, since there are only two road vehicles confirmed for the toyline this year (Flynn in Wave 2 of the Basics, Bertie in Wave 3 of the Deluxes), but then I realized... This new toyline was developed by ex-Cars diecast line designers. They may be assuming kids in the Thomas age demo may already have at least a couple of Cars or Hot Wheels vehicles. This is what the parking spaces are for, at least at this stage when there aren't many road vehicles, right?

So I gave it a shot and, yeah, these sorts of vehicles fit like a glove. If this was the actual designer intent, I've gotta hand it to them. This combined with how they've finally fulfilled the Motorized-compatible Diecast line's destiny of becoming Wooden Railway But Cheaper (i will explain this some other day) definitely gives me confidence in this toyline's direction, even if the new promo art style and some of the character redesign choices are a bit questionable.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, this set also comes with a plastic dummy version of Thomas!

...I don't know if I actually want to give my full thoughts on this Thomas yet, that'd probably be best saved for when I actually get my hands on the proper Diecast version of him. For now, all I'll say is that I like this design a lot more in person than I did in renders, especially regarding the face. He's got a bit of a Stepney vibe to him, y'know? Like the rest of the set, he's made a good first impression now that I have him in-person.

I will say it is a bit silly that they're putting plastic dummy versions of the vehicles in these non-motorized playsets, but I can understand why it happened. The actual metal engines are made in Thailand whereas everything else is in Vietnam, so making plastic clones of the engines probably makes more sense logistically than importing a bunch of stock from Thailand just to stuff into sets. Keeps the process streamlined, I assume.