Questions for Asmus

RandomHero said:

Sorry to see Asmus has decided to let the ship sail on a perfect opportunity to get people excited about their brand.

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???????

I remain excited. I completely believe them that Thranduil is in production already. The company I can't get excited about is InArt since they show Thorin but there's nothing definite. Not that I don't own multiple ASMUS Thorins one of their finest figures.

The only products I can assume from InArt are Legolas and the Nazgul. And now Chinese New Year is coming which will probably slow things up.

Sassafras said:

???????

I remain excited. I completely believe them that Thranduil is in production already. The company I can't get excited about is InArt since they show Thorin but there's nothing definite. Not that I don't own multiple ASMUS Thorins one of their finest figures.

The only products I can assume from InArt are Legolas and the Nazgul. And now Chinese New Year is coming which will probably slow things up.

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That's not what I meant.

Asmus has their fans that will collect anything Middle Earth because they want Middle Earth stuff, sure. People like you and I. But let's be real, Asmus has a ton of detractors after many of their figures released with issues or major downgrades. All legitimate criticisms. They took a break from LOTR, which after the Gollum skin discoloration debacle and the Boromir 2.0 that ended up being a massive downgrade, was good because it gave people a break from having eyes on things they were doing wrong.

Now InArt is here. Gandalf and Aragorn were figures of the year for many. Now, I'm very wary of InArt and I'm not buying a rooted figure from them unless I absolutely have to, like Hermione. I avoided Legolas even though I'm still tempted, and likely won't buy Malfoy and Snape unless they come with sculpted options. Point being, they have their detractors too.

So now Asmus is making their LOTR return, right at a time where InArt has made some missteps on their LOTR line. Tons of Aragorn hair concerns, Legolas price increase and no Mirkwood bow, claiming no more LOTR after Frodo/Sam. This is the perfect time to Asmus to come in and show progress on Gil-Galad, put Saruman up for pre-order and announce another Crown figure, make a perfect Boromir figure and show people they can buy that to help complete their Fellowships. They're working on Frodo and Sam too - show pictures and beat InArt to the punch. Show perfect looking figures and say Merry and Pippin are coming too to help complete your Fellowship.

Just seems silly to me to not try and capture people's interest after InArt said they wouldn't finish the Fellowship. Perfect time for Asmus to come in and say "hey, we got you guys. Boromir, Pippin and Merry are coming, and they'll look great. We want your Fellowships to be complete and we don't want our figures to look out of place. Oh, and you don't want to finish the Fellowship? We have Crown Galadriel coming since InArt won't make her."

That's what I meant.

I think this is the perfect time for them to start doing creatures and villains. Now that INART and JND entered the ring giving us main characters such as the fellowship, ASMUS needs to 2.0 and go back to the drawing board and re visit with better technology and RND such as stated Mouth of Sauron , Witch King , Give us some Orcs and Uruks , Hell i'll even take some 1/6 Power Pose Cave trolls .

So InArt aren’t doing the entire fellowship? Or have I picked that up wrong?

Life_m2000 said:

So InArt aren’t doing the entire fellowship? Or have I picked that up wrong?

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From the snippets I'd read I thought they were...tho I wasn't in for it anyway. Stopping at Legolas unless Thorin is released.

Just seems silly to me to not try and capture people's interest after InArt said they wouldn't finish the Fellowship. Perfect time for Asmus to come in and say "hey, we got you guys. Boromir, Pippin and Merry are coming, and they'll look great. We want your Fellowships to be complete and we don't want our figures to look out of place. Oh, and you don't want to finish the Fellowship? We have Crown Galadriel coming since InArt won't make her."

That's what I meant.

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True enough. But I don't know how ASMUS got production done; maybe with China having economic woes it's harder to line up painters, textiles, production, packaging - I don't know who ASMUS works with. A lot of production is switching to India and Vietnam. So maybe ASMUS can't step into the breech, even if they want to.

Life_m2000 said:

So InArt aren’t doing the entire fellowship? Or have I picked that up wrong?

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There's a lot of confusion about this, but it seems like the answer is no.

InArt had an event last weekend, where apparently they said they would not be doing any more LOTR after Frodo and Sam, who would be released in 2026. They also apparently said Gandalf the White was not off the table in the future.

Then InArt apparently said some things got lost in translation after the fact and there was some livestream coming with more info, but I don't know if that happened or is happening.

I thought this whole rumor of them not completing the Fellowship was debunked…?

Stryker2011 said:

I thought this whole rumor of them not completing the Fellowship was debunked…?

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I hadn’t seen otherwise. If it was, I missed it and it’s news to me.

RandomHero said:

I hadn’t seen otherwise. If it was, I missed it and it’s news to me.

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You’ve gotta be in the general InArt thread.

It seems more likely that IA do intend to ‘finish the nine’ but we still don’t have solid confirmation, and I guess their plans need to be flexible and based on sales numbers anyway so they are less likely to firmly commit publicly to large ensembles like the Fellowship.

So it turns out InArt stated tonight that they will be finishing the Fellowship after all. I'm sure we'll be waiting on it for 4-5 years since Frodo and Sam likely won't go up for at least half a year, but hey, Boromir and Gimli are coming from InArt after all.

RandomHero said:

So it turns out InArt stated tonight that they will be finishing the Fellowship after all. I'm sure we'll be waiting on it for 4-5 years since Frodo and Sam likely won't go up for at least half a year, but hey, Boromir and Gimli are coming from InArt after all.

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They said we’ll see I’m in 2-3 years. So not too long lol

It is almost February and still nothing. This is so sad, that we preordered Aragorn, he was released and arrived, before Asmus made any new figure.
At this point I am really worrying about figures after Saruman, Thrandul ( if he ever will see the light). They could use Inart to bust their own sales, producing other characters Inart will never make: Galadriel 2.0, Elrond 2.0 ... Lotr hype train is huge now thanks to Hunt for Gollum on the horrizon, Rings of Power, War of the Rohirrim, and yet, for Asmus these few years are the worst for some reason.

Sindicollo said:

It is almost February and still nothing. This is so sad, that we preordered Aragorn, he was released and arrived, before Asmus made any new figure.
At this point I am really worrying about figures after Saruman, Thrandul ( if he ever will see the light). They could use Inart to bust their own sales, producing other characters Inart will never make: Galadriel 2.0, Elrond 2.0 ... Lotr hype train is huge now thanks to Hunt for Gollum on the horrizon, Rings of Power, War of the Rohirrim, and yet, for Asmus these few years are the worst for some reason.

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I never expect anything around Chinese New Year, which has begun and runs to February 12. As far as I can tell from YT vids - never been to Asia - people go home, factories shut down.

I always hope an order ships before; or, loosely, I figure wait until March for any movement of anything produced in Asia. I may be wrong but always seems like slow period in the figure world. Unless the product is in stock at Sideshow or BBTS.

Again, too, there seems to be some economic roiling going on in China with production facilities and/or companies are moving to Vietnam, India, Mexico etc. plus the shipping mess. I won't question ASMUS as they'd stepped out of LOTR for a while, and companies like InArt are having their own issues. E.g. I imagine setting up production isn't as easy as we might think it is, even if to us it would make sense.

There were good times when Middle Earth figs were rolling off the production line. Times changed.