I stayed up late Thursday night writing my review of the classic First 4 Figures John Cena statue, and consequently ended up sleeping through the Friday Q&A. So now I’m up late again completing my documentation of this week’s F4F Q&A #102, where not only are Alex and Chocks joined by the mythical Michael Lai, but we also get the answers to revelatory questions such as:

WHAT would collectors think of Kirby PVCs and/or small dioramas like the Whispering Woods?

WHEN will the first resin My Hero Academia statue go up for order?

WHERE on the prospective pre-order schedule for the year are Dracula and Skull Knight?

HOW far along in development is that Dark Souls Artorias Life-Size Bust?

WHY isn’t Alex worried about the sales of Life-Size Busts and smaller busts cannibalizing each other? Chocks

WHO is eating white, creamy translucent stuff during the show?

WOULD anime fans like Fullmetal Alchemist PVC statues?

…And more!

Announcements and The Week in Review:

• The one and only Michael Lai is in the house, blessing Alex and Chocks with his presence!
• Alex hid all the sneaks before Michael Lai came in, so he didn’t see any secrets coming into the studio
• “We have a totally not action-pac–I mean, action-packed episode for you today!” — Alex Davis
• Michael Lai will have his own Q&A later in the show
• Conker on Throne statue is on pre-order until February; will remain open for order for longer if 1000 units aren’t sold
• Shovel Knight Player 2, Phoenix Wright, Marshall Law, Spyro & Sparx EX PVC, Alphonse, Warp Star Kirby, Psycho Mantis and Berserk Guts EX are all still up for order on the website
• F4F Alum Jeffrey Lee is in the house watching during the livestream!
• Metal Gear Solid Snake statue is now starting to arrive in AUS/Asia, including the Stealth and Neon Green variants! Should begin arriving worldwide in 1-2 months
• PAL Keys cards will come with the Twin Snakes and Essential Edition Packs; interesting to see the reactions in the OCC to these exclusive extras
• Alex has been hella busy at the business-to-business Hong Kong Toy Fair this week on Monday and Tuesday; Alex apparently looks super-stylish in his full-on business attire
• HK Toy Fair booth was primarily about PVCs, as resin don’t tend to get much interest at Toy Fairs since not many businesses can practically carry them
• Alex thinks HK Toy Fair was ultimately worth doing; Dan was able to put faces to the names of people he’d been communicating with, and some licensors dropped by
• The Kirby licensors–Warp Star–were in town for the first time ever on Wednesday, so Alex got the chance to give them a whole presentation; gave Alex a Kirby 25th Anniversary Art Book (“Kirby Art & Style Collection”); meeting was awesome and all had a lot of laughs
• What would collectors think of small Kirby dioramas such as the Whispering Woods with lots of scenery, as opposed to the large power-up Kirby statues that have been produced to date?
• Large resin Kirbys haven’t sold spectacularly, but maybe TF Kirby PVCs would be in-demand?
• “How could you make Kirby SD?”; Michael Lai proposes making just the base SD
• F4F could theoretically have a Patreon with limited-edition cards and behind the scenes looks at concept art, etc.
• Alex also had a secret meeting with “hmmm, hmmm, hmmmmm” and that was “very interesting”
• Saw Ubisoft this week as well; the F4F OCC broke Ubisoft’s heart exactly one year ago when the club poll numbers failed to return good results; perhaps a 1:4 Edward Kenway could be made someday from Assassin’s Creed?
• Rayman TT still doing poorly with just 267 ‘Yes’ Votes
• Ezio TT has 410 ‘Yes’ Votes to-date
• There was a fire in the F4F office building this week, but everyone and all of the secret projects are fine; some of the giveaways were soaked, but have been luckily saved; desktops are all fine
• It’s been quite a weird week, which is why Alex hasn’t posted much within the club
• Next week will be the inaugual pre-order of 2019: Meta-Ridley! Meta-Ridley has been scaled to be perfectly sized next to the original F4F Samus 1:6 statues (Varia, Phazon and Gravity Suits)!
• Meta-Ridley has been in the works for many many many years and actually came out of the Vault, so there won’t be any DE for him
• This is the first in a new line: the Metroid villains line; hoping to push for other Metroid villains in the future such as Space Pirates, Metroids themselves, etc.
• Alex is hoping that Meta Ridley sells like Bowser in terms of doing well, as opposed to some of the lesser-selling villains First4Figures has produced

Michael Lai Q&A!:

• ML (Michael Lai) found out about F4F about 3 years ago, back when the website was still black before switching over to the current white color scheme; joined the OCC May 5th, 2017 after being approved by Matthew “Law” Sharpe found out about First 4 Figures from Toys People
• ML was present when Chockles DEE-NIED the girl who made a move on him at the Toy Soul Awards way back when
• His favorite First4Figures statue is Mugen from Samurai Champloo: “#FINISHTHELINE”
• Excited to play Sekiro in 2019
• ML’s favorite Hunter X Hunter character is Killua; Hunter X Hunter is his dream license for First4Figures
• Prefers statues to be more simple with more focus on the figure and not an overly crowded base
• Jump Force isn’t his type of game
• Thinks F4F isn’t as big in Hong Kong since living space is much more limited there and many people don’t have the display space for large statues (which is one of the reasons that PVC Nation is a big focus of F4F moving forward)
• “Who is this handsome gentleman? It’s actually Cheggy!”
• Alex coerces Michael Lai to shave his beard by promising a poll for Samurai Champloo Jin
• Want F4F to #FINISHTHELINE? Be sure to vote in Alex’s poll to support Jin and F4F Champloo!

Chocks’ Snack Review:

• Sexy lady on the front of this week’s snack review (Okashi) packaging
• Individually-packed clear bags inside; not very environmentally friendly
• Very sweet with sticky residue inside; nice creamy residue inside; not too sweet
• “I’m feeling the romance! All that white, creamy translucent stuff! Where’s the salty version?” — Chocks
• Chocks would have it again, and would rate it an 8 out of 10 (really high for Chock!)
• Michael Lai would give it a 7

TT Polls (Temptation Thursdays):

• TT 134 Middle Earth Shadow of War: 234 Votes, 72 Yes, 162 No; Getting the license on this is a “wait and see” [sarcasm]
• TT 135 Dead Cells: 139 No votes, 52 Yes votes; this license is “right up there” [sarcasm again]
• Bubblegum Crisis TT Next Week
• This week’s hashtag for a chance to win Rewards Points next week is #F4FHMM
• Alex is happy to see that people are actually entering King of the Ring III

The Q&A!:

• Fullmetal Alchemist Greed and Wrath would be really cool, but let’s get through the Edward Elric and Roy Mustang in development first
• What would collectors think about Fullmetal Alchemist TFs? Alex wants to get into more anime PVCs and attend more conventions like Anime Expo and cover a lot of different bases
• No idea when the factory will finish the production run of Silver–that factory is kind of slow
• Alex’s voice is very calm and soothing, especially when he’s in one of his warm and fuzzy management meetings
• Jake Meyer question: “A few months ago, you had the discussion about making lines in 1/4 and 1/6. Ultimately, you mentioned the potential issue of support falling for either scale would lead to problems as the lines went on. Do you think this is a concern with the LSB and GSB as well? Or as busts do you feel they are in a different situation?” Alex thinks it’s not as much of a concern because LSBs and smaller-scale busts have a tremendous difference in pricing; in addition, a lot less effort goes into the design of a bust by principle of what it is, so there’s less investment in busts and there will be a lower bar for F4F to continue to support both bust lines if they aren’t selling as expected; to summarize: size/cost difference between the two is great and expectations are lower for busts
• Pancakes or Waffles? “American pancakes or British pancakes, that is the question.” Alex and Chock both find American pancakes too thick and prefer thin British-styled pancakes
• Cheat Code Spyro variants will probably be offered one by one (if licensor approved), which is why there’s unlikely to be a multipack of them
• Alex would go for a dynamic pose rather than a static pose for Toothless if F4F ever acquired the How To Train Your Dragon license
• Alex is going to talk to John (his partner) about gift cards next week
• Maybe Kill La Kill is something First 4 Figures can talk to Aniplex about more later on; no major rise in character poll numbers
• Michael Lai doesn’t play shooter games; prefers RPGs and strategy-based games; doesn’t play Smash Bros because he doesn’t have a Switch; prefers PS4 to XBox
• Would love to do Silent Hill Pyramid Head someday
• If everything goes well, we’ll get our first look at My Hero Academia statues at Emerald City Comic Con
• Dracula and Skull Knight are looking good for pre-orders in the first half of 2019
• Possible that Berserker Armor Guts will be up for order at the very end of the year; about to be submitted to the licensor and looks “insane“
• Alex prefers uniform bases versus interlocking bases since resin can shrink–very difficult to get that flush fit; much easier with PVC, so connecting bases for PVCs could be possible in the future
• LSB in the works: Artorias, Spyro and Amaterasu; Would like to do an Ornstein bust if Artorias sells well
• Snake and Codec Snake variant life-size busts possible
• Nothing confirmed for My Hero Academia life-size busts, but Alex may or may not have done a bit of prospective work on that already
• Michael Lai isn’t into shonen anime; only watched 1 episode of My Hero Academia; Naruto is “alright”
• Amaterasu resin “should be finished soon”
• New website front-end is almost done
• Alex and Chocks’ favorite anime and video game characters are all the ones that they have licenses for
• No update on Onion Bro plush; Alex paused his New Year’s Resolution to look into plushies for 12 days, but needs to start looking into that next week
• Alex would love to see what people have to say about Metal Gear Dead Cell
• Realistically, TTs need to have 800+ ‘Yes’ votes these days for F4F to start looking at acquiring a certain license; more about comparing how potential licenses fare against each other these days than just a straight-up minimum number of votes for consideration
• The reality is that F4F has to at least hit the target of one pre-order every two weeks, rather than the 18.5 pre-orders (Snake’s second pre-order only counts as half) that occurred in 2018; 1 every 1.5 weeks (or 3 a month) is what First 4 Figures is really aiming for in the future–not doing enough for all of the licenses held right now; licensors are really patient, but Alex wants to do more; all of the money F4F is making is being invested into more people and expansion: “the more we put in, the more we can get back”; “but whatever happens, we’re keeping it real”
• Alex’s partner John rolls his eyes at Alex wanting to go after more licenses, since F4F isn’t fully utilizing the many licenses already held
• Jet Black PO should be sooner rather than later [with the earliest possibility being February 1st, since Meta Ridley launch is 1/18/2019]
• Alex hasn’t checked on Amaterasu life-size bust lately; “that’s the slow factory, but I think there’s some good progress on that maybe”
• Crystal Dragon order “possibly/probably” placed with the factory
• Meta Ridley will be the next pre-order
• Chocks has been following ACDQ this week
• Haven’t heard back from From Software about Ornstein resin color revision just yet
• Ornstein SD pre-order: “Later”; Alex poses the question of whether F4F should continue waiting until a PVC prototype is available to open pre-orders for PVCs, or start basing the pre-orders off of the resin prototypes of the PVCs without waiting for the PVC tooling molds to be made
• Almost 5 months after Gamescom, none of the new PVCs shown there besides Spyro have gone up for order yet because of waiting for the resin prototypes to be made into PVCs
• Solid Snake SD pre-orders will open “soon”; molds for Ornstein SD aren’t made yet, so it’s going to be a while unless POs are opened based off of the resin prototype of the PVC
• Statue collecting is “a waiting man’s game”; Alex doesn’t think an extra six months would make any difference to collectors as to whether or not they pre-order a PVC
• The vast majority of PVCs will be sold via mass-market wholesale; only heavy-hitters will be made
• After a resin prototype is made for a PVC statue, “We go to the factory and say ‘Here is a shit load of money, now make us steel molds’, and then 50 days later the steel molds are ready, followed by 20 days of fixing the molds” and then pre-orders; should F4F open PVC pre-orders at the resin prototype stage rather than waiting for the steel molds to be made so that the final PVC prototypes can be shown first?
• There could be slightly differences between the resin stage prototype and the PVC prototype made from the steel tooling, which is why First 4 Figures hasn’t opened PVC pre-orders traditionally while at the resin prototype stage; if POs were opened during the resin stage, collectors could cancel penalty-free if there were changes to the PVC prototype that they didn’t like; selling at the resin stage would also allow the possibility of revisions based on feedback–this isn’t possible once the steel tools are made
• Legend of Dragoon TT has 430 ‘Yes’ votes
• Absolutely will look into Sif SD
• Alex looked at the Yakuza Kiryu Kazuma statue today and said “Let’s change it–let’s make it a little bit better than it currently is”
• Started making mini Crystal Dragons
• Have thought about attending NYCC for sure
• Kingdom Hearts isn’t particularly high as a priority; character poll didn’t seem to do very well; perhaps too many characters?
• Haven’t checked to see how Shovel Knight sales are
• Will see our first look at Yu-Gi-Oh products sometime after Emerald City Comic Con
• Haven’t really considered repainting Katamari Damacy Prince into any of the other cousins; Alex doesn’t see anybody but Dabid asking for it
• May be sending something to display at the Dark Horse booth at New York Toy Fair 2019 next month
• No Zelda news to share
• Banjo revisions are almost done
• Alex doesn’t know yet how much cheaper the Spyro PVC recolors will be (if approved at all)
• Not saying if Blue Eyes White Dragon or Dark Magician will be the first in the Yu-Gi-Oh product line; Will see a sneak of them “later on”
• Should be wrapping up Dracula development soon
• First Nintendo SD PVC would be Link if F4F got Nintendo on-board with SDs
• Morrigan does not come with bats
• Would be easy to include little items as pack-ins with Castlevania SD PVCs (ie hearts, money bags, etc.)
• Soul Calibur Ivy won’t be up for order in the spring
• No new anime/game licenses on Alex’s radar that he’s seen based on recent polls
• Life-Size Fierce Deity Mask? “Maybe. Maybe not.”
• If your dog poops in the woods and no one hears or sees it, Alex says you’re not obligated to pick it up
• Alex’s favorite Kingdom Hearts is Kingdom Hearts II
• Would love to do a Baby Metroid in 1:4 scale (same scale as Varia Suit Samus); “it’s been considered… and there’s a very strong chance that that may or may not happen”
• Fingers crossed Lauren Morrow’s knee surgery goes smoothly!
• Shout-Outs from Michael Lai today!
• Looking into whether First4Figures needs to hold a license to sell a Partnerships item on the F4F website if F4F doesn’t hold the license that item is for
• Modern Amy Rose has been “paused”
• If the Boom8 Classic Amy Rose sells really well, can look into a resin of her–can’t beat “hard data”
• Sonic TF PVC could be up for pre-order before Chinese New Year if pre-sold at the resin prototype stage, but absolutely not if it’s to be pre-sold at the PVC prototype stage
• Haven’t heard anything back lately about Sonic & Tails diorama; definitely won’t be ready before Chinese New Year
• Life Size Aku Aku Masks are in production; Minis “Sooner rather than later”
• Can’t tell us how many My Hero Academia characters are in the works; first My Hero Academia resin pre-order won’t be in the first half of 2019 [but a PVC will be, obviously]
• We could see another resin version of Snake
• Not sure when the next Zelda pre-order will be yet
• Artorias LSB pre-order will be before Grayfox pre-order
• Actively working on making MHA products available outside of North America
• No idea how many pre-orders will be posted by the end of May
• Most Wait Lists convert after items start shipping
• Artorias Bust is already done and ready for approval–no doubt in Alex’s mind he’ll be up for PO before Nito
• PVC Amaterasu is in the molding stage now–no changes will be made
• Bayonetta guns will be done first, and then her herself later on
• Bowser is still bigger than Alex’s kiddo
• Spyro Reignited resin will be completed after Chinese New Year; Crash Team Racing stuff being worked on looks tight
• Nothing extra for those buying Alphonse combo packs
• Mini PVCs could be looked at some day after current ranges are fleshed out
• No updates regarding Kickstarter-styled pre-orders
• Zero Suit Samus PVC would be nice
• [Alex refuses to blink, as there’s a question asking him to blink if there’s Persona 5 news]
• “‘1:4 TP Link when?’ Indeed.”
• “Aw shit, I blinked.”
• Nothing to say about Persona 5
• Alex apologizes to Mrs. Matthew Sharpe for destroying Matt’s wallet and all of his remaining space to display things
• Last Chance Banjo-Kazooie pre-orders probably in a couple weeks, during Chinese New Year
• Alex is looking closely at Monster Hunter for the time when F4F meets with Capcom in Las Vegas this year (in June 2019)
• Updated Shiranui shown off with updates markings on face and animated lights! Markings are painted in a much darker red now.

And that… is a wrap! Come back next week, when the long-awaited Metroid Prime Meta-Ridley statue will finally go up for order on the website after being revealed and detailed during First 4 Figures Q&A #103! Is this a piece that you’ve been waiting patiently (or impatiently) for, #F4Fam?