Hey MentalMars here, personally I do like to collect game merchandise and I have a collection of merchandise of The Legend of Zelda. I got several statues from that franchise, however, will we ever see Battleborn statues? I would love to collect them because at New York Comic Con 2016, two awesome Battleborn prototype statues were shown off. But what happened to these statues by Pop Culture Shock Toys?
So let’s go back to 2016. Battleborn was looking promising as it was THE new video game from the creators of Borderlands. With the first Borderlands game, Gearbox Software brought a unique game to the market that blended the FPS and RPG genres. Now the studio seemed to bring another exciting game to the market that would be genre-defying. Probably because of all this hype around Battleborn the team over at Pop Culture Shock Toys started developing statues. That seemed to be a smart move as Battleborn is filled with unique and likable characters which are ideal for collectibles. Since the announcement of these statues, the Battleborn community has been freaking out about them.
Sadly enough these collectibles haven’t seen a release yet. I heard a rumor that these statues never reached the production phase. Because while Battleborn showed a lot of potency the game sadly didn’t take off. Therefore due to the lack of success, Pop Culture Shock Toys did not go beyond the prototype phase. But that’s just a rumor therefore this summer I reached out to 2k games and Pop Culture Shock Toys with the question if there was an update on these awesome statues. My contact at 2k Games wasn’t aware of these prototypes and was very enthusiastic about them and would love to see them being made.
The update from Pop Culture Shock Toys However was a bit disappointing:
We do not have any new updates to share at this time but appreciate your interest in our BattleBorn line 🙂
Pop Culture Shock Toys
Personally, I found this reply pretty vague therefore I contacted them again about the status of their Battleborn line and got a similar response.
As of right now I do not have any updates, I apologize. We do not have a release date, or a confirmation they are on hold. I can only recommend you keep an eye out on the newsletter for when we do have more information.
I wish I could be more help
Pop Culture Shock Toys
I discussed these replies with a PR guy and we came to the conclusion that it sounds like they’re probably in limbo. However, I think due to the current state of the game we won’t be seeing these statues produced anytime soon. Luckily we still have the photos and that gave us another thing to dream of….
Photos
In the newsletter that Pop Culture Shock Toys send out they mentioned a full line of characters. However at the New York Comic Con 2016 only two statues were shown there; Marquis from the LLC faction and an Ambra from the Jennerit faction. Apparently, there was also a Toby statue in production, but since I was only able to find a render of it I think it got stuck at the concept stage and didn’t make it to the prototype stage.
Future
More recently Gearbox Software has partnered with McFarlane Toys to produce a claptrap collectible statue. This triggered community Badass Lowlines to photoshop some Battleborn versions to showcase how these would look if they were produced on a similar stance. These images got picked up by Gearbox staff members and forwarded to Erica who is the licensing director at GBX. She was kind enough to respond.
As Erica stated in a follow-up tweet, this isn’t a promise that stuff is coming right now. However, Gearbox is always looking for opportunities for all of its franchises. One of the examples we see of that is that we could see Duke Nukem in the movie trailer ‘Ready Player One’. And like Randy Varnell, creative director on Battleborn, mentioned on the forums.
We’re still talking a lot about the future of Battlborn, both as a product and a franchise. We believe there’s more future there. While other universes may need our attention first, I’m pretty certain we’ll return to Solus in the future.
Jythri aka Randy Varnell
Question of the Day:
Would you like to see collectible statues of your favorite Battleborn or maybe some other merchandise? Let me know in the comment section. Thank You!
