r/LEGOtrains • u/Brick-separator • 3h ago
LEGO Ideas Katy- The Caboose Who Got Loose
I'd like to show off, Katy Caboose, an old MOC of mine, and more recently an IDEAS entry. She has one more month left on IDEAS so I thought I'd share now, before she's gone off rotation.
https://ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/d4dbb53e-2343-44cb-85bd-da0ef06e260e
In 1952 Walt Disney Animator Bill Peet wrote the story and sketched the characters for the animated short cartoon, "Susie the Little Blue Coupe." Flash forward to 2006, the style of the automotive vehicles in Pixar's Cars movie were inspired by the Susie short. In between, Bill Peet worked on many other Disney films but eventually left the studio in 1964. Along the way, he started writing and illustrating children's books, including, "The Caboose Who Got Loose," which was published in 1971. The title character is Katy Caboose, who does not like spending her life at the end of a train and she is frightened by the high trestles and long tunnels she has to travel through in her life as a caboose. The book opens with the lines,
"When Katy caboose rambled down the train tracks, the engines were steamers with puffing smokestacks. She was a caboose who disliked being last"
While the rhyming could give Dr. Seuss a run for his money, the pictures were just as amazing. Any inanimate object could show subtle human expressions through Peet's anthropomorphic magic. His time at Disney turned him into a wizard.
Here's my take on Katy, where I tried my best to capture some of Peet's magic: you'll see as your view changes that the thin black line of her mouth goes from being a "happy caboose" to showing her fear of the trestles and tunnels ahead.
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https://ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/d4dbb53e-2343-44cb-85bd-da0ef06e260e
