I wonder what the timeline is for a toy company to cancel production at the factory. I’ve always heard from concept to being available is about 18 months, but it does seem like stuff gets canceled last minute all the time.
So 18 months is like 'concept to boat' timeline. You gotta keep in mind that the design, sculpting, approvals, and deco process takes -most- of that time. Tooling is like.. a couple weeks to a couple months, depending on complexity/number of the tools and how long it takes to get the tools right (so this process includes running samples to test functionality/fidelity). Actual production can literally take weeks to a couple of months as well, depending on the product complexity (how many parts to assemble, how many paint deco hits, how many color changes for the plastic injection).
That being said, the decision to cancel is a pretty huge one depending on what stage the product is at. If you're at the stage where the product is at the factory at all, you've already hit a significant financial investment just in paying designers, sculptors, etc. So you have to be willing to just say 'okay, we didn't need that 15 grand.' If you've cut tooling, now you're adding tooling costs and you have to be willing to say 'it's okay, we didn't need that 80 grand.'
If you're at a point in production where you've already paid the factory for tooling samples and packaging mock-ups, now you're like 'it's okay, we didn't need that 100 grand.'
At some point, it's more economically responsible to just finish production and sell what you've come up with, even if you know that line isn't going anywhere. It's why you might see a single wave of movie toy product and then never anything else ever again because the movie bombed. They already sunk so much into that product, they HAVE to release it and hope to get some of that money back. It's also why you see things like Mattel releasing WWE fgures of wrestlers that were fired or are literally already appearing on a competitor's program; it's financial murder for WWE to say 'if someone gets fired or leaves, you have to eat the cost of making their figure and never release it.' That's only happened like once at the very beginning with the Jeff Hardy figure and it sucked for Mattel.
Anyway.... I'm still 100% not saying 'Super7 definitely cannot make TMNT product.' So don't take it that way. I'm just saying there's a lot of financial incentive for them to A) Lie about that fact, B) obfuscate that fact, and/or C) release whatever product they can right now and even collect pre-order money for product that will get cancelled.
