When this special run item was first announced but not pictured, I was excited. But was quickly put off when the photo was posted showing MTH's less than creative and IMO lazy paint and graphics. MTH's holiday designs over the past several years have been far inferior in both style and colors as compared to Lionel's (even the Lionel's low priced Christmas themed starter sets).
MTH's Imperial ES44AC is a great selectively compressed detailed loco with strong design lines, but aside from the red charging lights, it seems that MTH did not put much creative effort into its style or look for this Christmas model. The paint colors and layout is blah and the graphics look like it was downloaded from a free clip art website from 10 yrs. ago.
I found a link to a recent video someone posted of this engine w/ the sounds.
The engine appears to run well and MTH slightly changed their standard Christmas dialogue offered in prior engines. The dialogue starts OK, but I think they need a Santa w/ a deeper or richer Santa like voice. I like the elf & Santa going over the toy list. They tried to inject humor, but I think they missed two important items. 1) Santa should be eating cookies and not a cheeseburger 2) The toys named in the dialog do NOT include a train set!!!
Watch the video and you decide. I hope those who ordered are pleased, but I'm not upset that I passed on this offering, just disappointed that MTH missed on what I saw as an opportunity to improve on a product.
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