Legendary Swords Project Now in Limbo

The Aelutian Gladius was the design that I was most interested in purchasing, and it was never released (to my knowledge anyway). I also seem to recall concerns about the weight of the prototype.

I'm primarily a collector of historic sword designs, but that honestly has more to do with functionality than pedantry. I think there are certainly lessons to be learned from this mostly unsuccessful venture.

Most of the fantasy market seems to live at the low and high extremes of pricing. Things that can get away with a price point somewhere in the middle are based on popular IP, and thus have a baked-in market. I have a hard time believing that a sword line based on a generic pseudo-European fantasy setting was ever going to see much success. There just isn't going to be much buy-in from most potential consumers, and there wasn't any unifying design theme tying the line together.

To my eyes these swords look like they were all designed independently, by individuals with their own specific design expectations and tastes. Now imagine if you asked a group of people to each design a sword which belonged in the LotR films, or ones for the Westeros of the TV series. The results would most likely be very different. This fantasy sword project needed a style guide, and it needed editorial oversight.

Another issue I have already seen mentioned is the marketing and long hiatus between when the products were announced and when they were to be available for purchase. These products were hyped too early, and the excitement ran down before the swords became available to buy. The early efforts should have been a slow strip-tease, and then a big push when they became available. I wonder if something like Kickstarter would have been a better model. If each design was individually Kickstarted, you would not only know how popular each design was, but you would have a known quantity of preorders.

I don't think that's really true, as such. Darksword's generic fantasy models seem to do just fine in the $400-600 price range, as did Valiant Armoury's Warder, for example.

I certainly don't have access to the financials of DSA or VA, but they are small enough operations that I would consider them statistical outliers.  We've seen Valiant Armoury make a recent push towards the high-end market with their Craftsman product line, and the swords in the mid-range Signature line are mostly historic European designs, not fantasy (and their best selling fantasy piece is rooted in the Wheel of Time, and not an original IP). 

Darksword Armoury's fantasy pieces (whether they are sales leaders, or not) seem to me to not be catering to the serious sword enthusiast, but to the collector of generally low end wall-hangers who wants to splurge on a "real sword."  

Paul, just a thought.

I think the definition of fantasy is quite broad.

Clearly fantasy swords modelled on film swords works, both decorative and functional sell well.
I personally would love to buy swords based on the Kingdom of Heaven swords but made better than the Windlass swords.

The LOTR swords have sold well regardless of manufacturer (and there have been a good mix of unofficial versions ranging from high end smiths to decorative).

There’s also plenty of scope based on well selling fantasy book series such as Shannara, Rift Wars etc...

Those will always sell well.

Pure fantasy blades, those with nothing behind them other than design might well struggle if the aesthetic is only compelling to a subset of the fantasy following.