If you pre-ordered the long awaited R2-D2 Deluxe statue directly from Gentle Giant Ltd, be watching your inbox. There are reports of collectors receiving emails that state "
We regret to inform you that item #80048 R2-D2 Deluxe Statue is no longer being produced & your pre-order #***** will be cancelled". This comes after more than five years of playing the waiting game.
Earlier this year,
I spoke with Ashly Powell, Director of Product Development for Gentle Giant, about this piece and she mentioned that they kept having to switch factories and were having sampling issues. With the rising costs of production, it's highly likely that they simply weren't getting the quality required for this intricate piece at the originally solicited price point, thus having to scrap the entire project. This is unfortunate news for those who have been waiting for a companion piece to the
C-3PO statue from 2005. We can only hope that one day, R2 will see the light of day.
