Star Trek: Starships Model/Magazine Subscription

I regret not buying those books in PDF format when that bundle was up. I wanted to get the physical versions.

 

Me too

 

I popped into my local store last week. The owner's bummed about the whole debacle, too, saying it's like losing an old friend. On the plus side for him, he's been selling a lot. (If anyone wants a DS9, Relay 47, or an XL Equinox, I know for a fact that he's got 'em). I wish I'd checked in sooner to see if he had any Orville stuff. That's all gone now.

I ended up buying the Lokirrim ship from "Body And Soul" and didn't even get around to opening it until yesterday.

 

Does he have shuttles?

 

I don't believe so. Sorry.

 

So I downloaded and read the "Notice of administration's proposals" for Eaglemoss' bankruptcy proceedings.

They've sold off two items:

1) editorial files, domains and customer database specific to the subscription build-up business. It doesn't say to whom this was, but notable that any tooling and existing stock wasn't included in the sale, so probably safe to assume this confirms what was previously posted regarding Premium Collectibles Trading Co. (the company who was actually making these for Eaglemoss) purchasing this part of the business. Since all of the build-ups were licensed properties, it'll probably be a while before any sales start, because it will take a while for PCT to execute new licenses.

2) database, interest in e-shop and wholesale stock relating to the Dairy Diary brand of calendars to Heathside.

The document mentions that Eaglemoss found someone willing to take over the existing stock (for 10% of its value), IP and tooling for the rest of the business, but that deal fell through because the purchasing company wanted consent from the licensors to sell it free from any royalty obligations, which was obviously never going to happen (particularly since looking through the creditor list it appears Eaglemoss still owes most of them royalties for stuff already sold).

The administrators also note that most of the existing stock is held by numerous warehouses and third party logistics companies Eaglemoss also owes money, which combined with the need to have licenses for sale makes it difficult to try and dispose of the stock via smaller sales. They state that the most viable plan would be to find a single buyer who was willing to incur the risk of negotiating multiple licences as well as trying to physically access the stock held by the various logistics companies - to me this seems pretty unlikely.

TLDR: the build-ups should continue somewhere down the road, but everything else is currently dead, and it sounds like it'll be difficult to even sell the existing stock.

 

Presumably we might see the current holders of the stock dump it to wholesalers to recoup some of their costs. Would be a shame to see it end up in landfill.

 

Prototype Cerritos shuttle, Ben Robinson gave it to Mike McMahan

https://twitter.com/MikeMcMahanTM/status/1564731934667730944

 

They can’t, someone has to pay royalties on the sale, which requires a license.

However, depending on how sketchy they are, it may “disappear” from their warehouse and end up for sale somewhere.

 

Such a shame we’ll never get to see these prototypes IRL. Curious if anyone has seen a Vancouver in the wild yet.

 

Wishful thinking but I hope a Beyond Enterprise A prototype was made.

 

As I recall, Eaglemoss stated they never did anything with that design because the ship would likely look different in a hypothetical sequel, which always seemed strange to me because they did plenty of “blink and you’ll miss them” ships, plus concepts that were never seen on screen at all.

 

Yeah, the Voyager prototype was ok, and of course the original Ambassador which was on the conference wall, but those Excelsior concepts were just a waste of money and effort for them.

 

well STO doesn't need to CG to make the model, there's probably enough reference shots to recreate it. They recreated the Enterprise as it appeared in the beginning of the film.

 

It's curious that they didn't just go ahead and make new files, a new Enterprise is going to sell way better than almost anything else. I guess just another odd Eaglemoss business decision, wasn't like that was an outlier, lol.

 

All the Abramsverse movie models were in a larger, near-XL, scale, as compared to the smaller main-line ships at the time. Must have been some kind of contractual mandate between Eaglemoss and Paramount, who owned the exclusive movie rights at the time. Larger models require a LOT more up-front R&D (for the more intricate detailing) and tooling infrastructure for mass-production. By the time the Nu-NuEnterprise should have been made, two big things had happened: 1) Despite how some people may feel about it, Beyond didn't do all that well. Merchandising for that movie suffered because of it and 2) the CBS/Paramount/Viacom merger was getting spooled up and all the corporate players involved were focused on that. Other than some BRD repackaging and a few other afterthought trinkets, the Star Trek 50th anniversary was almost completely overlooked during this time. Their minds just weren't in the game. Eaglemoss probably figured if C/P/V wasn't going to back their own products, why should they?

In all honesty, this was probably a GOOD move on Eaglemoss' part, as anything from that movie probably wouldn't have sold as well, and they would have been even further in the hole from up-front costs putting together models for a film that very few cared about. They probably would have died even sooner if they had done the E-A, more's the pity. I would have liked to include that one in my collection as well, but it does make a kind of sense why it never came to be.

Just my 2 cubits' worth...