One thing that needs to be stated - this went up for pre-order February 14th 2023 and released January 9th 2025. Under two years, which is great as that's actual progress on Lim releasing figures a little quicker.
Yes, I know people are still waiting on Connor but it's been shared how that figure has gone through hell in development, and yes John will be closer to 2.5 years by the time it comes out. Still not great, but this figure is actual proof Lim is working on speeding things up, hopefully Joel/Ellie, Dutch and the Sully I am going to pretend is definitely happening will all come in at like a year and a half to keep that progress going.
Either way, if people can dump on Lim for taking a long time, they should be praised for making steps in the right direction.
It's because this figure didn't go through a rigorous redesign period like the other ones. Arthur was almost entirely redesigned from the ground up, so has John. Connor was in production hell for ages, every cast that came back was either worse than the last or had a new issue which required a complete shift in production which has thankfully worked out well even if at a massive loss, and now him and RK900 are on track to release this year too.
That's thing with LIM's figures, they have rarely been just the prototype but mass produced, no, almost all of them have been completely revamped during production resulting in vastly superior final products, because nobody is harsher on these figures that the team itself, we're perfectionists and we make these for us as much as we make it for collectors. It's just most people don't know that, which is odd considering just how different some figures have been when compared to the prototype, Arthur probably being the best example.
Nate was fairly straightforward, the sculpts and accessories are the same as the prototype, the weapons were quickly redesigned to have some articulated features, new accessories were added to the package and the clothes and paint were refined for the final product. The body was the only thing that underwent multiple changes but it thankfully didn't slow down production that much, had the body been perfect at the prototype stage, he would've released much sooner.
LIM's new strategy going forward will be to essentially create final products, cast them, and then put them up for pre-order, that's what has happened with the
The Last of Us figures. Sure we could've announced them ages ago, but they still wouldn't have been released, because over the past 2 years LIM's been perfecting the craft, learning new techniques, getting better equipment and applying all of it to Joel and Ellie. The result is LIM's best work to date and figures that I think will impress a lot of people, the detail of the skin, hair, eyes, clothes, is leagues above what came before them.
