Capcom has no more objections, and the First 4 Figures Phoenix Wright statue will finally go up for order next week with both Exclusive and Definitive Editions! But before POs open next week, we get our first look at the painted Ace Attorney this week, and the answers to these questions and more:

WHO might make good candidates for Kickstarter-styled statues?

WHAT vegetable does Nito remind Chocks of?

WHEN will we see the TT Polls for Drakengard, Guacamelee and the Fairy Tail anime?

WHERE is Meta-Ridley in development right now?

HOW limited might those Spyro PVC Color Variants end up being?

WHY was Alex farting like a beast for two weeks?

WILL the Metal Mini Crystal Dragons be made?

COULD we finally see Tekken Law get enough orders to be produced?

Announcements and the Week in Review:

• They’re working on something in the back end just for us
• Chock is rocking out with a mega 20 oz. Red Bull, compliments of the Great Bang H Le
• It’s going to be a late night, so Alex is indulging in his own Sugar-Free Red Bull again!
• “What is the club and what does it mean? Why is content just being put into the club and not on the main page or the website?”
• Alex has been in China and has gone to see Alucard and Crash
• Alex doesn’t understand how it’s possible that Instagram, with zero promotion and 17000 followers, gets like 1,000 hearts (which is better than the Facebook main page that has over 100,000 likes)
• Cheggy isn’t actually taking anything off Chock’s plate, as she’s doing stuff that Chock wasn’t going in the first place like managing Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest
• Today was supposed to be the last day for the Exclusive and Definitive Edition Alphonse’s pre-order, but unfortunately the target of 1000 orders was not reached, so the pre-order has been extended
• John is quite pleased with the Partnerships Torch Torch rings
• Spyro PVC is hopefully approaching 3000 units soon and can then be closed for orders
• Psycho Mantis, Warp Star Kirby, Spike Spiegel, Spyro PVC and Guts Exclusives are all still available for order on the website
• Today is Preview Friday! At long last, Phoenix Wright will be revealed in teaser trailer form!
• They have to move the studio outside of the office to a secret location so that the Q&A can be held in a studio setting with different camera setups, a more comfortable environment, space for Cheggy to sit down, etc.
• A moment of silence for Stan Lee: “Excelsior indeed.”
• Alex on Spyro PVC Variants: “You don’t want it, you don’t buy it. We’ll do it because we want the cash to invest in other projects.”
• Maybe it will turn out that F4F makes only 50 of each color Spyro worldwide; variants aren’t for everyone, but it’s something collectors need to get used to, as they’re something happening for the Mega Mans, Shovel Knights, etc.; they’ll be soft launches and not major full-on launches
• If a Mini Crystal Dragon gets done in metal, it’ll be in all the colors under the sun
• “All of this stuff moving forward is about conventions and being able to go and have a team in place that does them; cons can’t be based on just having a single PVC–there has to be other stuff like Mini Jiggies, Dragons and Notes as well”
• For the color variants, Alex would not make them with the Exclusive box and would just have them in the normal packaging and cheaper than the EXs
• Power-Up LED Effects for Powered-Up Spyro PVC statue will require a thicker base to fit the batteries
• Variants aren’t for everybody, but are for those who want them; First 4 Figures has been doing variants since Day One–it’s nothing new
• Metal Gear Snake SD PVC Test Shots are in the house for Stealth Snake and regular Snake!; The ones displayed at GamesCom were resin; don’t want to take pre-orders based off of resin models of the PVCs, as that would be false advertising
• F4F is getting better engineering-wise with PVCs
• Maybe we’ll end up with the PVC variants being highly-limited with only like 100 pieces–and that’s fine, since there’s no new tooling required to make them
• Amaterasu PVC will be ready for pre-order in about 3 months time; not sure how long it will be between the Amaterasu PVC and resin launching
• There has been some movement with regards to Tekken Law; E-Mails will be sent to those who have him ordered next week; Pre-orders for Tekken Law will go back up for order on Monday after the courtesy E-Mails are sent; Original Purchasers could receive a special card or something extra on the bottom of the base
• Alex just ranted for like 5 minutes when he came back to the office from China–if there was a 24/7 camera in the F4F offices, he’d have to tone it down
• Tekken King and Jin have received nice reviews (besides many of the EX Kings arriving damaged), so hopefully with King and Jin in the market Marshall Law will actually sell enough pieces now to be produced
• Chances of the Wait Lists for Bowser converting if you join the Bowser Wait List are very, very good right now
• RIP PAX East: “Goddammit.” — Chocks
• PAX East was the top contender for the first half of the year that F4F wanted to attend, but were denied for this year; will have to see if they get accepted for their second choice
• Website Update: Now you can add a three-month payment plan to your converted Wait Lists, since Wait Lists convert now before statues actually start shipping; Alex feels like IT is finally starting to get into a rhythm now; want to implement paying off a statue early soon and the ability to see where you are on the Wait List
• “Can you believe our website is so bollocks that you wouldn’t even know that we have a Facebook presence? That’s next for us to tackle.”
• Latest production piece of Aku Aku Mask arrived in the office this week; there is progress for those waiting; Ornate and EX Shovel Knight progress also going well
• Solaire SD Standard Edition packaging looking great; should trickle out into Australia/Asia soon; Exclusive and Praise the Sun Edition are going to be a while because the PTS Edition is going to be a nightmare to produce with the LEDs inside the body
• Solaire resin statue final production samples arrived today, and should begin shipping out very, very soon (including the Jolly Combo Edition)–within 2-3 weeks; be sure to check the shipping calendar on the website for updates
• Hopefully more resins shipping in the next few months: Solid Snake, Solaire Resin, Crash Bandicoot
• Will move ahead with the Mini Crystal Dragons with a price-point of around $50–overall reaction in the OCC was positive
• Grayfox 3-D print of his head shown this week; Alex is really pleased to see how he turned out
• Nito: “London Buses” — Describes a situation where you’re waiting and waiting and waiting for a long time, and then 5 buses all come at once; there’s been a lot of movement with Dark Souls over the last few days that all happened at once; Nito is absolutely ginormous and is going to cost significantly more than Alphonse
• On Nito: “Not only is he big, but he has stupid chicken legs! His massive legs are probably going to have to be made of metal like Robotnik.”; the hair on Nito will have to be mixed media–can’t be replicated any other way; Nito reminds Chock of Bok Choi the vegetable
• Nito is definitely going to be expensive: huge and complicated as hell; same height as Ornstein’s hair
• Alex almost shat himself when he saw the size of Nito, but has faith in the Dark Souls fandom to buy him
• Alex has been fleshing out concepts and leading development for the last few weeks, rather than waiting and having team members come to him; no one in the company knows as well as Alex what will work from an aesthetic standpoint and also be able to be produced at the factories at an affordable price-point
• Guests on Q&As when the new studio is set up; can get some of the staff like Phil and Buffy and Brenda on the show; perhaps Guest Speakers from the club calling in?

Temptation Thursdays and King of the Ring II:

• Seven Deadly Sins TT: 357 Votes; 161 ‘No’, 196 ‘Yes’; pretty good results so far
• Drakengard TT Next Week!
• Guacamelee TT in 2 Weeks!
• Fairy Tail Anime TT in 3 Weeks!
• Alex used to look around and not want anime licenses if other companies were doing them, but now Alex really would like to do TF and SD PVCs of various anime, even if others companies are doing resins for the same licenses; would like to do PVCs first and then resins in order to widen the customer base of those aware of First4Figures
• This week’s hashtag is #F4FPW (for Phoenix Wright) for a chance to win 500 Rewards Points next week
• King of the Ring II Match 3: Kirby is currently smashing Tekken Jin in Match 3, but after the first two matches of the tournament, only 3 of the 40+ entrants remain! 20th Sonic upset 25th Sonic by earning more votes, eliminating 90% of the entrants! Brackets Broken! DEE-NIED!
• Only 3 KOTR II entrants remain: Rose Pesiri, Mari Amsler and Melissa Murtagh! All 3 have different predictions, so either everyone is eliminated this week or only 1 entrant will remain after this week!
• If everyone is eliminated in the first round, KOTR II won’t continue, in which case F4F will just stop the tournament and not finish it off

Chock’s Snack Review!:

• Two snacks this week: “Almond Chocolate Sand” and “I’m not sure what it is exactly, but one of the words is ‘Salt'”
• Almond Chocolate Sand: Like a little sandwich biscuit; Quite plain; Nothing special about this; Honestly a bit plain; “Biscuit is a bit… meh”; individually packaged and come in nice packaging; definitely not the best; 4/10–Nothing special
• Something Something Salt: Better than the Almond Chocolate Sand; shaped like a fish stick; Nutty flavor; Quite interesting; You don’t have this kind of thing very often; Official name might be “Salty Sesame”; 7 or 8 out of 10

The Q&A!:

• Alex was farting like a beast for the last two weeks of his diet
• Won’t go back to sending replacements before defective statues are destroyed because it’s a nightmare to followup with people and many weren’t ever documenting destroying their statues
• Meta-Ridley has been submitted to Nintendo, but the contact at Nintendo is on vacation
• Roy Mustang is 100% going to go ahead and go into production; 3-D has been done, but no pose yet; Alex is really happy with the concept and think it’s incredible
• Zelda SD won’t be discussed with Nintendo until the SD range is more established
• Zero news about a Wolf Link PVC
• Alex used to say that characters who wouldn’t sell as resins won’t sell as PVCs, but has changed his stance somewhat on this: the whole idea of projects where both PVCs and resins are done at the same time makes Alex feel more secure making TF PVC versions of characters; but characters who sell really poorly as a resin still wouldn’t get done as PVCs–would rather do stronger characters as PVCs first; would still take a punt on something like Kirby though, as it makes sense
• Alex is not happy with the factory making Bowser and Varia Suit Samus–they’re pissing him off; will visit that factory next week to get a clearer idea of what’s going on
• Crystal Dragon going into production very soon–Alex was looking at the counter sample at the factory today
• We could see Power-Up variants of the Reignited Spyro resin statue
• Will see Resin Reignited Spyro in early 2019 as it’s being 3-D printed now; will see Reignited Resin long before the OG PVC; PVC just submitted
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Roy Mustang looks super strong; Edward Elric is still being tweaked to make it stronger, with changes being made; Alex has a great concept for Edward in his mind
• Alex didn’t know there were different colors of Spyro in the new game prior to its release
• Will update us on Varia Suit Samus progress on Tuesday
• Mini Crystal Dragon that comes with the Crystal Dragon EX was originally going to be made of resin, but can now be upgraded to metal because of the upcoming Metal Crystal Dragon Minis being made available; can also have a mini base included now as well; the EXclusive one can have a numbered base and possibly a special gold color compared to the ones available separately; still of two minds about this
• Sonic TF PVC is coming along nicely; Sonic and Tails is at the casting stage
• Will let us know when there’s news on Dracula
• Conker PO will still be in 2018
• Lots of catching up to do on the statue giveaways; Chock doesn’t necessarily announce or make a big fuss about the winners in the club; hopefully can be more profesh and start announcing winners on the blog and social media as well; winners are notified via E-Mail
• There are some mind-bogglingly difficult Dark Souls statues in the work; From Software is very hands-on which is helpful but makes development take longer
• Coco Bandicoot could be a possibility via a Kickstarter
• Alex was serious about Alucard SD and a Castlevania SD line
• Banjo-Kazooie should be back up for order before the end of the year once revisions are complete
• Ivy’s whip could be made out of some elastic material; would have to be looked into
• Need to establish the SD line before approaching Nintendo about it
• Uka Uka Mask: Nothing done on it yet, but it makes sense
• Need to get back to working on Wolf Form Alucard
• Yoshimitsu Tekken statue could possibly be a Kickstarter
• Alex will consult with Dabid about a do-over for the Kingdom Hearts character poll with more restricted options
• Resins will have more of a scene and more intricate bases, but you won’t necessarily
• Amaterasu PVC variants from Marvel vs Capcom are absolutely a possibility
• Castlevania Death is shaping up to be amazing
• Mini Aku Aku Masks will match numbers of authenticated resin Crash statues, but won’t be necessary to retain your number for the Crash resin line if you don’t want them
• “I’ll be going to the Bowser factory to kick some ass on Tuesday.”
• Perhaps new license could be announced as part of the Christmas sneaks?
• Don’t want to answer questions about Dark Suit Samus right now
• Crash resin will 100% ship before the end of the year; Samus–we’ll know more on Tuesday
• Alex thinks Crash on a polar bear is a great idea; really likes the idea
• Yakuza update: Lights on the gate are really difficult and the gate may have to be done as a standalone companion piece later on; Kiryu himself is done and looking great and the only thing holding him up now is the gate; DE could include two torsos (suit and bare-chested) with an extra base to hold the extra torso
• Need to figure out if mini figures will be sold in packs
• Uka Uka Mask may have the same base as Neo-Cortex; would make sense
• Crash in Go-Kart could be in both resin and PVC if it were made: “Why not both?”
• F4F has no way to get past Mr. Trump as far as tariffs go: “Taking it up the butt-butt” already
• No updates on Persona 5 today
• Would consider doing Amaterasu with other weapons and the other Celestial Gods; would like to do a mini range
• PAX East didn’t like First 4 Figures; that’s why it fell through
• New license announcements possibly at Christmas time
• Jet Black is the next anime pre-order
• Mini Jinjo Pack won’t be seen at all this year; if it’s done, we’ll see all of the colors
• There have been licenses like Gurren Lagann that F4F has bought before and then not made statues from; better to take the loss on the license than lose money on statues that sell very poorly
• Shenmue: “Where are the fans?”
• Wait Lists convert once a week now
• Amaterasu Life-Size Bust: Don’t have any updates today
• Deinonychus is Alex’s third favorite dinosaur
• Possible to have a pack of Alucard familiars down the line if Alucard Forms do well
• No updates on Crystal Cloak Alucard
• Difficult production with more steps doesn’t mean less defects
• Small characters themselves could be companion pieces
• Chock shows Alex everything all the time from every different license; “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”
• Hopefully Amy Rose will be approved by Sega for a Kickstarter
• Will be a long time–months, if ever–before we hear about Darksiders
• Kiryu Yakuza figure is in 1/6
• Pikmin would be great for a combo of both PVC and resin releases
• Hopefully news on Dracula soon; would have been a perfect launch on October 26th
• Life-Size Puck from Berserk makes sense to Alex if there’s support
• Bronzed statues is definitely something Alex has looked into recently
• Spyro Power-Up Variants for PVC or resin? “Why not everything?”
• Donkey Kong possibly after Yoshi
• Let’s see how Phoenix Wright does before talking about anything else from the Ace Attorney games
• Neo-Cortex is just a resin statue–from the time before shared projects with TFs
• Chocks won’t play Rock-Paper-Scissors with Alex today–he’s afraid of losing his perfect record
• Hopefully we’ll see Mario on Yoshi early in the new year
• Alex is so excited about the future with so many things in the works; has to send out a PVC list to distributors–a BEAST of a lineup! “That’s a lot of con fodder!”
• “The future is bright. The future is F4F.”

…And that’s a wrap for the F4F Q&A #94! Come back next week for the Exclusive and Definitive Phoenix Wright Statue Pre-Order! Learn anything new this week that really captures your attention (and your future dollars)? Will you be showing up for the first day of Phoenix Wright reservations, or is there a different line that’s on your radar right now instead?