The end of Thomas and friends from Plarail?

Hmmm...my first thought was: How will a new cartoony look for the characters affect future Plarail releases. 

Exactly. That was my first thought, too. I'm almost certain Mattel will follow their own show, and make their models and sets accordingly. They are supervising the cartoon making. Mr. Bryer from Nelvana said: “Sometimes we'd pitch things and they'd say "that wouldn't work on a toy track" so we wouldn't do it. We were really given the freedom to try something new, basically 'do what you want and we'll tell you if you're going too far.' "

The only thing that we don't know is what would Tomy do. It very well could be the matter of License, as you said, Super.

But if the show looks like this:



shouldn't the models look something like this?