Cost of business since they already paid. ETA: To be clear the legal ramifications of McFarlane failing to comply will cost them substantially if the phasers have to go through a CA port: Source And this is just a brief snippet of the laws that concern this specific facet. Given how large the CA market is to manufacturers, as well as the number of ports that goods go through McFarlane clearly needs to evaluate this extremely carefully or risk further cost to their business. It is not a small thing.
The Anovos phaser isn't a kit that the customer assembles, but i believe Anovos does the final assembly themselves in the US, which is maybe what you were saying.
Honestly, reading the last update by Anovos, where (if I read correctly) assembly is done in Asia, I'm not sure what the difference is. I certainly was misremembering the Anovos one vs. the McFarlane one, as both are complete units. But, even Anovos mentions in an update that it required considerable planning to ensure they could comply with legal guidelines. So, the cost may have simply increased too much for McFarlane. Again, this is my speculation but there is a cost that came along with it, and not just to McFarlane, but also Anovos.
The only extra cost they should incur is hiring a summer intern to mask and spray paint all the muzzles blaze orange at minimum wage. The rest of the model and out-of-the-box paint job should remain unchanged from their original plan. It's starting to make me wonder if there's more going on with this than just the dumbass muzzle color law and they're just using that as convenient cover for something else happening behind the curtains.
I am wondering if there is more to the story as well, but I also know from airsoft manufacturers that CA has strict requirements, including with packaging and shipping. I'm sure there is more to the story, but given that even Anovos had to review the legal requirements, which means that they had to do a legal review, which adds to the cost.
It has to be telling that they’ve apparently abandoned releasing any more action figures - and if that’s because bread-and-butter Kirk and Picard didn’t sell well they may not want to stomach the risk around anything Discovery related.
Starting to wonder if they're at risk of imminently losing their license and maybe they're cutting their losses so they don't take too much of a bath when the cord gets cut.
Just makes you wonder WHY they took the license to begin with. I don't get it, either produce the things you promised us, or don't lie to us saying you're going to make a line of Star Trek toys, because they obviously arent!
They neither promised nor lied. They changed their plans based on the best information they had. It's not like they'd taken anyone's money.
They did release two figures (Kirk and Picard), which likely didn't sell well. That put an end to the line. No one keeps tossing money at a product that is losing them money.
Apparently it's not just McFarlane that's having problems selling Star Trek toys. Gentle Giant announced early last year they were going to produce a line of "micromachine-type" ships from DIS, but nothing has come of that beyond a few prototypes unveiled at Toy Fair 2018. https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulnomad/40522971702 After a year of listing those ships as "pending licensor approval," Gentle Giant has recently deleted them from their website.