The fiction that they can be relied upon to supply anything more desirable than re-runs of last-year's headline-grabbers via their long-suffering dealer network has well-and-truly been exposed. Given the conversations on the Hornby Facebook page after the announcement it was very surprising to see the amount of people who unaware of Rapido and unaware of what prompted this whole saga to begin with.

If they were just producing a model of Lion, perhaps with Thunderbolt nameplates as an extra, then there might have been an argument to suggest that their "inspired by" had more credit. I doubt there would be any written clause or agreement between Studio Canal and Hornby that would undermine an existing exclusive agreement.It’s a darn shame a greedy media group have the final say on an item that would probably sell quite well.

There was even an argument between Simon Kohler and the people at Rails of Sheffield that was captured in the TV programme ‘Hornby:A Model World’ over the release of their Terrier model a few years ago. Nothing secretive about it, there didn’t need to be, Rapido acquired the licensing rights from Studio Canal in a legal and professional manner.In terms of trademarks, those extant before 01/01/2021 in Europe still hold value in the UK at the current time. While this was going on, we also had to source drawings and images and to speak to owners of real vehicles. This new train pack certainly looks to be a lot better than that one but maybe there's something linking the two, apart from them being about the same film?

It seems that Hornby have had a policy for some time of nipping in quickly when smaller manufacturers announce a new product to take some of their market share by producing the same thing themselves. Yes because as the Hornby Facebook has shown many are unaware of the other shenanigans behind all this.The fact that what they've quite clearly done is take the wagon/coach and brakevan set-up from The Titfield Thunderbolt and just put "inspired by" on the box and said Lion appeared in multiple films, of which Titfield was one, just smacks of "we've started work on this model and got x far and so we're going to finish it! I think it's likely that Lion has been in the works since 2020, when it became clear that there was a strong market for Rocket, and they figured it was worth seeing if they could get the licence for Thunderbolt as well. If you Watch Rapido trains latest video on their YouTube channel, you will see they have an exclusive contract with studio canal the rights holder of titfield thunderbolt, they have advised they will vigourously defend the copyright as they describe Hornby have yet again steamrolled their way in.