For those that don't know... Back in 2015, Anovos rushed out a small number of "Alpha" kits to members of the 501st to dress up for the premiere of The Force Awakens. It was largely good, with a few issues -- some of which they addressed, some of which required serious work by the end-user to get them up to something like film-accurate. After the premiere, they announced that they were going to take the time to do it properly, fix the shortcomings the Alpha suit had, and started preorders for various levels of kit. I had initially opted to pass. I was more okay with the design than many, but didn't feel strongly enough about it to need to make a costume.
Then in 2017, the novel Phasma came out -- going into her backstory, and also introducing us to Captain Cardinal. I have had a weakness for red things in Star Wars since 1982. The Emperor's guards made a heavy impression on me, a violent slash of blood-red in the middle of the monochrome world of the Empire. So formal and faceless and imposing. Since then, other red things have caught my attention. Some Royal Guard related, some not. Cardinal had the armor, which I liked well enough, but also the Captain's accoutrements that Phasma had -- the cape, the boot armor, the sidearm and heavy rifle... Plus I liked the guy. So, in the summer of 2017, I jumped onto the preorder bandwagon for a set of Standard The Force Awakens First Order Stormtrooper Armor Kit Plus Standard Edition The Force Awakens Helmet.
Then a whole lot of us settled in to wait...
Along the way, The Last Jedi came out, in which the general public dislike of the First Order Stormtrooper helmet saw a revision to the design, plus tweaks to the armor, most of which I don't know the reasoning behind. Anovos announced that they were updating their reproduction to match, without offering us options or asking if we were okay with them changing the thing we had preordered to something similar but different. I stayed in, trusting to my ability to alter it back to TFA spec, so long as I had a good base derived from Lucasfilm assets to work from (and could trade the helmet for a TFA version...).
Time passed. There were sporadic updates, most notably when they expressed dissatisfaction with the initial pulls they got from China and decided to start from scratch, milling concave dies the plastic would be pulled into, rather than convex bucks the plastic would be pulled over. Inversion-forming. They wanted to capture all the crisp detail on the outside of the armor, as with the original film suits. Some time later, they posted pictures of piles of the new uncut sheets, and a rough mock-up build on one of their employees. A couple people got kits, and then silence. People going on the new "Rise of the Resistance" attraction at the US Disney parks noticed some suspiciously familiar armor on the First Order Stormtroopers standing at attention in a hangar bay. We'll probably never know the full story, but it seems Disney yoinked the majority of that first batch to populate the new rides.
Time passed. A class-action lawsuit happened. Another movie came out -- the last of the Sequel Trilogy. Mixed reception to the trilogy in general and that film in particular make it unlikely we will ever see First Order Stormtroopers again any time soon. They do not have the caché of the OG OT model, timelessly appealing to general audiences. Many felt slighted -- justifiably -- by never having the opportunity to wear their finished armor at a relevant movie premiere. Anovos lost the Star Wars high-end costuming license, and is in indeterminate status as a company. Their website is gone. The other properties they had license to are in limbo. But NECA -- who make the cheap retro action figures and other such collectibles that populate those portions of the electronics and entertainment collectibles sections of Walmart and Target... Well, some years back, they bought Rubies Costumes when the latter went bankrupt.
A bit over a year ago, NECA created a new business called "Rubies II", which seemed to exist for the sole purpose of hosting a company called Denuo Novo, who now had the high-end Star Wars costuming license. Trying to go to the Anovos website led instead to Denuo Novo's. They seemed to have acquired all of Anovos' Star Wars assets, including the production facility in Texas that Anovos had built for the purpose. They announced in July of last year that they would be, amongst other things, doing their best to make Anovos' waiting customers as whole as they could -- with product or store credit. That didn't assuage everyone, and there was a lot of skepticism. But weeks later, boxes started showing up on people's doorsteps. I enquired about the First Order Stormtrooper. They had initially hoped for early this year, but kept updating as things were delayed. Earlier this summer, a few people started getting kits, and two weeks ago, my own Big Brown Box was at the front door.
In the intervening time, I had acquired upgrade parts and materials, gloves and boots, 3D-printed my blasters and boot armor. Now, after five years, time to properly get started...
Then in 2017, the novel Phasma came out -- going into her backstory, and also introducing us to Captain Cardinal. I have had a weakness for red things in Star Wars since 1982. The Emperor's guards made a heavy impression on me, a violent slash of blood-red in the middle of the monochrome world of the Empire. So formal and faceless and imposing. Since then, other red things have caught my attention. Some Royal Guard related, some not. Cardinal had the armor, which I liked well enough, but also the Captain's accoutrements that Phasma had -- the cape, the boot armor, the sidearm and heavy rifle... Plus I liked the guy. So, in the summer of 2017, I jumped onto the preorder bandwagon for a set of Standard The Force Awakens First Order Stormtrooper Armor Kit Plus Standard Edition The Force Awakens Helmet.
Then a whole lot of us settled in to wait...
Along the way, The Last Jedi came out, in which the general public dislike of the First Order Stormtrooper helmet saw a revision to the design, plus tweaks to the armor, most of which I don't know the reasoning behind. Anovos announced that they were updating their reproduction to match, without offering us options or asking if we were okay with them changing the thing we had preordered to something similar but different. I stayed in, trusting to my ability to alter it back to TFA spec, so long as I had a good base derived from Lucasfilm assets to work from (and could trade the helmet for a TFA version...).
Time passed. There were sporadic updates, most notably when they expressed dissatisfaction with the initial pulls they got from China and decided to start from scratch, milling concave dies the plastic would be pulled into, rather than convex bucks the plastic would be pulled over. Inversion-forming. They wanted to capture all the crisp detail on the outside of the armor, as with the original film suits. Some time later, they posted pictures of piles of the new uncut sheets, and a rough mock-up build on one of their employees. A couple people got kits, and then silence. People going on the new "Rise of the Resistance" attraction at the US Disney parks noticed some suspiciously familiar armor on the First Order Stormtroopers standing at attention in a hangar bay. We'll probably never know the full story, but it seems Disney yoinked the majority of that first batch to populate the new rides.
Time passed. A class-action lawsuit happened. Another movie came out -- the last of the Sequel Trilogy. Mixed reception to the trilogy in general and that film in particular make it unlikely we will ever see First Order Stormtroopers again any time soon. They do not have the caché of the OG OT model, timelessly appealing to general audiences. Many felt slighted -- justifiably -- by never having the opportunity to wear their finished armor at a relevant movie premiere. Anovos lost the Star Wars high-end costuming license, and is in indeterminate status as a company. Their website is gone. The other properties they had license to are in limbo. But NECA -- who make the cheap retro action figures and other such collectibles that populate those portions of the electronics and entertainment collectibles sections of Walmart and Target... Well, some years back, they bought Rubies Costumes when the latter went bankrupt.
A bit over a year ago, NECA created a new business called "Rubies II", which seemed to exist for the sole purpose of hosting a company called Denuo Novo, who now had the high-end Star Wars costuming license. Trying to go to the Anovos website led instead to Denuo Novo's. They seemed to have acquired all of Anovos' Star Wars assets, including the production facility in Texas that Anovos had built for the purpose. They announced in July of last year that they would be, amongst other things, doing their best to make Anovos' waiting customers as whole as they could -- with product or store credit. That didn't assuage everyone, and there was a lot of skepticism. But weeks later, boxes started showing up on people's doorsteps. I enquired about the First Order Stormtrooper. They had initially hoped for early this year, but kept updating as things were delayed. Earlier this summer, a few people started getting kits, and two weeks ago, my own Big Brown Box was at the front door.
In the intervening time, I had acquired upgrade parts and materials, gloves and boots, 3D-printed my blasters and boot armor. Now, after five years, time to properly get started...
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