You can understand that for various reasons ( a movie/show flops, production issues, licensing issues) occasionally figs will be announced/shown but not actually see release. But you look at these huge collections of images of all the shown/unreleased HT figs - more than two dozen (not including vehicles) over only maybe 4-5 years - and you really have to wonder.
I mean based on that past record, this situation happens roughly 6 times a year, every year. So on average, every two months, HT shows a fig that never sees release. That's kind of crazy.
It's hard to categorize this practice: it's sort of misleading, maybe inept, and perhaps even exploitative given HT (according to the Howard interview) uses these announcements to gauge interest - in ways that are unclear to collectors/customers - and make a yes/no decision.
It's also somehow cruel or mean to officially put something out there at shows or in official images (this is not just a HT employee hinting at them working on a fig), people get excited over many months and.... HT just simply never mentions/shows it ever again. It's not like HT ever makes comment as to why they repeatedly showed a fig with a "TBD" card then it was as if it never existed.
