After being unexpectedly sidelined with a measly 102 degree fever for a couple days, I’m back with 3,000 words of goodness for the F4F Q&A #111 Recap! In this week’s episode (well, last week’s episode now), CEO Alex Davis and King Chockles give the answers to these spine-snapping questions and more:

DID Emerald City Comic Con 2019 crush the hopes and dreams for future U.S. F4F convention appearances?

WHO recently had a prototype put into the Vault (and why)?

IS it possible that the Alphonse Definitive Edition’s shipping cost can be reduced?

WHAT will the Exclusive be for the new Sonic figure that debuted at ECCC?

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

WHERE will F4F next be setting up shop for a major convention?

HOW did Chocks fare against Alex in Mario Tennis Aces at Nintendo HQ?

WHY are the All Might PVC figures launching before any resin MHA statues?

Emerald City Comic Con 2019 Reactions!:

• Chocks and Peggy both got sniffed by the dogs en route to Seattle and then went straight to the convention center from the hotel Tuesday afternoon; Dabid and his wife Jennifer were there to help with setup and bringing in stock [I don’t fully remember this happening because I was up at 3AM that morning, but I sort of have hazy memories of it]
• Setting up the plinths and counter tables for ECCC 2019 was a nightmare on Wednesday
• They locked the doors at 8PM at the convention center, but could stay inside and work until about 10PM
• Chock was being a bit aggressive and shouty during setup and apologizes [He lies–he was all joy and smiles and Red Bull!]
• Built custom plinths for ECCC 2019 and then threw them away after the show, but learned what doesn’t work–will make much more practical ones for their next show (which is likely to be ACG); will improve on custom cases in the future, but Alex thinks F4F did an amazing job with the display cases with the time they had; “if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger and you learn some lessons, and we’ve learned a lot”; didn’t rent out furniture from the actual convention center for the first time for this con
• Plinths were flat-packed
• Chocks wanted to take more close-up pics of the statues at ECCC; “No need! We have Dabs handling all that!” — Alex; but Chocks wanted more photos without the glass
• Alex thought the booth looked very classy and similar to what they imagined it would look like
• Three reveals at the show: Artorias Grand Scale Bust, All Might Action Figures and Sonic PVC Figure
• A lot of people who are dismissive of busts in general were surprised with how well the Artorias Grand Scale Bust turned out; Alex would love to see Nintendo or My Hero Academia busts in the future
• Alex is pleased with how the Artorias GSB turned out: “They’re not too massive; they’re not too small; they’ve got presence”
• Alex would be interested in seeing Super Shadow, Modern Tails & Knuckles, maybe something with Metal Sonic in the future
• Massive failure from F4F’s point of view; lack of sales and lack of attendance; lots of foot traffic but the show felt very very dead; would have rather gone to PAX East but couldn’t get in; ECCC wasn’t right for F4F, but have a prospective list of shows they’d like to attend in the future
• Felt great to go to Nintendo HQ; felt very profesh; invaluable to spend several hours talking to Nintendo and have a meeting in-person; an absolute honor; getting to go to Nintendo HQ can be crossed off Alex’s bucket list now; “if you like Nintendo products, you should be excited”; made the trip worth it, but would rather not take a huge loss again (as with ECCC)
• F4F will also be doing GamesCom in Germany and ACG this year
• Starting in 2020, would like to do PAX East, ACG Hong Kong, Anime Expo, GamesCom, PAX West, EGX, MCM London and/or NYCC as flagship cons; would like to get a booth at SDCC if ever possible; would also like to do an AUS convention if F4F can ever get a warehouse there; could possibly have someone else going around to smaller cons in the US for marketing purposes

Announcements and The Week in Review:

• Alex and Chock discuss a woman in China who injected herself with fruit juice this week and almost died; Alex says that Chock would have probably injected Red Bull instead
• Jake Meyer says Dr. Pepper is the best soda; Chocks says it’s “good”
• “Root Beer is not Dr. Pepper, but it tastes similar”
• Shout out to Lorenzo, who’s working behind the scenes all alone for Validation this week
• Bowser Jr. statue? “Now that would be cool. That would be cool.” — Alex
• Mario on Yoshi pre-orders will be open until April 19th (or possibly longer if 1000 units aren’t sold for some reason)
• New Torch Torch Dark Souls items are now up for pre-order on the website, including the Sif Wolf Ring and also several Dark Souls T-Shirts
• Torch Torch Pendants were shipped out from various warehouses last week and will hopefully arrive within 1-2 weeks; Hornet Rings should be arriving in mid-to-late April 2019
• Snake SD Pre-Orders are open until March 29th or longer depending on sales
• No new F4F Shirts this week since the team has been getting ready for validation and upcoming launches, but Sandy is working on a new design for next week already
• Meta-Ridley, Dark Souls Mimic, Alphonse, Warp Star Kirby, Berserk Guts, Psycho Mantis, Shovel Knight Player 2, Conker on Throne and Spyro PVC EXs are all still up for order; will give a one week countdown whenever orders actually close for any of these statues
• 60,000 members in the OCC now after only 3 years (and a bit more)!
• Shiranui bases have already started production, ramping up production and continuing on accordingly
• Quite a lot of people have said they’d like to buy a version of statues in ivory (such as the Sonic TF PVC was shown in at ECCC); Alex thinks that would be classy if the licensor approved
• A lot of people thing “AF” means “As Fuck” when Alex says it with regards to All Might, but he’s actually meaning “Action Figure”
• More people took the Golden Age All Might “trading card” at ECCC than any other All Might card
• You can move the EX All Might’s arms up and down like legendary WWF tag team The Bushwhackers!
• F4F now has the approval to go forward with making the molds for the All Might figures; Alex thinks that Silver Age will be released first so that people can recreate the legendary meme scene ASAP
• Some people weren’t sure about the shading on the All Might figures until they saw the video or saw them in-person, and then they wanted them all
• Chocks and Alex bring out a box of All Might prototypes to show off on the livestream!
• “I am here… in a box!” — Jake Meyer
• World premiere of the regular edition “straight” arms for All Might! They don’t quite line up perfectly yet on the Golden Age All Might prototype but will on the actual figure (obviously)
• Alex would love to do every version of All Might including teaching version, yellow suit version, etc. if the AFs do well; would like to start working on the 4th/5th/6th AFs now
• Silver Age All Might’s cape will be malleable so you can get your hand behind it
• Resin/dynamic All Might are coming soon, but action figures are coming first to raise awareness of F4F
• Sonic PVC will be slightly smaller than the prototype, but will still be pretty big; will hopefully be ready for PO for Sonic’s birthday; EX will have LEDs and stars around checkpoint that the regular won’t
• The new studio is almost done now; painting and carpeting are done and statues have been moved from HQ to the new studio by hand; display cabinets are now moved in as well; about 70% done (still needs furnishing and some other things done); amazing to see this expansion that First4Figures is in the middle of; Alex wants to be streaming in the new studio in about a month
• Sonic Mania Artist Tyson Hesse visited the First 4 Figures booth at ECCC and gave Chocks a Sonic Mania art print to give away in the club!
• Spider-Man (PS4) TT: 249 ‘Yes’, 189 ‘No’ — Yes in the lead right now
• Journey TT Next Week!
• Overlord Anime TT in 2 Weeks!
• This week’s hashtag for a chance to win Rewards Points next week is #F4FBOOHOO; “Thanks for absolutely nothing, ECCC!”

Mario & Yoshi Validation!:

• Those who authenticate their Bowser when it arrives and also order Mario on Yoshi will get a matching number for their Mario on Yoshi; all other numbers in the sequence were up for grabs during Validation
• EX and DE are from a shared pool of numbers–if someone gets EX #95 (or whatever), there won’t be a DE #95
• Orders will show “Signature Edition” about 24 hours after Validating–the system only updates once per 24 hours
• Numbers from Those Validated (Not taking into consideration Bowser purchasers who don’t need to Validate)
  
• Sub-400: Within 3 Minutes 44.64 Seconds after Validation began
• Sub-350: Within 1 Minute 18.444 Seconds after Validation began
• Sub-300: Within 54.975 Seconds after Validation began
• Sub-250: Within 48.879 Seconds after Validation began
• Sub-200: Within 46.720 Seconds after Validation began
• Sub-150: Within 44.650 Seconds after Validation began
• Sub-100: Within 42.883 Seconds after Validation began
• Sub-50: Within 40.168 Seconds after Validation began

The Q&A!:

• GamesCom Ornstein SD payments shouldn’t be being taken already; will be fixed
• No news on Yakuza; Alex knows what needs to be done with Yakuza but it hasn’t been done yet
• No progress on Jin; haven’t even thought about it
• Spike ships soon-ish
• Can let GNF know what fans want to see in the Boom8 series, but what characters are made is up to GNF
• Mini Crystal Dragons coming up
• Plenty of plans for Dark Souls; currently not looking into Bloodborne
• 5 new sales of Warp Star Kirby since ECCC, but only 1 to someone in Washington state
• Would definitely like to do more My Hero Academia figures as PVCs, but probably wouldn’t be AFs (action figures) since All Might is based on the action figure in the show and other characters wouldn’t be; would love to make true fully-articulated action figures (TAFs) someday
• First resin My Hero Academia statue will be Deku or Bakugo; All Might is still at the 3-D stage
• Ornstein SD pre-orders probably won’t open for a while–still haven’t started making the tooling yet
• Alex went to Washington around 2010 to see Valve HQ and had a lunch with a contact at Nintendo in downtown Seattle, so he didn’t visit Nintendo HQ until this month
• No Metal Gear news beyond the Solid Snake busts and Grayfox statue being worked on
• Working on some Yu-Gi-Oh stuff; showed Dark Magician sneak recently
• Would love to see TFs of the Mario series like Bowser
• Nothing to say about Phoenix Wright right now
• Last con of the year could be PAX West, EGX or NYCC this year; EGX would be more of a safe route since it’s a known gaming show
• Want to have space at cons like GamesCom to have contests/activities such as “Guess how many Smarties are in this fucking jar” to gather customer information
• Apparently you can play Streets of Rage 4 at PAX East; “Why aren’t we there?”
• Alex’s body was ready to meet Reggie at Nintendo Headquarters, but unfortunately he didn’t have the opportunity to do so
• Learned it’s absolutely important to meet [Nintendo] face to face, it’s much better than meeting at Las Vegas if and when you can
• Haven’t had a chance to go to the factories since leaving for Seattle two weeks ago
• Alex already made Sly Cooper and Jak & Daxter when he worked at Gaming Heads, so doing those characters again would just be a retread for him; thinks collaboration with Gaming Heads would be very unlikely: “How does a collab work?”
• No bundles for the All Might PVC EXs, but there could be some retailer exclusive bundle packaging deals or combos on the regular editions down the road
• No Zelda news
• No True Form Midna news beyond that the factory is making the counter sample
• No news on Persona
• No news on Dead Space
• No news on Kingdom Hearts
• Alex has plans for what’s next after Nito in the Dark Souls line, and it’s being worked on simultaneously already
• Is it possible Nito will never be produced? “I hope not!”
• F4F didn’t bring anything to be signed off on to Nintendo HQ, and nothing was signed off on there
• ECCC will absolutely not crush the hopes and dreams for future US conventions, but should be anime and gaming cons from now on and not pure comic-cons; E3 isn’t big enough for the public attendance
• Life-Size Aku Aku Masks should be wrapping up soon–Alex needs to visit the factory to see them
• Boom8 Classic Amy and Super Sonic pre-orders coming sooner than later
• Amaterasu PVC & 1:4 version coming up this year
• Would you want to see a Shiranui PVC?
• Faye & Ivy are coming along
• Morrigan should be ready sometime this year
• Will probably never go back to doing interlocking bases
• Chocks will be getting a genuine Saara Arwington Streets of Rage drawing in June! Alex requests a Meta-Ridley drawing from Saara!
• Neo-Cortex has been 3-D printed and is in the process of painting now
• The new resin Sonic based on the PVC design will not be ready to launch alongside the PVC–will be later
• Nothing new to report on Crash Team Racing, and Scuba Crash isn’t even a concept right now
• No updates on Rider Link; undergoing final touches
• If everyone in the US has received their Crash Bandicoot resins, Mini Aku Aku Masks can launch soon
• First All Might pre-orders likely in 3-4 months
• Super Mario World? “RTF.”
• Rayman figure would deal with floating limbs in the manner that the old Worms statue does
• Alex has been called to the factory to check out the Amaterasu busts and see if they can wrap up, but hasn’t had the chance yet because of ECCC
• “I promised PVC Link wouldn’t be alone come the end of 2019…? Whoopsies!!”
• Alphonse shipping cost could be reduced if the DE can fit into one box, but don’t get too excited until it can be confirmed
• No Pride mouth for Alphonse, but will verify the color for his loincloth
• Bayonetta pre-order? “Way, way later!”
• No news on the start date for F4F KOTR IV
• Should Alex RTF for a Fox McCloud statue?
• Nothing to say about Persona 5
• Jet Black PO coming up really, really soon
• Lots of production videos of Bowser upcoming once production moves further
• Alex hasn’t heard anything about problems with the chest paint on Varia Suit Bowser
• No news on Phoenix Wright orders
• Sticking with Modern Amy as next in the Modern Sonic line, but not sure what’s happening with that
• No chance for Ripto’s Rage Spyro PVC pre-order in Q2 2019, but Reignited Resin maybe
• Rewriting payment system to allow more flexibility in making payments
• All Might AFs chosen as first MHA products from F4F to allow people to get into the OCC and get into the culture and understand what F4F does with resins to increase the audience for resin MHA resin statues when they’re ready to launch: “Strategy 101”
• Decided to make All Might as “Action Figure” as it’s a sort of prop replica of the one in Deku’s room
• Would need to talk to the licensor about doing a Bronze Age All Might
• “After ECCC, you should be giving me back some fucking points. I need some money back, yo!”
• Maybe Chaos Emeralds for the resin version of upcoming Sonic as companion pieces?
• Sonic & Tails diorama may be ready soon-ish
• PVC Sonic pre-order hopefully around June, resin likely later in the year
• Still looking into Super Shadow; poll is doing very well; Super Shadow looks more likely than Blaze
• The previously shown Dante sculpt is being completely reworked; old version of Dante is going in the Vault
• Silver Age All Might makes sense to release first
• Not sure why some Varia Suit Samuses have arrived with
• Alex’s favorite Mario game is Mario Tennis Aces because he smashed Chocks in it at Nintendo HQ
• “What happens in the Nintendo office, stays in the Nintendo office… because of NDA.” –Alex Davis
• Wouldn’t consider Robotech/Macross after the dismal TT poll results
• RTF if you want Anthem Javelins
• Can’t elaborate on Darksiders negotiations
• Let’s see how orders go for busts for other series before thinking about Zelda busts
• Alex would love to meet Reggie but never has
• Neo-Cortex is next for the Crash Bandicoot resin line after the Mini Aku Aku Masks
• Horizon Zero Dawn? RTF.
• Figured out what they want to do with Dark Magician’s face
• Alex has been working out and is ready to defeat 3PM in arm-wrestling
• Absolutely surprised by how popular the Casual All Might was after being revealed
• Spike is at the packaging stage
• Jet PO will be sooner than later
• Fullmetal Alchemist props? RTF.
• Used to use foam back in the day for pieces like Fierce Deity Link, but switched to styrofoam because it’s nicer, has less breakage risks and you can print things on it
• Everyone is different: some people put a big emphasis on having low numbers, some don’t care–it’s all personal preference
• The amount of freedom and guidance First4Figures with projects and promotions varies hugely by licensor
• Amaterasu PVC and Ornstein SD won’t be the next pre-orders because the PVC tooling isn’t done yet
• Alex doesn’t know if a resin My Hero Academia statue will be up for pre-order by the time Season 4 premieres in October

…And that’s a wrap for the 111th First 4 Figures Q&A! Did you get one of the lowest available numbers for your Mario on Yoshi during Validation? Did you learn anything new and exciting from the Q&A segment? Do you have high hopes for the upcoming TTs?