F4F Q&A #122 Recap: Bowser Drop Test! Amaterasu PVC PO!

Ever since the inception of the First 4 Figures Q&A several years ago, F4F fans have never had to go three full weeks without a livestream of some sort… until now! But the dark ages are officially over, and CEO Alex Davis is back from the United States and ready to dig in to a new thrilling Q&A, which will include the Validation for the Dark Souls Artorias busts, tons of collector questions, and the long-awaited pre-order launch of the Okami Amaterasu PVC statue! Can’t watch where you are? The F4F Q&A #122 Recap in text form is now LIVE!

Announcements and The Week in Review:

Pre-orders for the Okami Amaterasu PVC figure will open at the end of the Q&A!
This is an all-new line of Okami PVCs, so low numbers will be up for grabs!
Last Chance Week for ordering Warp Star Kirby coming very soon–hopefully next Friday, 6/28/2019
EX POs still open: Jet Black, Mini Aku Akus, Meta-Ridley, Mimic, Alphonse, Psycho Mantis, Shovel Knight Player 2, Mario on Yoshi and Phoenix Wright
Brenda in CS will be leaving F4F at the end of the month; so Phil will be stepping up into Brenda’s role during the transition period during which a new CS employee is trained–so CS may be slower than usual responding lately; this also led to the snafu where some members were double-charged for their monthly payments–this has been fixed and corrected now; want to apologize for that and are reaching out to affected customers via E-Mail to make up for the mistake by offering refunds or coupon codes
What has Chocks been up to while Alex has been away? “Party, party, party!”
…But really, Chockles has been busy working with the team on an amazing Amataerasu Life-Size Bust unboxing video!
New Signature Edition holographic stickers are coming now that Signature Edition has replaced Day One edition; sneak peek of the stickers in the club!
Do check out and enter the Photo Contest in the F4F OCC Facebook Group for a chance to win a huge amount of free F4F Rewards Points!
F4F has 90+ projects in development, of which 50% have not been announced yet! Yowza!
Voting for the Signature Edition cards will not continue unless the newest polls garner 400+ votes! Get voting, F4F fans!
Dark Souls Artorias Busts Validation Day has begun! If you ordered him already, make sure to log into your account and hit the “Validate” button!
Life Size Busts and Grand Scale Busts are separate series, so we can’t tell based on Validation times yet how low numbers might be
Factory production video of Bowser shown! Rows of completed Bowser statues look amazing!
The hotly-anticipated Bowser Dreaded Drop Test video is coming up later in the stream!
Two new PVCs debuted at the Licensing Expo: Zelda Breath of the Wild Princess Zelda and an EX version of BOTW Link
In order to facilitate the electronics in Princess Zelda, she needed to have a much thicker base than the original BOTW Link PVC has; it made sense to produce a new Link to match the EX Zelda, as well as a standard edition of BOTW Zelda to match for people who already have the Link and don’t want to have to re-buy him as an Exclusive just to have a matched pair
Have seen the comments on the Zelda PVC, but no changes can be made to her at this point beyond some of the paint applications on the head
“It’s good to finally show something for the Year of Zelda!”
The other new PVC that debuted at the Licensing Expo was Luigi’s Mansion! Would still love to do standard/evergreen Luigi if fans are up for that. It was really difficult to get the Luigi’s Mansion PVC done in time for the show, but it looks really, really good.
Resin is still the roots and bread-and-butter of F4F, but PVC Nation is incredibly important for bringing in new collectors and spreading the First 4 Figures name

Alex’s Adventures at the Las Vegas Licensing Expo:

Shout-out to Bang H Le in Las Vegas for helping courier Mario on Yoshi to the Las Vegas Licensing Expo for Alex!
OCC Admins The Rastello Brothers came to Las Vegas during the expo as well! Ryan Rastello and Bang and Alex got to be Nintendo of America Exhibitors for a day since they had to set up statues at the Nintendo booth.
Alex has never been so back-to-back with meetings in Las Vegas as he was at this year’s Expo; as a result, he didn’t have time to do his daily updates on Facebook
Licensing Expo was a really successful show this year–bar one meeting “but it’s always nice to be kept humble”
Alex would say that First 4 Figures is “pretty famous” this year compared to last year!
“We’re still the smallest of the small potatoes.” — Alex Davis
“Tiny spuds! Great for spud guns!” — Chocks

Temptation Thursdays (TT Polls):

TTs had a big influence on what companies Alex met with in Vegas
Psychonauts TT: 52 Yes, 208 No
Slayers TT: 91 Yes, 186 No
Mortal Kombat XI TT: 100 Yes, 264 No
Ape Escape TT: 49 Yes, 165 No
Zoids TT Next Week!
This week’s hashtag to type in the Q&A stream comments for a chance to win F4F Rewards Points this week is #F4FAMMY

Bowser DDT Dreaded Drop Test!:

The culmination of Alex’s entire life: the hotly-anticipated Bowser Statue DDT (Dreaded Drop Test)!
Bowser survives!!

The Q&A!:

[The live-stream is now live! This section will be filled in as it happens, if there’s time for a Q&A portion of this week’s Q&A.]

Okami Amaterasu Exclusive PVC Pre-Order Details!

The Amataersu PVC statue will go up for order around 1:30PM EST on the F4F website. The cost and other details will be added to this recap as they’re discussed during the Q&A shortly!
James Bennington: “When did you know for sure that you wanted to do an Amaterasu PVC?”
Started going into PVCs in 2016, and felt as a company that they were interested into diving deeper into this type of product; wanted to see if they could make some characters previously done in resin as PVCs
3 years later, F4F is finally here with their first ever Capcom PVC! First 4 Figures really wants PVCs on the shelves at conventions or local gaming stores to bring in new fans, but this means that distributors need to be relied on to get the PVCs into chain stores to make the pieces viable since PVCs require 10,000+ sales just to pay for the expensive tooling
Didn’t get the initial response hoped for initially from wholesale distributors, but decided to make this project viable by designing this PVC so that it can be purchased as an upscaled resin statue in the future as well; making it transparent and clear now that this piece will be available in multiple forms so that collectors can make an informed decision; this project can only be done at all as a PVC because of being done as a resin to subsidize the cost of the PVC tooling and development
Undecided exactly when the resin version of this Amaterasu will go up for sale; probably 3-5 months away
This pattern of releasing PVCs and resins in the same pose in different sizes will allow for many more PVCs to be made in the future of characters that won’t necessarily sell spectacularly at chain stores
Posed Amaterasu diagonally so that more of the body, head and cloud can be seen than if she was just standing straight in front of the cloud base unturned
This is the most dynamic Okami statue that F4F has done with a sense of motion through the turning of the head and the positioning of the feet and movement of the tail–the previous Amaterasu and Shiranui statues were quite static
It’s been quite a challenge to bring this piece to PVC form after showing the resin prototype at GamesCom last August
The most challenging aspect of creating this piece was determining how it could be designed technically to make sure that it will stay in the same shape for years to come and also come out of the mold shaped as intended; has to make sure there’s no latent defect where the PVC could start leaning years in the future
Have to carefully determine where the mold lines on the pieces of a PVC will be so that the piece doesn’t end up looking terrible once it’s assembled
Structural integrity is key for this piece, as are clean lines
Different parts of Ammy PVC are made of PVC or ABS plastic, depending on the necessary hardness and level of detail necessary for specific pieces
Bridget Laing: “Any chance of an Amaterasu or Shiranui Grand Scale Bust?”
Would love to look into an Amaterasu GSB if collectors show interest
Ryan Heath: “Should I finally finish this game?”
“Right now!” –Alex Davis
The Amaterasu PVC Figure window art box debuts (subject to final licensor approval)! Beautiful sunrise and light coming in through the top of the box. Plus a leaflet will be included with rewards points!
The EXCLUSIVE Version has always-on and animated light-up modes where the flaming Solar Reflector on Amaterasu’s back lights up
The EX version will have a USB port with battery indicator and a rechargeable/removable battery
The Exclusive version will also have an exclusive outer art box that covers the standard window box!
There’s also a VARIANT: Sword of Kusanagi Amaterasu with the detailed Sword of Kusanagi in place of the Solar Reflector!
A combo pack of the two versions will be available on the F4F website at a slight discount
Kusanagi Version Amaterasu will come with its own exclusive packaging with green instead of orange on the packaging
Karmic transformation versions of Ammy in a darker grey will be available sometime in the distance future as well as variants–full disclosure
Definitive Version of the resin Amaterasu will have the Sword of Kusanagi be interchangeable with the Solar Reflector–not possible for the PVC
PVC is 9″ by 8″ by 9″; not a big space commitment at all
Pre-orders will be open until July 26th unless the edition size doesn’t reach 3000 of each version
Estimated release date is Q4 2019; 6-month payment plans available
20% Non-Refundable Deposit is due when placing your order: $23
There will be three Amaterasu PVC EXs given away on the main Facebook page
Validation will be next week
EXclusive and Blade of Kusanagi Versions are each $114.99
Combo Pack will be priced at $199.99! A savings of $30!
Shipping Cost per Ammy PVC: $25 to US; $26 to EU; $26 to Canada; $45 to AUS; $65 to other regions