Thomas' Halloween Adventures (2018 Re-Release)

This was a little announcement that made its way on Sodor Island Forums some days ago, and it's something which has been bothering me since I first heard about it. So now I get to talk about it in full.

Thomas and Friends is no stranger to DVD re-releases. Many of them have been re-releases of the older VHS tapes from the 1990s, and most have been given upgrades to their cover artwork to try and freshen up the release. My personal favorite style is the one from the late 1990s/early 2000s with the colored border and a character (sometimes two) overlooking a scene from one of the episodes (Cranky Bugs, the re-release of Thomas Comes to Breakfast, etc.).

Which brings me onto the 2018 re-release of Thomas' Halloween Adventures. There are two issues I have with the re-release.

The first issue is that the cover above is a glow-in-the-dark outline of Thomas in CGI form for a model era DVD. I know some parents and kids don't have the best perceptions of the model era, much less The Railway Series, but I can already tell this will blow up in Universal's face because this is practically false advertising on their part.

Speaking of Universal, that brings me onto my next issue; they'd rather reissue older content than bring the American audience newer content from seasons 20 and 21. At this point, the American audience is missing out on Spencer's VIP and Toad's Bright Idea from season 18, Helping Hiro from season 19, nine episodes from season 20 (Bradford the Brakevan, Ryan and Daisy, Pouty James, Blown Away, The Way She Does It, Mucking About, Buckled Tracks and Bumpy Trucks, Mike's Whistle, and Useful Railway), and all the non-winter themed episodes of season 21. That's about three DVDs' worth of episodes!

In America, it's pretty obvious that DVDs are being made obsolete by online streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu - the most recent episodic American DVDs with were Extraordinary Engines and Christmas on Sodor (I don't count Thomas' Holiday Collection because it's a compilation) - and with Big World! Big Adventures! coming to the aforementioned sites (and quite possibly a few more), it looks as though the days of buying Thomas DVDs at a department store are becoming numbered.

What makes it even more frustrating is that the season 20 and 21 episodes not released on American DVDs are stuck in the UK on Tales from the Rails, Team Up with Thomas (the 2017 version), Danger at the Docks, and On the Go with Thomas. I remember when people were frustrated that America got the episodes out on DVD first before the UK did, and right now the opposite situation is happening.

Getting back to the re-release of Thomas' Halloween Adventures; what is even the point of a re-release for DVD? If you have an Amazon Prime account, you can simply watch the episodes featured on the DVD in the form of the complete series 1-7. Hell, you can even watch seasons 16-20 there as well (though some episodes from 17, 19, and 20 are missing, and the Dinos and Discoveries episodes are part of 19 for whatever reason)! There is seriously no excuse for Universal to not bother with the season 20 and 21 episodes awaiting an American DVD release.

The bottom line is, this is another prime example of the distributors making stupid decisions for the franchise they supposedly hold copyright towards. Sure, you can get seasons 19-21 on Nickelodeon, but what about the viewers who don't have cable? DVDs are the likely option for them, but what if they can't find certain episodes? What are Universal going to do then? They'll have to do a lot to make up for how abysmal their distribution of the episodes is...