Master Replicas to no Longer Make Star Wars Products
I realize that this doesn’t necessarily fit under the umbrella of toys, but this should be of interest of any toy collector out there. It seems that Corgi International, the semi-new owners of Master Replicas has decided to drop the Star Wars License. If you do the math, that means the death of some awesome product lines.
Now, far be it for me to play armchair CEO, but if they wanted a good way to kill of or severely mutilate Master Replicas. Yes, Master Replicas is known more for it’s Star Wars items than anything else. What Star Wars nerd among us doesn’t own or want to own one of their fantastic Force FX lightsabers? What could possibly have happened for Corgi to not renew?
The Corgi press release gave this answer:
Unfortunately, the company and Lucasfilm Ltd. were unable to agree on terms for securing a new license starting in January 1, 2008.
Read: Someone was greedy. I’m guessing Lucasfilm was trying to jack up the licensing fees and Corgi didn’t want to budge. Unless it was some outrageous price that would drive Corgi out of business, they are morons for letting this slip through their fingers.
It must really suck to be working at Master Replicas. Here you are working hard making the kick assiest Star Wars collectibles around, your company is growing nicely, and then the shop gets bought out and the company that buys you totally f’s with practically your whole business model. Poor bastards. If only Star Trek had some highly popular/crossing into mainstream nerd bauble like the Force FX lightsaber, there might not be of a big of a hit on the company.
Here’s to hoping that some other company can fill in the role of “awesome pretend lightsaber producer” for nerds in the very near future.
Corgi International, you only did this to yourselves:
toy, toy collecting, toy collectors, Master Replicas, Star Wars, lightsaber
May 21st, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Wow, this has got to be painful for Corgi. I don’t know the numbers, but how could any other franchise’s replicas (Lord of the Rings?) come close to the popularity of Star Wars “toys”?
May 21st, 2007 at 2:35 pm
There isn’t anything else. I mean MR was able to get the Force FX lightsabers in mainstream outlets… there’s nothing else that’s been as sucessful in the higher end collectors market.
June 20th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
[...] will be making high end Halo collectibles. Why you ask? Well, Corgi owns Master Replicas and after losing their Star Wars license, they’d be utter fools not to cash in on the Halo [...]
June 21st, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Well, that blows. At least I got the man-child one before this happened.