Thomas & Friends Yoto Cards gifted for review
If you’re avid Yoto fans like us, chances are you’ve heard the rumours for a few weeks now and have been waiting with trepidation for the announcement about the NEW Thomas & Friends Yoto card collection. Well, the good news is, the long wait is over, with TWO new releases featuring Thomas the Tank Engine train and his friends that we all, (ahem, I mean our kids) know and love so much!
Here’s everything you need to know about the new Thomas Yoto Cards.
What are the new Thomas & Friends Yoto Cards?
Available to buy from 16th March 2023, there are not one, not two, but SEVEN new Thomas and Friends Yoto Cards to choose from – one single story, and another available to buy as a collection of six stories. These licensed original stories from Thomas and Friends each feature fantastic tales, heroic rescue missions and exciting Thomas adventures in the familiar town of Sodor.
For the first time, the story cards will also feature an interactive quiz element, allowing children to test their knowledge by answering fun questions about the stories and characters they’ve just met on their audio adventure.
We’ve been lucky enough to try out these new yoto cards before their general release – read on to hear our full Real Mum’s verdict!
Thomas & Friends™ Fairy Tales
Price £7.99.
Total running time: 1 hour 40 minutes | Features: 10 stories | Individual duration: 9 – 12 minutes each
What Yoto Say:
A collection of ten classic fairy tales reimagined with everyone’s favourite little blue steam engine. From beanstalks to giants to trolls and pumpkins, join Thomas, Gordon, Percy, Nia and more on ten magical adventures on the Island of Sodor. Stories include; Thomas and the Fairy God Engine, Thomas and the Enormous Pumpkin, Thomas and the Gingerbread Train, Thomas the Wooden Engine and the Seven Tiny Engines, Thomas and the Nutcracker, Thomas and the Elves.
Real Mum’s Verdict:
This card offers ten fun, action-packed stories for preschoolers and younger children. Narrated by the original Thomas voice-over Mark Moraghan (who else could do it justice?!) these stories of a fun Thomas twist on traditional fairy stories including Jack and the Beanstalk and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Each magical story takes place on the Island of Sodor and includes familiar characters such as Thomas, Percy, James and Sir Topham Hat in action-packed adventures that are bought to life with fun music and sound effects – helping kids use their imagination and really picture the scenes in their mind.
My girls haven’t always responded well to deeper voiced narrators on some Yoto stories, but Mark’s voice overs are high energy and with unique character voices, he really kept my daughter’s interest even at the age of 6.
With each story being around 9-12 minutes long, they’re the perfect duration for a bedtime story, whilst also being a fun travel companion too.
Thomas & Friends™ The Steam Team Collection
Price: £29.99 for six cards
Total running time: 3 hours 22 minutes | Each card duration: Approx 30 minutes
What Yoto Say:
Meet a new engine in each audiobook (Meet Thomas, Meet Percy, Meet Nia, Meet Gordon, Meet Emily and Meet James). Each Thomas and Friends™ Yoto card contains four fun stories and an awesome engine quiz.
Real Mum’s Verdict
This Thomas and Friends Collection is a guaranteed hit for Thomas fans. Each of the six cards comes with a fun introduction that allows children to get to know each character – from their personalities and appearance to their responsibilities, character traits, even their hopes and dreams.
The rest of the card features two stories (three on the Thomas card) where this character plays a staring role.
Thomas & Friends Interactive Quizzes
A fab new feature on these cards is the interactive quiz – offering a child led activity that Yoto fans have been asking for for a while! Children press the button on their Yoto to start the quiz, press the button to check their answer, and then press again to move on to the next question.
Each quiz has ten questions which are all age appropriate and based on the character they’ve just learned about. This could be anything from the colour and number of the train, to other tasks involving counting, vocabulary, letters and colours. We LOVE the interactive element of these quizzes and are confident children will be beaming with pride to hear they’ve got their answers correct. It’s a clever way to check your child’s listening and comprehension skills too.
Thomas & Friends Yoto Cards – Overall Verdict
It’s always great to see such a popular children’s book series make its way to Yoto and thanks to their high energy, exciting and funny stories, I can see these Thomas and Friends Yoto Cards being a huge hit with adults and children alike. We LOVE the addition of the interactive quiz element, which not only offers something a little different to the Yoto experience but also is a great way to bring in more educational benefits too without your child even realising it!
We are loving the variety of new releases coming to Yoto in the last few months, and with lots more hints as to what’s on the horizon, we really cannot wait!
