OT Paddington Bear Event @ Butterley

Perhaps they forgot to pay the licensing fee and thus got told to yank a certain bear from Peru out of the lime-light, such is the vigour some protect their intellectual property rights these days! I well remember the anger that some preserved lines had for Brit ??? when she demanded that preserved railways start paying her for the privilege of publicising 'her'[1] products... :~(

From what I understand Hit Entertainment are even worse ?

Chris

Rights to Paddington appears to be controlled though "The Copyrights Group", not HIT Entertainment.

I was thinking about Thomas not Paddington :-)

I feel the main problem, it was a Paddington Bear event and only Paddington Bear was on site ! I am not sure what else you could have apart from a marmalade sandwich stall but ..... ?

Compared to other events I would suggest it was not well attended,

I would imagine Paddington Bear is a bit like Marmite ... you love or loath it.

I always feel a little sympathetic to those 'volunteered' to wear those costumes ..... in the summer weather you are sweltering but in the rain you are cooler but the fur gets wet, heavy & smelly. In any weather you cant see were you are going very well.

Chris

As well as simple greed, one of the reasons people can be a bit aggressive about rights to these things is because of the risk of one rubbish event damaging the brand. If a child-hating owner of a hardcore railway anorak museum ran a token-effort Thomas event, it might put people off visiting a future entertaining event on a big railway which would make the kiddies happy (and, yes, bring in lots of money).

"Oh look, Thomas event at the NYMR next week. Oh, no, hold on. We did Thomas before, on that miniature railway in the park where that old man swore at Little Johnny for calling his loco Duck"...

Many years ago I spent some time one summer wandering around Scarborough dressed as a whelk called Reginald. Unfortunately the designers had forgotten to put any eye holes in the outfit, and more fundamentally, the costume was quite clearly based on a squid, not a whelk....

From what I understand it's the level of insurance cover they demand and last minute demands.

Is HIT a US based company, as that would explain the above ?

Butterly have their own 'Thomas' which is hired out, I understand demand has dropped dramatically over the past year.

These events are based on children enjoying themselves. Do a poor or even an average job many children of today will not accept it. I am surprised many accept everyday loco's with hand drawn face boards held on with wire as 'Thomas' loco's.

Chris

I suspect that most children, of the intended age group, are either far to spell-bound (or totally freaked out) by the real live steam/diesel locomotive with all the wheezing, groaning, creaking and what ever other noises are being made to notice the 'face' for very long!

It's a multinational company, registered in England but responsible for brands such as Thomas, Barney (ugh!), Bob the Builder, Angelina Ballerina, Pingu and Fireman Sam. Many of its executives have worked in both the UK and North America (US/Canada).

Not to mention the wrong colour or wheel arrangement.

How many railways have a Toby the Tram Engine? How many people have actually seen a steam tram engine?

Maybe the kids are not rivet counters. As a Kid I enjoyed my Trix Twin train set and To be honest the locos did not look like anything that BR had ever had. But I had two locos one black and one green what more could a lad want.

I've seen plenty of kids shouting "don't be silly mummy, is a not a ".

On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:00:53 -0700 (PDT), Dragon Heart said in :

I fee sorry for those children who lack a creative imagination. Mine would have been fine with that, and still are fine with "playing trains" rather than railway modelling.

Guy

When we took our (British) modular O-scale layout to various NMRA conventions, children in arms were saying "Ooh look Daddy, there's Duck" etc. Even some I didn't know either of the Awdreys had written stories about. Especially City of Truro - you don't expect a pre-schooler to recognise it.

There's a difference?

On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:58:26 +0100, Arthur Figgis said in :

The existence of Pendon rather suggests so, yes :-)

Guy

Is that run automatically? It's far too long since I went.

They have a steam tram @ Telford, not Toby, but a working steam tram. I recall seeing some photo's of a full size replica but I don't think it was steam driven or remember were it was.

Chris

On Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:52:35 +0100, Arthur Figgis said in :

No, there are operators (or were last time I went).

Guy