#0116: Toby

A cursory glance through the INAKA archives would reveal that I have only successfully celebrated this blog's birthday a grand total of three times. I could trot out a myriad of excuses, were I so inclined, but the simple truth of the matter is that I don't particularly care enough to try.

So now in 2023, as I juggle workplace duties across multiple websites, combatting my rapidly diminishing health, and a daily celebration of Nintendo music that I have inexplicably deemed as important, I remind Toy Eulogy that it's lucky I even bothered at all.

You're twelve now, blog, old enough to start earning your keep and looking after your beleaguered father in his advanced years. Have a happy birthday, you little asshole, here's a Toby toy that I'll fling in your vague direction before grabbing myself another glass of scotch.

Thomas the Tank Engine was a staple of my formative years, and not coincidentally, the formative years of the blog itself. The great and powerful Montague was one of the first items I had listed in 2011, while the majority of the Thomas cast would later make an appearance two years later.

I had opined at the time that Toby's absence was curious, and in today's sojourn to the garage, I finally located his tattered ass, relegated to a box of unrelated curios. My only assumption is that the trains had a falling out at some point over the last three decades, forcing him to seek lonely refuge amongst a crowd of strangers.

But now, Toby has the last laugh. He's gonna put some dirt in your eye.

For one thing, other than notable paint chipping on his roof and minor wear and tear around his chassis, he is a damn side better off than most of his departed colleagues. His unusual square-shaped head — no doubt the cause of much antagonism back in his days in the cutthroat world of Sodor — actually protects the sticker that makes up his face quite well. While Thomas was a-peelin', Toby remains steadfast; I guess seven was his lucky number, after all.

Speaking of faces, one of the fucked up things about Toby is that his passenger coach, Henrietta, was one of the few characters who originally didn't have one at all. As unnerving as it is to have a sentient train grinning at you, a sentient train with no face at all is arguably much worse. Is it the fucking Mugen Train? Am I going to have to fight for my life against Enmu, Lower One of the Twelve Kizuki?

Also, why were the original trains male and the passenger cars female? What kind of fucked up patriarchy was Reverend Awdry building here?! Little does he know, in the eighty years since his vehicular brainchild first left the station, gender roles have made quite the shift.

Here, Toby discusses politics with a respectable young gentleman who calls himself Marth. The tram engine is impressed not only by the youth's worldly, measured viewpoint, but the fiery manner in which he conveys it.

But what is this? It was a ruse all along, and the amiable lad was in actual fact Lucina in disguise. The rattled locomotive's whole perspective has been changed, and if nothing else, he is now really very interested in the concept of cross-dressing. It's a start, Toby. It's a start!

That gag was probably not worth unboxing my $200 Figma for. Alas.

There is a certain melancholy that goes into passing this charming little toy off into its next stage of life. Without getting too bleak (though in fairness, the Railway Series was originally quite bleak in nature), when last I covered a Thomas toy on this blog in 2014, my spirits were much higher. By revisiting it some nine years later, I pine for that era of Anthony once again.

And besides that, if I can't track down Percy out there in the garage, this could be the final time I ever hold one of my Thomas toys in my hand; rendering Toby the veritable Last Train Home. Unless I suddenly decide to buy new ones, of course, which is both an unusual and yet not entirely unrealistic proposition.

In any event, I am thankful to Toby for giving me one more memento from my youth. The world of Sodor is all glitzy and CGI nowadays, scarcely resembling those handsome little trains who captured my fancy all those years ago. Perhaps if that's not his cup of tea, he might instead like to take residence on the island of Aranearum? I hear trains have all kinds of fun out there.