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Tomy Percy and the Chocolate Crunch (2008)

First written February 23, 2025

On April 6, 2008 as the last new product in the European Motor Road & Rail range a neat chocolate-covered Percy was released as 4912 Percy and the Chocolate Crunch. The pack was rereleased in Tomy TrackMaster packaging shortly after in 2008. It references an episode of the television series where Percy crashes through a chocolate factory and ends up covered in chocolate.

Percy includes the regular mail van and fuel tanker included with the regular export Percy release... Its a bit of a pity Tomy did not do new rolling stock or similarly recolor the tanker or replace the mail van with a truck or something, but they probably knew that Motor Road & Rail was on its way out, and probably didn't want to put too much effort into Tomy TrackMaster knowing that their deal would be up...

Percy does look very nice, with lots of chocolate detail over his boiler, cab, and bunker.

Close inspection as well as opening Percy up reveal that his body shell was produced in brown plastic and the black and green details peeking out are actually painted over them, which is a neat production method and implies they thought about how to most easily and cost-effectively produce this toy... The date code on mine is March 2008, so it is probably an original Motor Road & Rail release as opposed to a Tomy TrackMaster one, although to be honest they could have just made one big run and repackaged the later TrackMaster ones...

In September 2014 a similar Plarail Chocolate Percy was released with a shocked face and "chocolate" covering in a different pattern as well as a Mr. Jolly truck as a Thomas Town theme park exclusive item.