Maybe I shouldn't try to paraphrase what they said, my understanding of QC batch was more that there are a lot of moving parts that need to come together to produce these figures, as such, you don't want to have them all produced at the same time. They do a small batch and QC them to makes sure production is up to quality. When it is, you order the rest, as fast as they can be produced (bottle necks such as hair rooting by hand). In batman's case, apparently it was an issue with the bat-signal. Retailers get them in order and choose to send them in whatever order they want, via whatever method (sea vs air ship).
They choose to give those few initial batch to folks that have a large public following. To drum up support for their other pre orders. They don't have HT bankroll and can much less afford low PO numbers. The reason they don't hold those, not saying I agree with it, is to hit deadlines and drum up interest. Because if they want to put X amount of figures up for pre order, every post will be full of "Wheres Batman? Wheres Aragorn?".
The fact that they choose to share this info at all, and open themselves up to scrutiny, is to me commendable. It's a 1000% more than HT does. I appreciate this glimpse into the manufacturing side of things, helps me be more patient.
They also explained what was going on with the rings from Gandalf, apparently it was a third party they contracted to make those, and they switched materials half way through the run and QC didn't catch it. They ordered more and are working with retailers to correct the issue.