F4F Q&A #60 Recap: Castlevania SOTN Alucard Exclusive Reveal!

It may seem like forever since the last First4Figures statue launch, but in actuality, it’s only been two weeks! But that’s nothing compared to the long, long, long development time that the subject of today’s full reveal has endured: the long-awaited exclusive F4F Alucard statue is finally up for order! And that’s not all–it’s the F4F Q&A #60, and that means dozens and dozens of collector question will be answered live by F4F CEO Alex Davis and Lieutenant Chockles!

The Week in Review:

F4F is 99% confirmed to be going to GamesCom 2018–buy your tickets now if you want to come
The Impossible Hint that Alex posted this week was so difficult that even Chock didn’t know what it was
Alex will cry if Alucard doesn’t sell better than the Castlevania Simon Belmont statue sold–Simon only sold around 150 pieces
In response to collector feedback, the F4F Alucard statue will be the first statue in a new Castlevania Symphony of the Night line, rather than a continuation of the Castelvania line that began with Dracula and Simon Belmont

On Temptation Thursday (TT) Polls:

Tomba TT: 58 ‘Yes’ votes and 272 ‘No’ Votes; respect your fellow members; F4F doesn’t want to do heavy-hitters every week; any information is good information
Nier TT: Next Week!
Killer Instinct TT: In Two Weeks!
There could be a Bloody Roar TT someday
#F4F2B is the hashtag for a chance to win next week’s Reward Points

On Alucard:

The EXCLUSIVE Alucard F4F statue is now available for order!
The Alucard trailer won’t be ready during the stream–Alex and Chock will debut the exclusive on the stream: Old Skool Style!
This is the first statue in the new Symphony of the Night series: Dracula is already at the physical form and Death is in 3-D
Alucard’s sword will be die-cast–the sword will look much better than the prototype at NYCC
The hair on Alucard has been revised to be coming out of the roots like it should be instead of having helmet hair
Getting the hairline right was of crucial important
A lot of work and revisions have gone into shaping Alucard’s face correctly
Alucard’s eyes have been oriented to look into your soul
Alucard is 21″ high (53 cm); weighs around 6.4 kg (14.1 lbs.)
The engineering was the hardest thing of everything in the development of Alucard
There’s no PVC on the First4Figures Alucard statue–he’s all resin and metal

Alucard Exclusive Details:

EXCLUSIVE Alucard statue will come with Crissaegrim sword in addition to Alucard’s sword
Both swords will be die-cast
Exclusive version will also come with a gorgeous, gorgeous art print
There will be a 10% NRD taken with the pre-order
12-month payment plans will be available as usual
This statue will be expensive because of the crazy engineering work involved–Alucard is an “engineering nightmare” which will have a huge production scrap-rate
Regular version will cost $499.99 US dollars
Exclusive version will also cost $499.99 US dollars, and include the art print and extra sword
Shipping Cost: $45 to the US/EU; $65 to Canada
Expected release date is Q1 2019–the first statue First 4 Figures is targeting for a 2019 release
BOOM! The Exclusive version will also include the huge and incredibly detailed Alucard shield with bat, wolf and mist on it!
The left hand must always be holding the cloak, so Alucard can only hold his shield or one of his swords in his right hand at once
ONE MORE THING! There’s also a Twilight Version Alucard statue that comes with the red cloak seen at the start of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night!
Twilight Edition will come with everything that the regular Exclusive version does
The art print for the Twilight Alucard statue will be slightly different, since the cape on it will be red
Art print hasn’t been approved yet, but the concept art is shown (screenshot at the bottom of this article)
The Alucard Twilight Version statue will look really good with SOTN Dracula later on
Want him to hold both a sword and his shield? Buy both versions of the statue to display both! 😉
There is a combo pack available containing both the Exclusive Edition and the Twilight Edition with matching numbers: $924.99–a $75 discount off the cost of buying the two separately (double the shipping for the combo packs, since two statues will be shipped to you)
Pre-order will be open from today until March 16th; both versions will be available throughout the two weeks and then also throughout Last Chance Weekend–no more “three day only” versions since it’s difficult to advertise for statues with such a short timeframe

The Q&A!:

F4F has made contact with the My Hero Academia licensor and is looking more closely now–that’s all they can say
True Form Midna has been sent to Nintendo for approval–will always wait and not post Nintendo pre-orders until after approval is received from now on
Nothing to report regarding PVC Spyro
Rider Link is almost complete in 3-D
Spyro the Dragon will finish up and ship out right after Majora’s Mask; Alex wants to make sure the eyes are perfect
Alex’s son Spencer is having a hard time being weaned off breast milk–he really likes his “titty milk”
Ridley needs a pole to hold him up–F4F can’t do gravity-defying stuff with the statue
Ultimately decided to launch Castlevania SOTN as a new line to try to reignite the Castlevania brand; Alex was really disappointed with the sales for Simon Belmont and wants to see statues from the franchise do better
No updates on Aika–would probably do an “Ultimate” version instead of a combo pack, coming with more expressions and weapons
No more Banjo-Kazooie sneak peeks until Q2–locked down for now
Making Castlevania Symphony of the Night its own line will hopefully lead to a strong line as a whole
F4F is making changes to Crystal Dragon–making it greener, and making the wings greener still
Alex thought the Crystal Dragon looked too dull
The “750” edition size on the regular Simon Belmont statue was a “complete bullshit” number chosen before the statue went into production–there were actually only around 100 made; it was criminal how badly Simon did
Classic Crash Bandicoot resin probably won’t be a Q1 2018 pre-order, but are trying to push for it–not much time left in this month
Sonic and Tails diorama is still ongoing–looking very sweet
Still don’t know when Tekken Law Last Chance Weekend will be
Solaire SD PVC statue will hopefully go up for sale immediately after the game comes out and Artorias SD is in-hand
Solaire resin statue will probably be ready around May
Don’t know yet if the edition size will be completed on Sif–need to have a conversation once the factory reopens from Chinese New Year (next week)
Licensors have different expectations when licensing out franchises for PVCs and resin statues–licensors expected 20,000+ to be produced of a PVC statue, whereas resin edition sizes will be much smaller
F4F can survive one or two bad resin launches, but cannot survive two bad PVC launches–producing PVCs is astronomically expensive
Will never just do a full PVC line, because resin is First 4 Figures’ bread-and-butter
F4F looks at licenses now and asks themselves if the franchise would be good for resin, PVC SD and also PVC TF (True Form)
The Guts statue doesn’t have a white streak in his hair because this statue isn’t the Berserker form
The Skull Knight statue is still horseless–won’t be shown until at the physical stage
Animes that Chock would like to make statues of: Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Inu Yasha, Hajime no Ippo, Initial D
Chocks likes the GTO anime, but wouldn’t want a statue from it
Genos will be submitted to the licensor next week
Banjo-Kazooie should be revealed sometime in April if everything goes smoothly
Morrigan was almost finished the last time Alex looked at her
Nothing to mention for Soul Calibur II right now
Xenoblade TT will be around May, when Alex is going to the Las Vegas Licensing Expo
SOTN Dracula is already at the physical stage and ready to be painted; could be ready to go up for order in 4-6 months
Alex could push the button to bring SOTN Death to physical stage if Alucard does well; could be ready for pre-order in 8 months if there’s a strong demand
No movement on plushies just yet
First Q2 Pre-order will probably be Guts; probably won’t be able to squeeze him in this month
Once Nintendo approves True Form Midna, she’ll go up for order next–she gets to jump the queue because it’s been so long
Gabriel Belmont could be in line for 2019 (assuming Alucard does well)
Bayonetta’s guns are likely to go up for order before the actual Bayonetta statue
Mary is a fish
Shiranui is coming along nicely; submitted to Capcom two days ago
Okami Prop Replica numbers are looking way too low in the poll–Alex wants to see 600-700 votes
No classic anime licenses on the backburner right now–all licensed anime licenses have been revealed
Shovel Knight is its own line–won’t be combined with other independent games
King Dedede TT will be posted once Warp Star Kirby goes up for order; will have images because King Dedede statue was already made and put into the vault
Zero work has been done on Ed & Ein; Alex doesn’t plan to do any work on them until at least one of the others is up for pre-order
Next pre-order will likely be in three weeks instead of two weeks, in order to keep the launch schedule from falling on Good Friday
The Modern Amy Rose poll is almost at the goal Alex set for it just two months ago–please spread the word and share out this article on how your fellow Sonic fans can vote and get F4F to look seriously at Amy Rose!!
Chockles would rather be born Quirkless and get a better power than those born with one
Alex: “Is there a Quirk for making money?”
An “Ultimate Version” Jin statue for Samurai Champloo could be a possibility–has made Alex a bit more excited about the idea
F4F needs to be hitting 500-550+ pieces at a bare minimum for any product launch–that’s the number that would be acceptable for anime statues
When you see the documentary for Guts, you’ll see the pole that will hold the statue up and stable
There’s always a chance for Tokyo Ghoul TT–you never know when it will strike
Spyro delay won’t delay Mugen shipment–being made at different factories
Persona 5 Day and Night combo packs aren’t official–Persona 5 isn’t even an announced First 4 Figures license at this time
Had a breakthrough on card holders last week–will start working on it now that CNY is over
Licensors don’t have any say in the price First4Figures charges for a statue–can’t tell Alex “Your figure is too cheap!” and demand it cost more; F4F generally proposes to make statues within a specific price range
If F4F got the Persona 5 license, they would do the line in 1:6 scale so that all of the Phantom Thieves could be produced (and be viable space-wise)
When a statue box reaches a certain girth, it becomes significantly more expensive to ship one oversized box than two smaller boxes–which is why some statues (Ornstein, Bowser) will ship in two boxes
Will hit up Crunchyroll to see if they want to promote the upcoming Guts statue
Chock is looking forward to the Persona 5 anime; would buy Persona 5 statues himself
Transportation test has been done on Majora’s Mask to make sure it (hopefully) arrives safely
Alex shows off more of his uncanny knowledge of the F4F OCC club members, discussing at length the F4F-related interests of Chris Hildebrand Jr.
In the future, First4Figures wants to have more options for changing/adjusting Flexipay plans–will work toward this eventually
Flexipay payments are usually taken on Monday
Genos will have a complementary pose to Saitama
Alex knows what pieces will go in each box for Ornstein: statue is one box and spears/base in the other box
Haven’t been given permission to show any Alphonse sneak peeks yet
Fuu being made will be dependent on sales of Jin–particularly sales of Ultimate Jin
Alphonse will very likely ship in two boxes like Ornstein
F4F will rally the fans and poll to see what collectors want after Ed and Alphonse
Can’t confirm or deny if Alphonse’s eyes will glow red
Alphonse’s clothing will be made out of resin
The band that goes around the bottom of Alphonse’s base will match Edward Elric’s
No Last Chance Weekend for Mugen
Ivy or Cervantes will hopefully be next in the Soul Calibur II line [Mitsurugi?]
If F4F released the identical Fierce Deity Link now instead of when it was released, the price would be triple because costs have tripled since then–would cost around $300 now
Never considered giving Alucard a larger, more expensive environmental base–Alucard was developed many years ago and F4F is staying the course with what they developed
Some parts of Alphonse will be solid and some will be hollow; but he will be heavy regardless
Alex is of two minds about Metal Sonic
Last Chance Weekend is done two weeks after pre-orders so that F4F can know the number that they want to bring into production at the factory well ahead of time
It’s actually easier to get approvals for the SD line because they don’t need to be 100% accurate to the source material
Siegmeyer plush pre-order–back on Alex’s list now that factories are open again
Classic Crash Bandicoot resin will have dark brown eyebrows
If F4F got the Darksiders license, would make both on-horse and character-only statues
UFC 222: Alex picks Cyborg
Zero hasn’t been forgotten–have to look at the timing for his pre-order
3PM (Christian Hernandez) is all about the Care Bears, My Little Pony, One Punch Man, Zelda and Berserk–more of Alex’s unbelievable knowledge of every club member
If Alex were a Care Bear, he would be Cheer Bear

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Also, I’m looking to increase members in our all-purpose video game toy group, so I’ve started doing giveaways of video game related toys straight from my own collection over in the Gamer Toy Alliance Facebook Group–join up if you want a shot at free figures and toys! I just gave away a World of Nintendo Bowser Jr. this week, and there’s lots more good stuff coming up! 😉