With a trio of statues arriving to collectors around most of the world this week, the earth-shattering Ornstein pre-order last week, and the recent rash of Christmas Sneak Peeks and Last Chance Weekends for Varia Suit Samus and Shovel Knight, there can’t possibly be anything left for First 4 Figures to talk about? Wrong! Not only is the Dark Souls Life Ring now up for order, but in this week’s F4F Q&A #54 Recap, we’ll learn about: Green Player 2 Shovel Knight! Kid Icarus? Uka Uka Mask! Yakuza? Smough?! And more!

[Note: I’ve included the full recap of the Q&A itself here. I’ll go back this weekend and document the various tidbits mentioned in the stream before the actual Q&A.]

On Nintendo:

• Varia Suit Samus Exclusive Edition Size: 2100 Pieces
• Can we still get the Metroid Prime 3 Gunship, or has it been too long? “RTF.” (“Rally the fans.”)
• Fighter Kirby Shortage: A typical statue has a 30% cancellation rate, so F4F usually only produces 75% of the statues ordered. For some reason, only 8% of Fighter Kirby Exclusive statues that were ordered were cancelled. Consequently? “We’re fucked.” — First 4 Figures will go back into production to produce enough Fighter Kirbys to fulfill the confirmed orders. [I’ve been wondering when this would happen, so for my own nerd academic purposes, I’m thrilled to see how F4F is handling it!]
• The remainder of the Fighter Kirbys will be produced after Chinese New Year–those whose orders are delayed will be contacted and will receive some bonus F4F Rewards Points as compensation
• Bowser will enter production right after Chinese New Year
• F-Zero Captain Falcon statue has been made–RTF to get it out of the Vault
• Alex is visiting with Nintendo in May, so rally hard to give Alex data before that meeting
• Fire Emblem? RTF–need a consensus on one character to support
• Color Variants for Warp Star Kirby? “Great idea!” [I knew I’d have one one day!] It would be amazing to do Kirbys in combo packs with variant colors.
• With so many people on the Wait List for Fighter Kirby, do collectors want another Kirby variant now after Warp Star Kirby?
• Pikmin statue? RTF–there’s a TT.
• Warp Star Kirby has been printed and is now being duplicated
• Mario on Yoshi is looking tight, got feedback this week on some changes to make

On Anime:

• Alex used to feel a little bit of concern about the Cowboy Bebop line about a year ago, but is feeling better after the positive reception to the latest Spike sneak peek in the Facebook group–Spike and Jet will both debut at the Sunrise booth at C3 next month if all goes well
• There’s no chance for Guts to have a die-cast blade on his sword–it would be too heavy
• How Bloody will Bloody Guts be? “Super Bloody.”
• Finally got comments back on the Kamina pose, design and sculpting–will definitely approve accordingly
• Tokyo Ghoul is getting a bit crowded now, but rally the fans during Funday in the club if you want to see this
• Alphonse won’t be cheap
• Guts pre-order within 2 months; not sure what number expected to sell
• If Guts sells well, new Berserk statues hopefully every 5-6 months
• If Fullmetal Alchemist does well, F4F is happy to make all of the characters
• Paint stage for Alphonse is coming along very, very nicely

On Zelda:

• True Form Midna is looking tight–Alex is finally ready for her to be assembled and to have photos sent to Nintendo for approval; needed some gloss added to her fingernails
• If all goes well, the Majora’s Mask replicas could be arriving at the warehouses in March 2018
• PVC BOTW Zelda? “Nothing to report.”
• Calamity Ganon? Fans will need to rally significantly to move the needle for this.
• Sheikah Slate will be part of the Zelda Prop Line
• Ocarina of Time Link Playing the Ocarina Statue is in the Vault
• No thoughts about 1:1 scale Midna

On Various Topics:

• This week’s hashtag is #F4FSHIN
• Silver has now been approved to go to the packaging stage; should ship out before Chinese New Year–Katamari should be on this boat as well
• 25th Anniversary Sonic is at the same factory as Silver and still needs to be tweaked
• Alex is concentrating on the Sonic & Tails diorama right now, which is looking really tight
• If all goes smoothly, the Alucard pre-order will follow the Metal Gear Solid Solid Snake pre-order relaunch
• If the Amaterasu life-size bust was fully solid, it would easily weight 100kg; it’ll definitely have some holes in it to keep the weight down
• Right now, when you use both Reward Points and Flexipay on the site, the Reward Points are only applied to the final balance–F4F is working on this so that it works differently in the future
• The statues that survive the drop test get used as long as they’re still perfect, Alex believes
• How does F4F do everything that they do in a day? “Magic.” Alex and Chock “live, eat, drink and breathe F4F.”
• If First4Figures ever got the Persona 5 license, the characters would be done in 1/6 and would be done in Day and Night versions with a Combo Pack
• It was ridiculous how many extras came with the Sif exclusive; F4F couldn’t include the Leo ring with Ornstein
• Alex would like to make a video showing what everyone at F4F does behind-the-scenes
• F4F really wants to do Persona 5 statues because the club really, really wants them–but will require licensor cooperation
• Golden Aku Aku Mask Edition Size: 250 pieces
• Aku Aku Mask Exclusive Edition Size: 475 pieces
• Golden Aku Aku and Aku Aku EX overall edition size will be 550 pieces with some numbers duplicated between Golden and EX for combo packs
• Dark Souls Mimic pre-orders will probably be in 5-6 months
• Green Shovel Knight has been approved: What should F4F do about the Green Player 2 Shovel Knight statue? Should it have its own pre-order?
• The only thing Alex cares about about Smough (Dark Souls) is if it will sell. Fans want it? F4F will make it. But it would likely cost $2,000+ to be to-scale with the Ornstein statue. Rally the fans. =P
• F4F Art Book? Alex will run a poll.
• When Mega Man Zero goes up for order, those who bought Mega Man X and authenticated will be able to retain their numbers
• Ornstein EX Lightning Spear can’t be made any brighter (EL lights don’t work that way), but the color may be able to be made whiter; spear is already full of jagged effects “and definitely not spaghetti looking”
• Having a transparent spear with no lightning inside of it wouldn’t make sense–Ornstein doesn’t have a transparent spear in Dark Souls
• Alex would love to do a Life-Size Samus if Nintendo would allow First 4 Figures to make any statue
• Shovel Knight edition sizes will be revealed next week
• How many statues will F4F release in a year when they’re Large Potatoes? Chock says they’ll be large potatoes when they can get any license they want–it’s not about how many statues get released in a year.
• Alex wasn’t sure if F4F was going to continue in 2008, so he set up Gaming Heads at that time–worked on Sly Cooper, Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank statues there
• Alucard will be closer in price to Ornstein than to Bowser
• Spyro’s order quantity is so huge that it will fill a whole shipping container–Spyro likely won’t need to wait for Solaire or other statues to be ready to ship
• F4F needs to go back and work on Yakuza Kiryu now that the requisite number of TT votes has been met–hopefully it can be up for order sometime in Q3 2018
• Just finished the eyes on Devil May Cry Dante statue–hopefully something to show collectors soon
• Metal Gear Big Boss Statue? RTF.
• Reala and Aika statues–keep voting in the TTs and supporting them
• Boom8 Sonic PVCs will likely ship end of this month; not that many orders received for the first batch, but will be an ongoing thing
• Bayonetta will be ready when she’s done, and when she’s done, she’ll be absolutely glorious–but no point putting her on the calendar until she’s done
• Yoshimitsu is still happening, even though he’s not on the most recent pre-order calendar
• Kid Icarus (Pit) is in the Vault–Alex did make a Dark Pit variant to help increase sales, which is also in the Vault
• It would take “a lot” of votes to get F4F to look at the Kid Icarus franchise again
• If Mega Man fans want a Rush statue to go with their Mega Mans, “Rally The Fans”
• Life-Size Uka Uka Mask has now received enough votes to be added to the list of future items F4F will look into developing
• If offered to become the official spokesman for Red Bull by the President of Red Bull, with the condition being that he could never drink Red Bull again, Chocks would make the sacrifice and take the job
• Nothing to say about Dark Souls 3 statues right now
• Alex agrees that the saying “happy wife; happy life” is true; Chocks says he’s never happy; “RTW” — Rally the Women for Chock
• Alex loves Loftwing Link’s face: “He happy; I happy!”
• Alucard now comes with a hand that holds his cape, which is different from when we last saw him at NYCC 2017 (Chocks left his hand in the shipping box at the show)

And that is (mostly) all for this week! I’ll cycle back later this weekend to add a few pre-Q&A news bites and organize the Q&A answers a bit more. And if you love these recaps, please do follow the Gamer Toy News Twitter and/or Facebook Page so you can be alerted whenever new articles go live!