Lady is a magical purple engine who was in hiding but later ran on Sodor in the first Thomas the Tank Engine movie Thomas and the Magic Railroad. The Plarail Lady was released alongside Diesel 10, also featured in the movie, in the summer of 2000.
Plarail Lady (プラレールレディー) was released on July 27th, 2000 for the Thomas series of Plarail trains, coinciding with the first Thomas the Tank Engine movie Thomas and the Magic Railroad. The three-pack release includes Lady with two matching purple troublesome trucks.
Lady uses the Thomas-type gearbox. The trucks are some of the earliest troublesome truck color variants, and have nice gold lining applied to the molded bracing.
The gold lining on Lady can rub off over time, particularly on earlier examples. Lady has an open cab, but in Plarail form this is a squared-off black section around the cab.
The trucks in this pack are the original laughing face and the mischievous faced trucks. The purple and gold color scheme was not used in the movie or the show as far as I know, but the purple is just deep enough where it does not look cartoonishly out of place with other trucks. These trucks ended up being fairly common (although they were never released in the United States, as the three-pack Lady was never sold there).
Anecdotally, the June 2000 Lady shown above produced ahead of Lady's introduction in July had a crooked Plarail sticker over the Thomas and the Magic Railroad logo on the front of the box (the box above belongs to a November 2001 production Lady, although both boxes are from the 2000 print run). This is probably something that a child stuck on, but Lady and Diesel 10 were produced and sold before the film's Japanese release so it is potentially the case that early examples had a Plarail sticker over the movie's logo. Almost certainly not the case, but it is noted here in case others find June-production Ladys in boxes with stickers over the Magic Railroad logo.
In 2000 Lady was released in red and gold Thomas and the Magic Railroad Tomica World packaging for the European market.
These Ladies come packaged in a cardboard sled.
Being similar in production period, there are no differences between these Ladies and Japanese-market Plarail Ladies from the same time. This particular example dates to February of 2001.
In 2003 the Thomas Plarail range was revamped with characters receiving new boxes and some tooling updates. The Lady box shown here is a 2004 print run example that is stamped as being packed on July 23, 2007.
The Lady inside is the later updated Tomy logo version of the chassis. The old curvy logo was used into the mid 2000s.
In 2003 updated Ladys were exported in blue Thomas Motor Road & Rail packaging for the European market. A new box style was introduced in 2005 and used until 2008. Lady was also included in the 2008 U.K. Tomy TrackMaster range.
In 2005 Lady was released with a grey mischievous troublesome truck and four curve rails in the United States.