Yesterday evening, my 3 year old and I sat together for our reading time. He’d chosen “Bulgy” from his My Thomas Story Library collection, which I bought at MPH Gurney Plaza under the “3 for 2 Value Buy” promotion.
First page of “Bulgy” – I was reading the line “Duck, Donald and Douglas were taking passengers from the station to other parts of the island…” when he pointed out:
Looking at the blue train, I saw what he meant because Donald & Douglas are a pair of twin, black trains. To show Mummy supporting evidence, the pint-sized researcher ran and grabbed his “Thomas and Friends: Railway Rhymes” and flipped through the pages until he came to the poem on Donald and Douglas.
In case his poor old Mum still didn’t see it, he went on to point out that Douglas is BLACK, not BLUE. Hmm…did the production team botch up the colour separation process?
Then, he flipped through the pages until we came to Edward’s poem – true enough, poor Douglas was painted in Edward’s bright blue!
The 3 year old was REALLY UPSET over the mistake because he kept saying, “Wrong colour! That(’s) not Douglas, it’s Edward!” His pudgy little face had knitted eyebrows, he was pacing the floor and he kept referring to the pages on Donald & Douglas and Edward to show me the mistake.
Boy, I sure wish that either the publisher, the book seller, the graphic artist or even Rev. W. Awdry could be here to deal with this No. 1 Thomas the Tank Engine fan!
Seeing the gross error, I took out “Emily”, which I’d bought from Book Buddy at Ocean Terminal, Harbour City, Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong.
Can you see how loose the pages are? Half the pages had fallen out after the first reading…
Now, almost ALL the pages have fallen out! I’ve had to tape EACH and EVERY page together, resulting in a very pitiful looking “Emily”.
Before I start bashing the printing quality of any country, I flipped to the front matter of “Emily” and “Bulgy” and found: “PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN”.
Then, I took out “Sir Handel”, his first book in the collection. Bought three years ago, “Sir Handel” (like the old train) still looks good and stays strong.
Guess what? “Sir Handle” is PRINTED IN CHINA! Not everything is bad from that country 
Now that the mystery is solved, I wonder if either MPH or Book Buddy (or Egmont) will give me a refund or new books in exchange for these poor quality ones? Only one way to find out!
I certainly hope that the book retailers and book publishers will be as nice as the book retailer in Hertha von Gebhardt’s “Love from Nicky”.
Here are some titles in our collection:
