So sell no pins? Stern has already sold 600LEs to distributors and probably several hundred Pros. So they just should've tossed all that revenue down the toilet because people on Pinside think Stern should've taken their ball and gone home?

My guess with both The Hobbit and their Smaug issues and TWD, you get to a point where you have too much skin in the game to call it. Instead, you have to adapt. Realities of staying in business.

For all we know they did their homework and had the actors' voices in there, then the actors found out about it and started to scream, so AMC said "take it or leave it". Nobody knows exactly the circumstances of what went down except for Stern. Granted however, Stern could've chosen to just say screw it and not do a TWD pin.

They didn't. And they have still sold 600 LE pins to distributors. Let's say distributor pricing is only 6k (have no idea how accurate that is). Stern just made 3.6 million in revenue. This is not counting Pros or any money they stand to make selling mods. So tell me again, how as this a bad decision as business? Yes, it is sad that some people didn't get the TWD pin that they wanted. However Stern doesn't care which 600 people buy their LE, just that 600 actually do.

If the majority of those 600 LEs end up being stuck at distributors for the next 10 years and distributors cannot move them so don't buy future Stern pins, then yes it could be a decision that hurts them in the long run.

Stern isn't always going to make the best decisions as far as our vocal community is concerned, sometimes they are going to make decisions that are best for their bottom line just like any responsible company.

Sometimes things come down to a handful of bad choices though. TBL was pretty far along when they were told they couldn't use Kahlua's brand on the machine. Luckily for them it was a minor hiccup but they weren't happy about it. TH was pretty far along when they had the door shut on the Smaug design they wanted. Easy to point fingers and say it should've been done differently, but unless you are in the room I don't think blame can be assigned that easily/cleanly especially if you have a licensor who needs final approval on things that might've been in progress for awhile.

He also might have to get permission from AMC if he even did want to do it. AMC owns Rick Grimes, not Andrew Lincoln.