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Busy Bee James (2007)

First written December 4, 2025

After the 2005/2006 Thomas the Tank Engine and the Jet Engine three-pack release based directly on a specific episode of the Thomas television series Tomy released a few similar themed "regular" three-packs like the "Busy Bee" James for the Motor Road & Rail export range and later the Japanese Thomas Plarail series. In fact, this pack even got a unique box for the Korean market which can be seen on the Thomas Motorized wiki. The James in the pack is painted in bee stripes like he appeared in The Green Controller, a later episode of the model series Thomas & Friends T.V. show. There is also the more well-known story Buzz, Buzz where James is stung by a bee on the nose, which has also been represented in merchandise a few times including in TrackMaster and, more recently, Plarail.

4919 'Busy Bee' James (Thomas Motor Road & Rail) (2007)

In early 2007 'Busy Bee' James was released for the European Motor Road & Rail range with a green recolored version of the Harvey flatbed. Interestingly, James has all the additional details of the Japanese 2003+ T-5 Plarail James, with a nice white running board and silver handrail.

James' number five is on a black sticker that fits into the painted black stripes over the yellow plastic tender.

Indeed, most of James is made out of yellow plastic instead of the usual red, and I wonder if this is part of the reason that the European release had the Plarail-style details despite predating the Japanese release. Tomy rereleased the pack in the 2008 U.K. Tomy TrackMaster range and HiT Toy Company released a nearly identical pack with their own production variation of the bee stripe James with similar flatbed which even retains the white running board and other additional details of the Plarail-style engines.

T-34 Busy Bee James (2007)

  

On August 24th, 2007 the bee-stripe James the Busy Bee (はたらきバチ・ジェームス) pack was released in Japan as part of the Plarail Thomas series, now with a grey recolor of the tool cart flatbed. At the time of writing, the release announcement is still available on Tomy's website.

Unlike the rest of the C-battery-powered Thomas characters with tenders, the coal cover on these James' is grey - this example is from 2008, although I have had a few of both the Japanese and European releases over the years.

The tooling for the chassis of the flatbed was updated between these two releases, apparently.