Here is a PM Neill sent me today.
Hi Thad
Thanks for hanging on in there. I know it's been a long road for both us and the fans. There are emails going out right now to all our MFXWarehouse mailing list of which I assume you are a member so I'll just tell you now anyway.
As you know from my previous posts our efforts to get sonics mass produced in China failed for reasons too numerous to mention and it's now taken the past 9 months to go back to scratch and find a way to produce these here in the UK. As you can imagine the price of doing them in the UK can't possibly compete with the mass produced Chinese price but I think we've done very well to get it to where it is. The price will be £219.00 + vat for those in the UK. I know that's double what we'd hoped to get them produced for but it's costing us FIVE TIMES more to make them here so we're taking a beating on our profit margin. Now that's a BIG risk, especially in a depressed economic market so this is why we have to minimise our risk and only produce 500. We're a small company and simply can't afford to invest anymore. I know there are people here saying "you'll sell ten times that amount!" but the reality is there's a lot op people out there who just don't have the spare cash these days. I know the guys at EFX struggled to sell some of those Star Wars collectibles for a while there and that's a STAR WARS license. Doctor Who has a much smaller fan base. The advantage though of the LE of 500 is that anyone buying one knows that they're more likely to hold their value and possibly appreciate in value so I hope they'll think it's worth the investment.
So there you have it. Feel free to repeat any of this info on the forum. I'm personally keeping my head down as I'll just be flooded with questions and I just don't have the time to handle them all at the moment so I don't want to look like I'm ignoring people by starting posting and then disapearing. A few facts for all the guys and gals anyway;
You have the price so that's one.
They'll start shipping at the end of September
They are the most accurate you can possibly get. We busted a gut to make sure.
We listened to everyone and made sure that, if this is the one shot we have, we were going to make it the true slider version rather than the idealised pop up version.
There's no sound but the LED does work just the same way as the real prop (batteries are included)
The stand will be a very simple acrylic block with a groove. Makes it look like the sonic is floating and is very understated.
We've really tried hard and I refused to be beat so I really hope everyone likes them but I do appreciate that some will be disappointed on the price. Sadly I have to run my business as a business and I just can't do this for free or take silly risks with my company's finances so this is genuinely the best we can do.
Best wishes
Neill
