All posts by JohnM

Everything old is new again

Products

After a lackluster couple of years, BRIO seems to be returning to its roots with a couple of its accessories in 2018. The biggest news is Brio #33886, the Cargo Transport Helicopter.

Buy it on Amazon.

This is a modernization of the classic #33580 Helicopter from 1988.

The new version is a mix of plastic and wood like most of BRIO’s current lineup. A nice feature is the cockpit windshield, which opens up to reveal a seat for the pilot which is included. It also comes with a cargo car. The wheel base looks the same as the airplane, which means that, as with the latter, you can use the helicopter on a runway made from the road track.

Brio #33866 marks the return of the Low-Level Crane. This first appeared in European markets in 2017. In the US, it looks like it will be part of #33878, the Lift and Load Starter set. This set includes the classic, plastic tunnel and a classic tree.

Buy the #33866 Low Level Crane on Amazon or on eBay. Find the #33878 Lift and Load Starter Set on Amazon.

There’s even an update to the BRIO Airport set from 2013. The new version is a bit simpler by doing away with the monorail, and the new plane comes in red, adding some variety to your BRIO fleet.

Buy it on Amazon or on eBay.

I love these jets. They are one of the best accessories BRIO has made, and it’s nice to see new colors come along.

It’s a good start to the year.

Sometimes you just get lucky

Commentary

Anyone who has collected BRIO for any length of time is familiar with the #33532 Car Wash set. Listed in catalogs from 1986 through 1990, it had two foam rollers that are notorious for disintegrating as they age. It is almost impossible to find a set with the foam rollers intact. Most have large chunks missing from them, with small pieces of foam that flake off at the slightest touch. The foam apparently dried out over time, and the rollers crumbled as a result. I’ve even seen a set in an unopened box where the rollers had complete come apart, leaving only piles of blue dust inside.

But every now and then you get lucky. I found this one recently, and to my amazement the foam rollers are almost completely intact:

This photo is as bad as I could make it look. There are some depressions in the foam, but very little is missing and the rollers still look cylindrical. This is the most complete I’ve even seen them in over 15 years of looking.

Changes to BRIO Distribution in the U.S.

Commentary

Back in January of 2015, BRIO AB was acquired by The Ravensburger Group (Ravensburger is most widely known for its extensive line of jigsaw puzzles). At the time, BRIO did not have direct distribution in the United States, instead relying on Schylling Inc. to serve as a middleman. For those of us in the United States, there was nothing good about this arrangement: Schylling chose to import only part of BRIO’s product line, updated their catalog annually while BRIO was introducing new products in both the fall and spring, and lagged the European markets by a year or more.

When Ravensburger acquired BRIO I was hopeful that this all of this would change. Ravensburger has had U.S. offices for decades, and could serve as the direct distributor for the BRIO line of toys. Sure enough, this appears to be what has happened: BRIO has been dropped from the 2016 Schylling catalogs, and U.S. retailers are seeing the current generation of BRIO Wooden Railway products. We still lag the European markets, but only by months instead of a full year.

I view this as a significant improvement. I’d rather see the U.S. get new products immediately, of course, but Schylling never was a very good middleman and I am happy to see them out of the picture.

A Sneak-Peek at BRIO’s new Products

Products

BRIO’s web site has posted some thumbnails and larger-size images showing what appear to be some of their new toys for 2016.

33789_Lumber_Loading_Set.png

The first is #33789, the Lumber Loading Set (click for a larger, alternative view). Note that the red, tied-arch bridge is yellow in this starter set, and the yellow train car with the green arm looks somewhat similar to the #33316 Lift and Load Train from the early 2000’s. It’s not visible in the large image and hard to see in the small thumbnail, but there does appear to be a conveyor or slide in this set as well.

33829_Figure_Play_Pack.png

The second is a series of figures, #33829 the Figure Play Pack.

The file names on the larger images suggest that these will be part of the “Hero” them.

Coming soon from BRIO

Products

BRIO has made a couple of interesting announcements in the past couple of weeks. While details are still a little thin, here is their sneak peek at some new Wooden Railway products for 2016:

BRIO World — Railway App

BRIO’s first ever game app, BRIO World — Railway will let you build your own virtual BRIO railway complete with track, trains, accessories and characters. The worlds will be interactive and will supply “missions” for you to complete as part of the play experience. The more you interact with the game, the more your world will grow and the more features will be unlocked.

The app will sell for 2.99 EUR (with no in-app purchases) and be available for tablets, phones, and traditional computers running iOS, Android 4, and Windows 10. Read the press release on BRIO’s web site.

Character-based theme: Village

BRIO will launch a new set of character-based themes, starting with Village. Rather than try and summarize this one, I’ll quote from the press release:

Village is BRIO’s first character-based play theme that encourages boys and girls to play together with the help of stories from their own everyday life. The Village environment is constructed with modules like the Family Home and School Playsets, the Market stand and Ice-cream shop. Staying true to the BRIO spirit, it is up to every child whether to assemble the predefined modules or come up with their own creations. Everything is in the same scale as the railway sets, and themes in the BRIO World can easily be connected as part of a bigger setting.

See the press release for more information.

Other new accessories

Look for a new accessory called the Lumber Loading Set. Built with a sustainability theme in mind, it comes with trees, and tools for planting them. The Rescue theme launches in the fall, and they’ve announced three accessories: the Rescue Emergency Set, Central Firestation, and Firefighter Helicopter.

Understanding the Tip Converter

History

In 1994, BRIO released the #33389 Tip Converter accessory for the wooden railway system. It is arguably the most baffling of all the wooden railway products, with a name that does nothing to help people understand what it is or what it’s for.

BRIO 33389

Here’s how it works: you move a tipping truck into the center of the mechanism, and then turn the knob on the side. This causes the mechanism to lift the tipping truck into the air and flip it over, as if dumping its contents to the ground below. You then turn the knob to lower the car back into place.

Believe it or not, this accessory is modeled after an actual piece of railroad equipment: the rotary car dumper, or wagon tippler as it’s known in the U.K. They do exactly what I just described: rotate the track segment and car together to dump out the car’s contents. In a real railroad, these are used with gondola cars rather than hopper cars (what BRIO calls tipping trucks) as the latter have sloped sides and hatches for unloading.

Rotary Car Dumper

Image credit: Heyl & Patterson Inc, WikiMedia Commons

For more images of rotarty car dumpers, do a Google image search.

New arrivals for the U.S.

Products

In the United States we are saddled with Schylling as a distributor for BRIO toys. I use the term “saddled” deliberately: we tend to get “new” releases anywhere from six months to a year after they have already been out in the European markets, assuming we even get them at all. Schylling picks and chooses which items it’s going to bring in from BRIO’s catalogs, and we are stuck with their choices and their timing. The good news is, there are options for you if you are interested in some relatively recent Wooden Railway products.

First, Schylling has released their catalog supplement for 2015 and it looks like the Fun Park theme will be available in the U.S. for the holidays. Also showing up will be the all new #33766 Railway World Deluxe Set, a huge starter set with a nice mix of some recent accessories. Based on Schylling’s dealer pricing, expect the latter to run about $400.

If you want some of the Fall 2015 products, a few 3rd party sellers from Europe are listing items on Amazon’s U.S. site, and selling at very reasonable prices with either free or very cheap shipping. This week, I noticed LeVida Toys listing most of the Horse Farm theme, including the large #33791 Horse Stable. A couple of other sellers have these items listed as well. Be sure to look around.

Charlotte the Container Ship?

History

I recently gained access to some old marketing materials from 1999 that BRIO sent out to its U.S. retailers. The most interesting of these was a flyer advertising upcoming releases and it featured an early prototype in the Theodore Tugboat™ lineup for product #32718 called Charlotte the Container Ship:

#32718 Charlotte the Container Ship

As you can see from the footnote, the final character and product name was still not known at the time this was printed. The Theodore Tugboat television series, produced by Cochran Entertainment Inc., was in production from 1993 through 2001 so it’s possible that the name wasn’t finalized in the series at the time the prototype was created. Or there may just have been some confusion or miscommunication between BRIO and Cochran, and BRIO needed to get the product announcement out before they could get clarification.

Either way, the final toy would come to market as Chester the Container Ship, and would look quite different from the prototype shown in the flyer.

#32718 Cheaster the Container Ship

Major changes between early prototypes and final releases are not uncommon in the toy industry, though having them appear in catalogs is less so. After seeing this flyer, I went back through my catalog collection and noticed that Charlotte shows up in the 1999 wishbook, as well. Though the name is still printed on the side of the boat (or, rather, stuck on with paper…this is an early prototype after all), the official product name is given as just “Container Ship”.

#32718 Container Ship