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<\/p>\nTHE founder of the popular competition series Robot Wars has died after a decades-long fight with Parkinson's Disease.<\/p>\n
Marc Thorpe is remembered for his work building models for iconic films like Indiana Jones and Star Wars.<\/p>\n
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His death was confirmed by his daughter Megan Feffer who opened up about Thorpe's heartwrenching health battles in a Facebook post.<\/p>\n
She said the disease hindered her father's ability to work on projects due to mild tremors, which was "particularly torturous for a fiercely independent artist like my dad."<\/p>\n
"To say the last few months, and especially the last few weeks, were challenging for my dad would be an understatement, and I am grateful that he is finally at peace," she wrote.<\/p>\n
But she went on to highlight Thorpe's incredible career and successes, like creating the show Robot Wars.<\/p>\n
"He made many, many beautiful, weird, details and strange things," she wrote.<\/p>\n
"And me… he helped make me.<\/p>\n
"May his memory be a blessing."<\/p>\n
Robot Wars was a UK robot combat competition series that ran from 1998 to 2004 and then again from 2016 to 2018.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n It followed a series of amateur and professional designers who attempted to design a deadly bot that would be the last standing inside a WWE-style cage.<\/p>\n The show was the brainchild of Thorpe, an artist and designer whose career took off when he started making fictional war machines in 1992.<\/p>\n That year, he landed a job with the newfound business LucasToys – a division of LucasFilms that created figures and models based on George Lucas' movies.<\/p>\n While attempting to design a radio-controlled vacuum cleaner, Thorpe remembers wondering what it would be like if his inventions had to fight, he wrote on his website.<\/p>\n It was at this moment that he had the idea for the program.<\/p>\n The show aired on BBC and was beloved by those in the UK and elsewhere.<\/p>\n Robot Wars also held events in the US in 1995 and 1997 which helped to grow an American audience.<\/p>\n The show went through a slew of hosts, and was launched with top English presenter Jeremy Clarkson taking the helm. <\/p>\n Thorpe remembers the first episode of filming fondly and said he was immediately impressed with the skills of the young people who showed up.<\/p>\n "We all look back with nostalgia and amazement at that first event… it was charmed," he wrote on his website.<\/p>\n "I was very happy those days in spite of 16-hour days, seven days a week."<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.thesun.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/crop-24811230.jpg\")
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