Hornby aims to put Corgi back on track

摘要

The fate of one big name continues to dominate the diecast model bus market. That is Corgi, which for the past couple of years seems to have succeeded only in following one crisis with another, each one interrupting the release of eagerly awaited models. Two years ago, it released a catalogue promising 46 new 1:76-scale Original Omnibus Company, 1:50 Buses in Britain and 1:43 Drive Time models during 2007. Before the end of 2006, it merged with United States-owned Master Replicas to create Corgi International, a company focused primarily on the film and television memorabilia market. It insisted that it would still produce buses and other collectables, but it axed several of the models in the 2007 plan and significantly reduced the numbers it planned to produce of the models that survived this purge. The good news for collectors, it told us, was that the new releases would hold their value, as it would not be offloading large numbers of discounted models it was unable to sell.