Yujin Thomas and Percy

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I have been interested in a lot of stuff about these two since I found out they existed, so I figured if I was going to do another Japanese auctions run to pick up the rest of the Plarail stuff I really wanted, I had to have these two.

I haven't seen many pictures of the Percy online (well, on the English side of the internet at least, I dare say it comes up in Japan circles more often) so I threw together a Google Drive folder with some quick photos.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1...Qg6YkR62Pa

[Image: IMG-20191124-004619.jpg]
Some of the pressing questions I had:
It looked like the details were printed instead of stickers, are they, and if so they must predate the mid 2000s shift to printed details, right? Yes, they are printed on on both engines, and I suppose they are the first printed Thomas and Percy engines. Possibly this is the first Thomas with middle wheels? I think the normal Plarail one gained them around the same time, and I think they're slightly different but these ones don't need to be spring loaded to keep a battery cover closed so I suppose they would have to be.

What is the little bump under Thomas' coupling for? I hadn't seen it at the time, but I assumed Percy was the same way. He isn't, and the bump on Thomas is for the screw holding the back coupling down. Percy has a ledge on the bottom of the red inner cab floor and back wall that holds his in. Incidentally, both use the previous coupling design, or at least something very similar.
[Image: IMG-20191124-004709.jpg]

[Image: IMG-20191124-005047.jpg]

[Image: IMG-20191124-005457.jpg]

Can you swap the cabs around? Unfortunately (fortunately?), no. Percy's cab is wider and doesn't fit in Thomas at all, and Thomas' cab gets fairly deep in Percy but doesn't click into place.

[Image: IMG-20191124-004835.jpg]

Both are dated 1998, but I have a hunch Thomas was designed and maybe released earlier and they redesigned the back coupling to not use an additional screw to save a few fractions of a cent per unit (and I think it may be more robust anyway) on Percy.
Interestingly, the faces are molded directly into the front of the smokebox and you can see the reliefs through the back.


[Image: IMG-20191124-005209.jpg]

[Image: IMG-20191124-005656.jpg]

Percy's pullback motor is missing the gear that interacts with the metal coil so the pullback function doesn't actually work... It looks like a pretty standard pullback motor though, may look for a drop in replacement. I tried running Thomas around a little, he liked to hop the rails a lot on any curve so I figured I'd give him a load and he could just about handle one carriage at an okay speed, any more and he didn't have the power to move.

Anyway, that's a little info dump about these interesting candy dispensers.
I have a website where I have been writing about and photographing many of the sets and pieces that I find interesting.
[-] The following 3 users Like DuckGWR's post:
  • chrisjo, MuddyPoppins, Super
Wow! Fantastic score!
Yujin Percy is incredibly rare... If you ever see another in your searches please let us know.
He is one of the last pieces left that we need to add to our collection.
Thank you Smile
Play nice & have fun!!Smile
[-] The following 2 users Like MuddyPoppins's post:
  • DuckGWR, Super
Very interesting Duck.
[Image: super-smiley-emoticon.gif]
[-] The following 1 user Likes Super's post:
  • DuckGWR
Holy crap, I didn't know Yujin even made Percy. Incredible find!
(This post was last modified: 11-25-2019, 12:42 PM by Super.)
[-] The following 1 user Likes marclovestrainz's post:
  • DuckGWR



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