Blue Plastic Tracks

Hi all, I've no idea if this has been documented before but I recieved a new talk n action james today in the mail and it's a different colour compared to the other ones in my collection, (see photo below for comparison of both UK models I own, one is this new variant) so the question I have is, could this be a variant in the same way as talk n action toby? I noted most of the model, not just the red, is darker than on the other models, what do you guys think? Note: One side is sun-faded on this darker model but the darker colouration is consistent over the entirety of the model, the underside, tender etc

To my knowledge, they did this to either save money or a mixup of paint, but it's probably due to age.

I was thinking maybe age, but I've never seen one like this before, and I've seen plenty of them in my time as a collector

You could try to see the date they were made, by looking on the sticker inside the battery compartment, if they still have it

Good shout, I'll try it

Neither one has a sticker on the inside, to my knowledge I don't think the TnA's did? Unless you're on about the little stickers on the underside of the bottom cover, on which case the lighter one says DO2V and the darker one says I02V

Yes, those ... If I'm not mistaken the first one says it was made in April 2002 and the second one in September 2002

So then maybe there's a difference in paint applications between those two dates? Is there really any way to tell?

If by some miracle you were able to get another talk n action james from each of these dates(or close to these dates), and they matched the colour of each of your james than we could say that there are colour variants in the plastic

I have another james I could use to base it off, however it's the Japanese version, I have found another british one online though, so I could try to win that to find out

I'd be interested to see the result