99% of the time, it puts me in a bad mood when I get woken up in the morning by the doorbell ringing. Luckily, this morning happened to be part of that outlying 1%. Why? Because the FedEx driver at the door needed me to sign off on the delivery of not one, not two, but three First 4 Figures statues! With a glorious bounty like that this morning, there’s no way I could resist cranking out at least one review today! You can still get on the Wait List for the Exclusive F4F Spyro & Sparx PVC statue: should you? Let’s take a look…
Honesty is the best policy: while I knew there was such a character as Spyro the Dragon and that he was purple, that was literally all I knew about him until First 4 Figures announced him as part of their Activision licenses two years ago.
Collectibles generally fuel my interest in media and not the other way around, so my purple dragon fandom was pretty weak until I knew high-end merch from my favorite company was on the way.
Luckily, I’ve had two years now to acquaint myself with everyone’s favorite purple boi and dragonfly sidekick, and I’ve managed to play through all of Spyro Reignited and fall in love. Was all that hard work to grow a bond with the characters worthwhile to fully appreciate this new PVC statue…? Let’s begin the review…
As is the norm for the First4Figures Exclusive PVCs, Spyro comes in a pretty ludicrous amount of shipping boxes. There’s an outer brown shipping box…
…an inner brown shipping box suspended by foam corners inside of that…
…a plastic-wrapped metallic shoebox-style art box inside of that…
…and then an ornately decorated graphic window box inside of that…
…with Spyro and Sparx suspended inside of a plastic clamshell in side of that.
That… is a lot of packaging. My wife’s Master’s Degree is in Environmental Science, so from a purely environmental perspective, I don’t like the extreme amount of waste that goes into shipping one of these PVCs—all these layers of cardboard, foam and plastic are just too much for a figure this size in my eyes.
But from a purely aesthetic perspective as a collector…? I continue to be astonished by the elaborate (albeit perhaps a bit over-the-top) nature of the packing on these Exclusive F4F PVC statues.
An extreme amount of care, engineering and money has obviously gone into developing packaging that will ensure that the actual product and its deluxe art boxes arrive in pristine condition, and that’s definitely worthy of commending from a collector point of view.
The metallic outer box for Spyro is a thing of beauty that I think surpasses any of the shoebox-styled boxes First4Figures has made to date. The metallic red and gold and blue certainly give off the intended illusion of a treasure chest, and the foil-printed Spyro picture on the front is gorgeous.
There’s also a Spyro dragon printed on the back, along with the statue’s number out of 3000 (which is my name in my case, since I have the option of having my name as a number as a perk of being an F4F Official Collector’s Club Facebook group Admin). Beautiful.
Removing the lid of the outer box, we find the collector’s art cards inside. Those who ordered on Day One will have two art cards with one signed by F4F CEO Alex Davis (plus an exclusive holographic sticker!), while everyone else will just have one Art Card.
These look exquisite as always, and I appreciate the cloth tab that can be pulled to seamlessly remove the card holder insert from the box.
Beneath the card insert we find the main event: the Spyro and Sparx EX PVC figure. The art box is incredibly colorful and perfectly themed to the look and feel of Reignited.
The back of the box shows off the “credits” and some pretty photos of the figure itself. I don’t believe there’s any company in the business that does more eye-popping and authentic PVC packaging than F4F does.
Even if catastrophe occurred during shipment and all four boxes Spyro is inside of were pierced, he and Sparx are still protected inside a plastic clamshell for safety. It’s really once you’ve got them out of all those excess boxes that you see just how pretty the statue itself is.
Also inside the clamshell is a little pamphlet that shows off various First 4 Figures Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon statues and directs buyers to F4F’s website and social media (with $5 in free rewards points as effective bait to get new users to register for the website).
The box includes a full-color paper backdrop that can be pulled out and used as a background for the figure. I used to love these sorts of backdrops back when I first started reviewing and photographing toys, and while I don’t use them anymore myself, I totally dig seeing one included here. Love it!
That may seem like a lot of words just to describe the packaging for a toy, but so much work and effort went into the packaging for this Spyro Exclusive that I’d be remiss if I hadn’t taken the time to discuss it all.
But how’s the figure itself…? Well, as you might expect: it’s quite lovely. I spent a good 30 hours standing next to the regular edition of F4F Spyro PVC at Emerald City Comic Con 2019 in March, so I had a good idea of just how nice this sculpture is. Even so, there’s some things you just don’t notice until you hold your own in your hands.
The biggest difference between the mass retail version of this statue and the exclusive (besides the wild and crazy deluxe packaging) is that the EX includes a non-removable figure of Sparx the dragonfly. Since Spyro is only without Sparx when he’s vulnerable to death in the games, the dragonfly’s inclusion here is both comforting and necessary.
Even though Sparx is quite tiny as far as PVC statue characters go, the factory did a masterful job with him. The paintwork on Sparx is neat and clean, and I love the look of the “motion blur” wings, even if they don’t make a lot of sense while Sparx is resting on Spyro.
Sparx spends loads of time being green or blue after taking damage in the video games, though, so I do wish variant colors for the dragonfly could have been offered somehow (though I am admittedly a glutton for variants).
The other difference with the exclusive edition is the specific number written on the bottom of the base and the little foam risers to protect it from scratching off. This isn’t a big deal, but it is a bit of icing on the cake and a nice finishing touch.
Spyro himself looks straight out of Reignited, with a lovably cartoony appearance that makes him one of the cutest statues I’ve ever owned. The accuracy and proportions of this PVC figure blow away everything else on the market for the Reignited Trilogy version of this character.
From all angles, this piece is absolutely adorable—and also beautiful. The paint and plastic colors chosen are dead-on to the video game, and the subtle paint shades added to the piece really make a difference and show the quality difference between a First 4 Figures PVC and one from other companies.
But does that mean this figure is without flaws? Well… no. Few statues are beyond reproach, and EX Spyro and Sparx is no exception.
Seams may be a fact of life with PVC figures, but I don’t like the unsightliness of the seam line at the base of Spyro’s tail at all. I understand its necessity, but It’s really blatant and ugly-looking to me, making me not want to display Spyro from angles where it’s very visible. There are other visible seams, but this is the one that bugs me the most by a wide margin.
In addition, while the characters themselves are masterfully painted, the base itself has some fuzziness around the pink circle and some lines that aren’t crisp and bleed into the black in areas. I know the difficulty in painting bright pink on black plastic and keeping it clean, but I wish the paint on the base was just a bit more neat.
Even with a few shortcomings, this is still a terrific effort from First4Figures with quality and value that don’t make me second-guess the $100 price-point at all (even if I would have happily gone without the deluxe outer art box that I think the vast majority of collectors will never display if it means chopping $10 or even $5 off the price-tag).
Overall: Is the First4Figures Spyro the Dragon and Sparx figure perfect…? Not quite—but it is a really dang nice piece. Some of the seams on the figure bug me a bit, I think the (incredible) packaging might be a bit wasteful, and the paint isn’t quite at the same top-tier level as the (much more expensive) F4F resin statues.
All that said, I enjoy this PVC figure quite a bit, and I’m definitely looking forward to owning several (if not all) of the upcoming Cheat Codes variant rainbow Spyro PVCs that will hopefully be coming down the pike.
If you love the cartoony Spyro Reignited character design, this is a wonderful representation of it that blows all other Reignited Spyro merch released to date out of the water. And if you’re a Sparx fan, this exclusive version is an absolute must and well worth its $99.99 MSRP. The Wait List for this Spyro & Sparx EX statue is still open, so if you love what you see here, I’d definitely recommend jumping on it ASAP. I think this is a PVC a lot of fans are going to regret missing out on a year from now.