My kids never watched Thomas the Tank Engine, except for the horrible and incoherent feature film Thomas and the Magic Railway; and while my boys had a Brio train set with a few Thomas engines, they didn’t play with them much except to turn the curve pieces of track into bows to shoot pencils with. (No, really. Two sections of curved track, a rubber band, a pencil, and you’re good to go.)

But Calah Alexander has just begin to pay attention to the subtext of the Thomas cartoons her kids are watching, and she’s a little, hmmm, disturbed. And not unreasonably, it seems to me. See what you think.