I also have friends who work for WizKids here in the UK so am worried that they may lose their jobs - although there is a hope they'll be brought into the core TOPPS department, especially one of them who is already splitting her duties between the two companies so she'll probably just be merged completely over.
Wizkids brought innovation to the hobby industry - being the first to introduce the idea of prepainted collectible miniatures (through Mage Knight) and then the Pocket Model collectibles through Pirates of the Spanish Main. Both concepts have been used by other companies from the successes of the Dungeons & Dragons & Star Wars Miniature Games from Wizards of the Coast to the less successful imitations of their Pocket Model ranges with sets such as Racer Knights from White Wolf and Transformers from Wizards.
Apparently TOPPS are looking at ways of continuing Heroclix without too much interruption. Whether that is doing something with it inhouse or sub-licensing the game to a third party publisher remains to be seen. Wizkids also own the Battletech and Shadowrun IPs which they license to Catalyst Game Labs to publish the RPGs of. I presume the licenses will now just be owned by TOPPS although I guess they may sell them off.
Topps Shuts Down WizKids (ICv2; Monday 10th November 2008)
