Last weekend Silent Hill Paradise broke the news that Gecco Corp has terminated their partnership with Toymunkey Studios as of October 31st meaning distribution of their statues outside of Japan was left up in the air.
This news was really distressing and I was hesitant to officially report on this split until I was able to recieve confirmation from either company. Unfortunately I received confirmation of the split directly Gecco Corp’s President, Kineo Murakmai:
“…we have some sad news that we terminated partnership with Toymunkey on October 31st. Therefore, the release of “Heather” and “Robbie” in US will be much delayed although we’ve already started to talk to a new distributor. It will take time, but we promise that we’ll bring the statues to you, so please look forward to it.”
Their official statement for the reasoning behind the split:
Subject: Important announcement from Gecco Corp.
Dear Silent Hill fans,
Thank you very much for your patronage.
We, Gecco Corp., terminated the distributorship agreement with Toymunkey Studios, Inc. in the end of October.
Although we had requested Toymunkey to improve business operations for a while, they still don’t seem to respond in a sincere manner and cause our Silent Hill fans so much trouble.
Even though we broke up the partnership with them, we’ll keep requesting Toymunkey to improve the operations.
In Japanese market, we plan to release “Heather” in the end of this year and “Robbie” in February 2014. As for the other area than Japan, we are negotiating with several distributors, and the release will be later than Japanese portion. However, we promise that we’ll bring those statues to you. We really appreciate your patience and continued
support.
I’m pretty sad that Toymunkey and Gecco’s partnership has ended so suddenly but given how upset many fans have been lately over their lack of communication regarding Comic Con Statue and shirt pre-orders it’s not surprising.
I’ve reached out to Toymunkey for a comment but still haven’t heard back from the company. I’m not sure if those with open orders through them can still expect shipment of their purchases or just a refund.
On the bright side Gecco Corp is in talks with another distributor so we can still expect the chance order the upcoming Heather and Robbie statues domestically. This is a big relief especially since many Japanese import shops sold out of pre-orders for Heather weeks ago.
The Silent Nerd shared last week on the Silent Hill Collector group that he received an email from Big Bad Toy Store stating that any statues pre-ordered from them will be honored!
In some other sad news it looks like the “Souvenir Robbie” will not be made available outside of Japan and after the release of Heather and Robbie no new Silent Hill statues have been planned, though we can expect more shirts and iPhone cases:
“As for “Souvenir Version” of Robbie you’re asking, we regret to say that we don’t have a plan to release it outside of Japan.
After releasing Heather & Robbie, we don’t have plan for another new statues for a while, but we’ll release new T-shirts or iPhone cases.”
Source (Gecco Corp.)
