Thanks for the insight regarding licensors and DC Direct, I had not thought through all the inner workings and you articulated them well.
Yeah, with almost all IP content owners these days, they just make good content(Hopefully), and hope people come flocking to them to buy licences.
A friend of mine made SW themed Hawaiian shirts back in the day, and all he did was approach them and ask how much a licence was. They asked for samples of what he planned to make to check the quality(SW doesn't like to lend it's name to inferior products), and they asked him how many he planned to make and what price point. They came back with a $30,000 licencing fee, and that covered him for a five year period. He really ramped up his designs and had to make way more than he normally would, just to turn a profit.
Yeah, having an in-house staff led to a lot of creative collectibles that might never of been made.
Until you pointed it out, I forgot those Kiss statues (based on Jim Lee Hush) were from DC Direct - those are still amongst my favorite pieces, regardless of scale or IP.
I do not recall QC issues with the Batman/Catwoman kiss but you are correct, the Superman/Wonder Woman kiss statue pictured below had severe issues with the leg of WW breaking off from the attached cloud. It appears to be a design flaw, they did not factor the distribution of weight and should of provided better structural support.
BBTS gave me a partial credit and I was able glue mine back together. But I am playing it safe - I currently have one side of the statue pressed against the glass wall for support - and several clear fishing lines tied to the Detolf metal columns for additional support. [emoji23]
They are lovely statues but DC Direct must of taken a huge loss on this statue as you mentioned.
My Brother has several of those and never got one that didn't break.
They managed to track the problem down to the styrofoam packing being the wrong shape. It was just the difference of a few square cm, which, if removed, would have put no pressure on the leg joint. But when the statue was clamped into the box, it put so much torque on the leg, it always snapped. My Brother is also friendly with the guy who sculpted that statue(Amongst many others), and he even sent him an unproduced DC statue. DC had commissioned it and paid him for it, but in the end, cancelled it. He sent the painted proto to my Brother, and he has it here at work, on display in his detolf in his office as it's one of his fave pieces(Although his full scale Cavill Suit in a Mannequin is probably the total fave, and always raises eyebrows when people come into his office for the first time).
What channel does your brother do his YouTube statue reviews?
He doesn't have any recent content on there. I think he mostly posts on Facebook these days as he's too busy with work, but he does have a review room up here at work, with a full lighting setup. He just doesn't get much time these days, as we are both busier with work, and our Dad has developed dementia, so we share the looking after duties.
In case you want to see any of his Superman related stuff and hear reviews of old statues with a Scottish accent, his channel is Stewmurray47:
https://www.youtube.com/user/stewmurray47/videos