I unexpectedly found myself with an extra five hours this weekend. Why? Because the Friday ritual First4Figures Q&A with Chocks and Alex is no more (at least, for now), leaving a F4F Q&A sized hole in my life. But without the Q&A, where does that leave fans who don’t live on Facebook to find out the latest happenings in the wild world of First 4 Figures? And so, though the weekly Q&A and the official Week in Review rundown are no more, I decided to write up a report summarizing all the latest F4F news and notes—including the announcement of the Gears of War, an update on the Mega Man PVC and more!

 The biggest First 4 Figures news of the week—and perhaps of the entire year thus far—dropped on Monday, August 12th when it was abruptly announced out of nowhere that First 4 Figures has obtained the license to produce collectibles for Gears 5 from the Gears of War series!

How did this come to past? Alex was approached by his ex-SEGA of America contact, who now handles licensing for The Coalition, and the rest is history! We haven’t had a true new license announcement at all yet this year from F4F (unless you count the Luigi’s Mansion piece shown at the Licensing Expo), so this is definitely big news.

But in a twist I don’t believe anyone saw coming, F4F Gears 5 isn’t just something far in the future—it’s about to be the present! A teaser video was shown of the statue that will be fully revealed at GamesCom 2019 last week, which Alex Davis confirmed in the F4FOCC Facebook group will in fact be the game’s protagonist, Kait Diaz.

Classic Gears of War fans love Marcus Fenix and are likely a tad disappointed he won’t be first in the First 4 Figures GoW series, but with Gears 5 arriving next month, it only makes sense for this to be Kait’s time to shine!

You can see the Gears of War Kait statue in person at Gamescom in Germany next week, where F4F will be exhibiting at Hall 5.1 Booth C020! Come meet CEO Alex Davis, King Chockles and an actress playing the role of Peggy Hsieh!

For those who are waiting for their own Cowboy Bebop Spike Spiegel statues to arrive (or want to live vicariously through someone who did!), I video’d myself unboxing the Spike Exclusive and posted it at the start of the week.

I’m awkward as all heck and still getting over the jitters of making a video of… well, anything… but if you’ve ever wanted to see me open a box and give first impressions of a statue, this is your chance.

On Wednesday August 14th, we got to see a PVC factory product photo showcasing hundreds of lower paw/nails for the Amaterasu PVCs that went up for summer earlier this summer. Product seems to be going full-speed ahead, so high hopes for these to arrive on-time by the end of 2019!

…But that’s not all! A short video showing some early production work on the base for Psycho Mantis was also shown! It’s been a bit of a wait, but it looks like Psycho Mantis is off to the races at the factory as production has now begun!

Thursday August 17th brought us the first new TT (Temptation Thursday) poll in a post-Q&A world: Aiai from Super Monkey Ball! SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball is near and dear to my heart from my undergrad days playing a million hours on the GameCube, and both Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2 can be found on my all-time Top 10 list of video games.

But the TT poll results thus far are, well… they could be better. As of writing, the score is 240 ‘No’ votes to 56 ‘Yes’ votes. Things look bleak for Super Monkey Ball, but hopefully there are another 750+ fans reading this now who are about to race to the poll and vote ‘Yes’!

Also, those interested in entering the F4F Sonic Photo Contest to win free rewards points or a Sonic Mania Collector’s Edition set still have a chance to enter, as I’ll be accepting entries through August 19th! YOU DON’T NEED TO OWN ANY Sonic statues to enter, so no one should miss out on a chance for free and easy rewards points!

Check out the rules right here and PM me your entries on Facebook!

On Friday August 16th, we got a triple dose of news in the form of a production update, a product sneak peek and a new policy being put in place for the company!

First, a new ratings system is being implemented in order to facilitate more easily being able to “take the temperature” (so to speak) regarding customer feedback and concerns with the CS experience. All of the CS representatives now have icons in their signatures on tickets that can be clicked on to rate them as “Awesome!”, “Great!”, “So-So” or “Not Happy 🙁 “. Clicking the icons will send users to a landing page where they can add written feedback.

This new feedback system is going to really up the ante as far as the kind of data and statistics available to analyze and improve F4F Customer Service. My eyes lit up when I heard about this because I love these sorts of analytic processes, though I imagine most collectors will just be pleased to hear that their voices will be heard and monitored to best improve the CS experience!

On the production side of things, Alex posted photos to update us all that the arm seams on the Yoshi portion of the Mario on Yoshi Statue have now been removed! The neck seam will remain (though it’s invisible from a normal viewing angle), but the arms are now seamless.

I briefly thought these photos were Alex stealth unveiling a super-secret Grey Yoshi variant, but alas, that was not to be. Seamless arms are pretty unexpected and neat too, though!

Finally, we got one sneak peek to close out the week, in the form of Alex posting some photos of prototype helmets for the Mega Man statue and asking collectors if the light blue “mohawk” on the helmet should be metallic or matte painted.

This Mega Man is planned to be released as both a PVC and a resin statue, and although no color variants have officially been announced yet, it’s a dream of mine that we could see plenty of alternate color schemes for this statue (maybe even as limited convention exclusives?)!

…And that’s it for this week in First 4 Figures! What do think, #F4Fam? Anything this week capture your enthusiasm and imagination? And is it useful for me to summarize all of the week’s news in one article like this for easy nibbling, or is this just a bunch of empty calories I’m wasting my time on?