Star Wars News - News: Master Replicas Star Wars License to End in 2007

[News Bot]

News: Master Replicas Star Wars License to End in 2007
      

The license granted to one of Lucasfilm's collectibles licenseeswill unfortunately expire at the end of 2007.
      

http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/masterreplicas/news20070515.html#rss
      

[Bryancd]

I said it back when Corgi bought MR, it was the beginning of the end. Now the writing is on the wall for sure. It's a shame, especially with new Star Wars product from LFL in the pipeline, but Corgi is the low end of the market, unlike MR.

[iceman]

This will cost master replicas dearly, I think it comes down to corgi being greedy and wanting a higher percentage. This could very well mean the end of master replicas as I am sure that star wars merchandise made up about 80% of their business.

Pirates of the Car ribbean and Marvel has not really taken off . I know a lot of customers of Master replicas who were going to buy the helmets have decided to cancel their orders in protest of this development.

Apparently this bone headed move was done to satisfy shareholder interests. I just hope this is not the beginning of the end for Master Replicas as a company.

[Bryancd]

I think the problem with the helmets has been an issue of quality and control and poor accuracy. Have you seen the Stormtrooper helmet? It's awful!

[Dan M]

This is disappointing, but I'm looking on the bright side.  The one saber I need is Obi-Wan's ep4 saber.  I missed its original release, and now it's too expensive for me.  The CE version was never released.

If someone else picks up the license (guaranteed!), that should give me another chance.

[jedijeff]

Very Disappointing News to hear. Things had been so positive of late, with Lots of announcements at the start of the year. I had just started to get into MR, so this is definitely news I do not like to hear.

[Rico]

Is this completely over and official now?  I've followed the thread a bit over on the prop forum.  If it is true, maybe we will get lucky and more TREK stuff will get made - but I doubt that.  I think MR missed the boat on price point.  They need some other killer $100 and under stuff like the awesome Force FX sabers.  I wish they had done something like that in a TREK phaser sometime.  Kind of a step up from Art Asylum's line but not up to their Limited Edition level.  I'm wondering who will step in and take the SW license now.  Maybe Qmx - since Steve D. over there founded MR in the first place.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[Munkyman587]

I never collected anything but the hasbro stuff, so I don't really know much on the topic except for when Rico talks about it.  Maybe I should  look into the site sometime soon and see if there is anything that catches my interest  = /

[jedijeff]

One could hope more Star Trek props get made. My fear is that without Star Wars license, that MR will collapse since the Majority of its sales were from the Star Wars line and  with that it probably helped them branch out to the other Licenses. So I guess I would not be surprised a year from now that MR no longer exisits.

[Dan M]

Yeah, it seems like a strange move considering how much of their revenue comes from Star Wars.  However, Corgi's been around forever, so MR will likely survive.  Still, it really makes me scratch my head thinking about why Corgi would buy MR and then gut it like this.

I'm with Rico in thinking that MR needed more stuff priced like the Force FX sabers.  $400-$500 will always be too much for a collector like me to drop on a single product.  That's why I was so excited for the CE line.   I've mentioned that I wanted the ep4 Obi-Wan saber from that line.  I did pick up the Qui-Gon saber, something I'd never have bought for $300+.  I was also interested in the Biker Scout pistols that were shown.  Now we'll never see them from MR.  It's very sad.