Percy the Small Green Saddle Tank Engine (Percy) is a green saddle tank engine who was brought to Sodor to help run the railway during the big engines' strike. He is one of the youngest engines on the North Western Railway and is quite cheeky, often getting himself into trouble with his attempts to play tricks on the other engines. Percy's favourite/favorite job is to deliver the mail, and he works on Thomas' Branch Line as a goods engine.
Personality[]
Percy is a cheeky but kind engine. He normally behaves well, yet he also gets himself in trouble by jumping into situations without adequately thinking them through first. He loves teasing other engines, especially bigger ones such as Gordon and James, but is always brought down to earth in due course by anyone who gives him the moral to learn, especially Sir Topham Hatt/the Fat Controller. He can also be somewhat timid.
As the television series has progressed, Percy has been dumbed-down in order to teach viewers difficult words: he would say "dingy-fried" whereas anyone else would say "dignified", "demonstration" into "dimer-station", "railway inspector" into "railway inspectacles", etc.
Percy is incredibly accident-prone and has many accidents, sometimes due to his own silliness or his tricks backfiring. He holds the dubious record of the most accidents in one series - five; all of which happened in the second series - crashing into some buffers, falling into the sea, being pushed onto a brake van, colliding with a cart of lime and being hit by a falling crate of treacle. So far, his silliest accident yet was in the sixth series, when he slipped on oily rails and crashed through the chocolate factory and emerged covered in chocolate. Despite this, he always tries to do his best, learn from his mistakes and get his jobs done, a loyalty which Sir Topham Hatt has praised him for on many occasions.
Although their friendship has been turbulent at times, Thomas is generally portrayed as Percy's best friend and is also good friends with Toby as well. While he has a small rivalry with Harold, stemming from their race, they are always willing to help each other when in trouble.
Percy can also be seen as an easy target for teasing by the big engines, especially whenever he has an accident or when he is afraid of something. He also has held a grudge from them about their tricking him into misinterpreting a signal, but silenced this with some help from Duck. This shows that, when nonsense goes too far, Percy will not stand for it and seek help to settle the matter for good, even if he faces a reprimanding from Sir Topham Hatt/The Fat Controller for it.
Why He Rocks[]
- He is among a fan favourite/favorite of the main cast, and the franchise altogether.
- His naive but positive personality is what makes Percy a likable engine.
- He was given his own name by the Fat Controller/Sir Topham Hatt.
- His friendship with Thomas.
- He along with Toby started the Ffarquhar trio, Thomas, Percy (him), and Toby.
- His green color resembles him well.
- His episodes where he and James get the lead role together make him and James a very good duo, like how Ren and Stimpy are a great duo together.
- His redesign in the "Meet the Steam Team" series videos looks really wonderful to him.
- He tends to be kind, caring, and curious.
- Has the best crashes he could perform in the series much to the fact he is accident prone.
- Without him, the railway would never be the same.
Bad Qualities[]
- Lost his original personality to flanderization during Seasons 15-16 and the infamous "Day of the Diesels" as he was turned to a idiot, dimwit and a crybaby who obsesses over Thomas' attention and made a big deal over Thomas befriending Belle and Flynn in said special, yes Thomas may have ignored Percy, but that gives Percy no reason to behave like that. "Percy and the Monster of Brendam", one of his worst episodes, made him painfully dumb where he was asking to be scared by some so called "monster of brendam". His downfall was short lived like the Gene Deitch era of Tom and Jerry from 1961-1962.
- The infamous episode where Percy's attempts at befriending animals because he wants to play whilst he might have work to do on the railway would be something very against his character as Percy usually likes animals, but he would never obsess over attention to animals.
Trivia[]
- One of Percy's models is currently on display in Japan at the Hara Model Railway Museum (previously on display at Nitrogen Studios), along with his large-scale model used for the spin-off series, The Pack (previously on display at Thomas Town). One of Percy's original face masks is also in possession of Twitter user ThomasTankMerch.
- Percy is the only engine who is known to have been named by the Fat Controller/Sir Topham Hatt.
- In the French narration of the Classic Series, Percy is called "Pierre", and in the Greek narration of the Classic Series, Percy is called "Jerry". From the thirteenth series onwards, Percy has been referred to with his original name.
- Percy has been shown to be quite popular among several people who worked on the series, according to Abi Grant on her website, Percy is her favourite character, Britt Allcroft also stated he was her favourite character due to him being green and cheeky, Percy is also Mark Moraghan's favourite character, alongside Cranky.
- Percy is the first character other than Thomas to be the protagonist in a special, with that special being Day of the Diesels, which he would later do again in Tale of the Brave.
- In "Thomas and the Rumors", it is stated that Percy had a branch line, although it may have either been a plot hole, or had been mistaken for Thomas' Branch Line.
- Percy was featured on the 1986 single cover along with Rheneas of Oh L'amour, a song by English synthpop duo Erasure.