Roan, you should get your facts straight man, but the cloak is limited to inart direct. Plenty of companies do this. For all we know, inart might have authorized retailers that carry these inart products out there, but only accounts that purchase direct to inart store will get the exclusive item. I personally don’t see how this matters because the majority of the world that doesn’t live in China (only region Aragorn is licensed in) would need to obtain this product via a third party avenue aka resellers/unofficial retailers like OneSixthKit, etc. Hence, your problem therein lies with whomever you purchased from. If they purchased directly from inart, and you purchased from them, you’ll get the cloak. It’s really on these third party retailers/resellers to solicit that information to us (the end customer).
They stagger releases and most people seem to not understand ‘staggered production output.’ I assume this is what they’re doing to avoid bottlenecking. If it were up to the people on FB, they’d prefer if inart focused on one release first before moving onto the next. But why, when they can work on various things at once…? Hot Toys also do this but they’re on another scale. We must understand that they probably have several different crews working on separate projects. In time, I imagine they’ll increase their efficiency.
Lastly, you’re going to base your opinion on the Harry QC on the word of one guy? I’ve seen various people act like the world is falling because magnets slide out of the neck connector on Gandalf - it also does this on my copy - should this be happening? Ideally, no. But at the same time, am I going to discard the entire release as “horrific QC” because of that? Speaking for myself, probably not. The dainty pegs breaking on Harry and the fact that spares are not included is a legit problem, no doubt about that, but perhaps the user simply broke it by not being careful? I’ve seen countless of people break things on Hot Toys figures and they blame “lousy QC” but if they were just a bit more careful, it wouldn’t have happened. Just saying.
There are legitimate issues with INART, but they aren’t a “hot mess” overall. Imo, only real issues I see with them is the overall speed of their production and they should optimize their rolling batch system. But I guess I’m willing to be more understanding and reasonable since they’re a new company. They’re probably aware of and scrambling like mad trying to meet these demands and expectations in this 1/6 market, but I do think the overwhelming majority of the community is unreasonable and uninformed. The other con would be general communication, I guess. I don’t know about you and others but technically they can’t really speak much to orders that are being made “illegally” (for lack of a better term, seriously I don’t know what other term to use here), since most of their products are NOT globally licensed but 99% of their vocal consumer base on their social media are customers that don’t reside in those licensed regions where that specific figure is officially licensed. Which is why they sort of come off as “vague” and don’t outright address certain concerns and questions from the community and even the YouTubers’ lousy interview questions. Me personally, after all this time, I’ve been able to discern what they mean (what they’re trying to get at) but most people simply still don’t get how it works and what’s happening. How I wish they’d be able to address the whole situation and kept it real for the sanity and well-being of the community, but they sort of can’t…
Also, their releases up to Harry Potter are technically “released”, but most people seem to disagree since they don’t have their own figure in their hands and don’t accept the fact that inart has a rolling batch system. People should probably realize that Hot Toys also do that, but they have more of a larger wide release which is “felt” more by the entire world after receiving their Hot Toys from Sideshow. AOTC Anakin’s 2/3rd batch is still on hold it seems and “delayed” too, btw, but no one seems to be disputing whether or not it’s released.
Idk, I can write more but I’ll just leave it at that. And if I’m wrong as hell or I’ve got holes in what I’m saying, tell me. Just my own opinions and speculation on how I see things, but I’ve really trying to base it on facts and be as objective as possible.
