[STEAM] 'Mattel Is Constantly Out to Kill Me' — Creator of Original Thomas the Tank Engine Mod for Skyrim Puts Thomas in Morrowind in Defiance of 'Legal Threats'

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The creator of the original Thomas the Tank Engine mod for Skyrim has now put Thomas in Morrowind, apparently in defiance of legal pressure from Mattel.

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, a recently released mod for Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, replaces cliff racers (flying creatures found in Vvardenfell) with Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s the work of modding superstar ‪Trainwiz‬, who created the infamous 2013 Thomas the Tank Engine mod for Skyrim that spawned a meme that

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Recent comments from ‪Trainwiz‬ both on Nexus Mods and social media suggest that Thomas the Tank Engine owner Mattel has applied legal pressure, but Trainwiz‬ has modded Thomas into Morrowind anyway.

“I made a mod that replaces cliffracers with Thomas the Tank Engine,” ‪Trainwiz‬ wrote on the Nexus Mods page for Really Useful Cliffracers. “I am incapable of learning lessons whenever it involves corporations, because I fundamentally do not view toy company CEOs or media CEOs as people.”

‪Trainwiz‬ continued:

“In between working on my game and dying of various accidental injuries, I sometimes feel like I need to milk a particular joke until its inevitable demise. I will do this no matter how many legal threats, actual threats, ****** vans with the Mattel logo on them, or severed Barbie heads are mailed to me.

“This is because I have issues with authority, particularly authority derived from intimidation. I kicked a lot of bullies in the nuts when I was a kid.”

‪Trainwiz‬’s

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also contains a message on this issue:

Modder, game developer. Made that horrible, horrible mod that replaces dragons with Thomas the Tank Engine. Personally wielded the javelin that killed god. Mattel is constantly out to kill me. But why release Really Useful Cliffracers now? Also from its Nexus Mods page, ‪Trainwiz‬ explained: “I actually made this years ago but never released it, but then I realized that I don't particularly care anymore.”

Reading between the lines, ‪Trainwiz‬ is saying Mattel’s lawyers have taken issue with his Thomas the Tank Engine mods over the years, although we don't know how recently and in what form. What is clear is that Bethesda has given Trainwiz its seal of approval. It even

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, shining a light on the locomotion-related mods he had created for the developer’s games.

‪Trainwiz was later interviewed by

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, in 2019. “To be honest, the whole thing was spontaneous,” he said of the creation of his original Skyrim mod. ​“A friend of mine gave me some Thomas models he had ripped from a ******* iPhone game and asked me what I could do with them, so I spent half an hour replacing dragons. I read the books as a kid, but hadn’t really even thought about the whole thing in years. It was just ​’what would be the funniest thing at the time?’.”

In that interview, he also touched on potential legal action as a result of his work. ​“I got in so much trouble,” he revealed. “Mattel pretty much want me dead at this point — it’s the reason why the Fallout 4 mod can’t be found on any normal website.”

In the same interview, The Face said Mattel had “unleashed its lawyers” following circulation of ‪Trainwiz’s Skyrim mod on

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. ​“It was some intermediary law firm based out of Macedonia, saying how I diminished the brand of Thomas by showing him blowing up (nothing about him violently murdering people),” ‪Trainwiz said. “They issued takedown notices on the videos for it. The first time it got taken down. The second time

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told them it was covered under parody law, with no prompting from me. So that was nice.”

For now, Trainwiz's Thomas the Tank Engine mod for Skyrim and now Morrowind remain online, and the scourge of one of gaming's most famous memes continues.

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Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on

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at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld.

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