Questions for Asmus

That Thranduil tease is aces! Don’t quit, please, Asmus!

I feel like Asmus has fully abandoned us for easy to produce anime figures

I'm still wondering if there's anybody home at Warner Bros./New Line/DC merchandising anymore. That company has been in a constant churn of mergers and layoffs for the last five or six years. I wonder if their licensing people in the legal department are even there anymore. Or if they are, if they have enough people to properly run the department. Because it really seems like there are a lot of unlicensed figures from their IPs popping up lately. Stuff their lawyers would normally shut down. That giant Sauron figure ... knockoff Aquaman figures ... Seems kind of brazen. Yes, the ThreeZero GoT line was losing steam, but it's interesting that it went fully silent roughly around the same time Asmus' LotR line did. (It's the same people at WBD who would be the ones handling all those contracts.) It's hard to put out new figures if nobody's taking your calls at the Licensor ...

Just my idle speculation ...

Curious for sure. I didn’t know other WB lines went silent as well. I am still holding onto hope that Asmus still has the license and that we will eventually see more figures. I was really looking forward to the 3.0 hobbits.

The Hobbit/LOTR line is still ongoing with WETA, and Diamond Select with their 1/12 figure line. Inart is also still producing and developing their LOTR and Hobbit 1/6 figures, all of them still running.

So while their legal department may not be doing their moves to the 3rd party (which is perhaps.. good for collectors because we finally get 1/6 Sauron!), I think their licensing department is still working on approval, etc.

Good points although I think Diamond has had the license for a while now and Weta of course has had some kind of license since the beginning. Of course it is all conjecture since we don’t know any of the terms, time limits, etc.. I do know way back when Sideshow had the license for 1/6 they let it end and did not pick it back up (don’t know all the specifics behind it), Toy Biz’s license eventually ended and the same when Diamond had it way back in the past with their minimates. I am little concerned that with all the silence and lack of new figures it could be a situation where the license has expired and currently has not been renewed.

superdoug said:

Good points although I think Diamond has had the license for a while now and Weta of course has had some kind of license since the beginning. Of course it is all conjecture since we don’t know any of the terms, time limits, etc.. I do know way back when Sideshow had the license for 1/6 they let it end and did not pick it back up (don’t know all the specifics behind it), Toy Biz’s license eventually ended and the same when Diamond had it way back in the past with their minimates. I am little concerned that with all the silence and lack of new figures it could be a situation where the license has expired and currently has not been renewed.

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Yes, both has had the license for a while, but they have just recently launched new LOTR products, which, of course, needs approval from the licensor and also likeness approvals from the actors etc. Meaning, the WB merchandising/licensing dept is still running and working.

So I can't say/dunno about asmus, but there is no silence and lack of new figures from WETA, Diamond Select, and also InArt (they are developing their Thorin figure and completing their Aragorn.)
At least there are 3 big companies still going strong with the license. And those are great companies.
Which is good news for us LOTR fans.

I meant silence and lack of figures from Asmus. Weta keeps churning out the statues and Diamond’s latest wave of figures just came out with another wave up for preorder.

Hopefully Asmus still has the license and keeps making figures. InArt’s Gandalf is fantastic and their Aragorn looks even better but I don’t see them ever going as deep in character selection as Asmus. If we can somehow get a complete InArt Fellowship I will be ecstatic.

superdoug said:

I meant silence and lack of figures from Asmus. Weta keeps churning out the statues and Diamond’s latest wave of figures just came out with another wave up for preorder.

Hopefully Asmus still has the license and keeps making figures. InArt’s Gandalf is fantastic and their Aragorn looks even better but I don’t see them ever going as deep in character selection as Asmus. If we can somehow get a complete InArt Fellowship I will be ecstatic.

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Well after their post that they might lose the licence at end of 2023 and now radio silence...I fear that they can't produce LotR figures anymore. But hopefully we'll hear from them soon

superdoug said:

If we can somehow get a complete InArt Fellowship I will be ecstatic.

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Yes please!

Curious as to what is happening with Devil May Cry. Stores have just received their Dante stock, but Asmus has suddenly removed all the DMC products from their page (apart from a blank listing that appeared today and simply says 'payment' with the product code for Dante) They've also deleted the unboxing video from youtube and social media.

Ryokosama said:

Curious as to what is happening with Devil May Cry. Stores have just received their Dante stock, but Asmus has suddenly removed all the DMC products from their page (apart from a blank listing that appeared today and simply says 'payment' with the product code for Dante) They've also deleted the unboxing video from youtube and social media.

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wow that is weird!

I got their samurai schoolgirl figure and it is good. I hope asmus develops more stuff like that, but with good QC.
The samurai schoolgirl looks very close to its proto, while their zombie figures are worse than the proto.

batsheva said:

wow that is weird!

I got their samurai schoolgirl figure and it is good. I hope asmus develops more stuff like that, but with good QC.
The samurai schoolgirl looks very close to its proto, while their zombie figures are worse than the proto.

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Ah, that's interesting! A friend of mine bought it and was massively disappointed and said he'd never buy from their company again. I guess I'd have to see it in person! You're a seasoned collector, so it's probably not as bad as it looks in photos.

Asmus said the DMC stuff would be back up after some adjustments are made in accordance with the requirements of the copyright holder.

Ryokosama said:

Ah, that's interesting! A friend of mine bought it and was massively disappointed and said he'd never buy from their company again. I guess I'd have to see it in person! You're a seasoned collector, so it's probably not as bad as it looks in photos.

Asmus said the DMC stuff would be back up after some adjustments are made in accordance with the requirements of the copyright holder.

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well,
I've really lowered my expectation for asmus.. and I think the samurai schoolgirl is better than their LOTR stuff!

batsheva said:

well,
I've really lowered my expectation for asmus.. and I think the samurai schoolgirl is better than their LOTR stuff!

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I've certainly lowered mine after seeing Ash in a toy store, but the great thing about DMC is they use the game files, so hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised with Dante!

Any update on the Snake from Escape from New York figure?

Yeah it's been ages since that pic was posted.

I honestly would anticipate Asmus no longer producing anything LOTR. The writing was on the wall for a while and their silence really is telling.

As I've said before, the shame in this is that there's still characters that we'll never see in sixth scale figures that Asmus could have filled the gap for.

There's likely zero chance that InArt gets to characters like Eomer, Faramir, Elrond, Galadriel, etc. Even if they were open to it - they started up with sixth scale figures in March of 2022. We're almost two years away from that Joker figure going live and they're released three figures. Three. Even if they did want to do an Eomer - that's going to be a solid ten years away, between all of the other LOTR figures they'd do first, plus other licenses they'd be working on too.

It's a shame, because even with Asmus being flawed and cutting a lot of corners, they did still produce a handful of very nice figures that filled out my LOTR shelf nicely.

I agree. I rather like most of my Asmus stuff. It's just that InArt is on another level.

Asmus, much like Sideshow, had an opportunity to fill a support role and floundered it.

Environments, B and C tier characters, cannon fodder, etc. Both companies have proven they can make good versions of these things.

If InArt won't make Hobbits, Asmus should have jumped in and done Crown hobbits in the proper scale, built from the ground up.

They made massive mistakes not making Orcs and Uruks. People would have jumped on Moria Goblins too, I know I would have. Gondorian guards, Easterlings...none of those needed to be tied up with talent likeness approvals. While they struggled with their main cast, they could have been generating side revenue off of "the Armies of Middle Earth". Offer made-to-preorder head/accessory packs to expand army building for those who want it. It would have set them up with a purpose in the market as InArt entered the fray.

Those silly 8" lines, a rerelease and and R&D on another Thranduil with a dumbass throne, pushing die cast armor on a figure where the armor is never seen...those stand out as ridiculous time and resources sinks. You can get that Lurtz for like $30 now on their site.

This all sounds like Sideshow who certainly excels at aliens, decided to go toe to toe with the industry king instead, rather than offering a collection of supporting products. The difference is that at the base level, I believe Asmus actually makes pretty good products.

The problem is, well...I feel for them. I genuinely believe Asmus cared for the license and the goal of making fan driven products. I fear that we may generally see them fade into twilight as a company as a whole moving forward. If anything, it would perhaps be in their interest to try to be acquired by someone larger so they can offer their expertise AND have greater resources.