Wow, didn't realized they were doing that. They should just come out and explain why the trident is taking so long to produce. And at some point, they have to decide to cancel it if the delay gets longer.
I ordered the Princess Bride sword from them I think 2 years ago, and haven't heard anything. This is another company I get nervous about with preorders and lengthy delays. Remind you of something?
This is the last thing they posted to their website. Though you can’t find it anymore if you don’t have the link etc.
https://www.factoryent.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=185
April 27, 2020
Dear Factory Entertainment Customer:
We’re writing to you because you’ve preordered our Aquaman Trident Limited Edition Prop Replica and/or our Sword of Inigo Montoya Limited Edition Prop Replica. Both of those items have been delayed well beyond their originally estimated ship dates. We’ve received and individually answered a number of customer inquiries about the status of these items but, with the advent of a new year, we wanted to give everyone who has ordered them a detailed explanation of the reasons for the delay and an update on where things stand, as we’re sure that many of those customers we haven’t heard from are similarly anxious.
As we hope all of you know, during the nine years Factory Entertainment has been in business we have produced dozens of high-end prop replicas and hundreds of other premium collectibles, virtually all of which have been delivered on schedule. When announcing a ship date, it has been our policy to wait until we have a high degree of confidence that we will meet it, based on our review of samples (of which there will be multiple iterations on any high-end product), receipt of approvals from the relevant licensors and the track record of the applicable factory in meeting its projected ship dates based on prior performance on similar items. Therefore, once we saw near final samples of the trident and the sword from a factory that had reliably produced several items for us in the past, we felt comfortable relying on the factory’s projections of production times and set our expected ship dates accordingly.
Unfortunately, in the case of both products, the production pieces did not meet the high quality standard we expected based on the pre-production samples we had signed off on, necessitating that new molds be created. Mold-making is one of the most important (and time consuming) elements in the manufacture of prop replicas. The need to make new molds for these two products is the reason that substantial delays have crept into both. We deeply regret the delays, but we hope you share our belief that it’s more important to produce quality products than to be bound to specific delivery dates.
The global pandemic, which began in January, has regrettably also injected an additional unexpected delay into the production timing.
At this point we can assure each of you that the replica you ordered will be delivered sometime in 2020 and will be of the exceptional quality you have come to expect from Factory Entertainment. As of today, however, we’re reluctant to project precise new shipping dates because we don’t want to add to any frustration you’re already feeling from the delay by throwing out a date that may slip again. We promise that we will update you, via our newsletter, as soon as we have high confidence of the actual shipping window. That will be only after final production on the item has completed and the production run has been reviewed and passed by our QC inspector.
We thank you for your patience with us as we work with our factory to address the mold issues which have delayed these replicas. In the coming weeks and months we will not only update you on the progress of these two items, but we will also give you a peek into some of our replica plans for the rest of 2020 and 2021. If you’re fans of Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Star Trek, James Bond, Game of Thrones or Ultraman, to name but a few of the licenses involved, we think you’ll find them very exciting.
With our best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year,
THE FACTORY ENTERTAINMENT TEAM