WHAT improvements have been made prior to the Banjo-Kazooie Last Chance Pre-Order opening up today?

WHICH recent TT made Alex exclaim: “Oh shit! Where the fuck did that come from!?”

WHERE will F4F fans be able to order the first official F4F T-Shirts later today?

WHEN is Cowboy Bebop Spike expected to be ready to ship out?

IS Alex happy with the sales on Conker so far?

COULD we see a Yu-Gi-Oh statue pre-order this year?

…And more in this week’s First 4 Figures Q&A #105 Recap!

Announcements and the Week in Review:

• Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday are public holidays in Hong Kong, but F4F will still be open next Monday and Friday
• Didn’t quite get Skull Knight done before Chinese New Year–will resume after CNY ends
• Ammy bust will ship to Europe (and presumably most of the world) in about 3 months
• Just working on Ivy’s face–base and pose look amazing
• Nito will be easy to paint and complete–just deciding on the perfect way to implement the hair right now
• Alex teases about new product types F4F is thinking about: thinking about bigger, true 1:6 PVC statues
• Fundamentally, must sell the current PVCs to wholesale, which “gives Alex the shits”–makes Alex feel that the PVCs need to be subsidized by larger resin versions; if F4F made 1:6 TF PVCs, they wouldn’t be carried by many retail stores, and would cost significantly more than the current TF PVCs ($150-$200), but only around 5000 units would need to be sold instead of 10000
• Selling 5000 pieces on the website for larger PVCs may be a bridge too far for right now, as Spyro only sold 3000 PVCs on the website
• May set up an Amazon store later on to sell the regular versions of PVCs through
• The problem with current TFs is that Alex has to be quite conscious with the pricing–even more so than the resins–because they must hit a certain price-point
• Would only want to do Witcher 3 PVCs–resin has already been well-served
• Going back to the drawing board for Yakuza because the previous sculpts from 10 years ago aren’t good enough anymore
• Banjo-Kazooie revisions will be shown at the end of the show and pre-orders for the Exclusive will reopen on the website
• If you already have Banjo ordered and validated, you are golden–all preexisting orders will still be honored from before the revisions
• The first F4F T-Shirts will be available via RedBubble after the livestream; it’s an on-demand printing service so that First 4 Figures only has to focus on the designs and concepts; this phase is like early prototyping to gather data to expand the range later on; will take community designs; have 4 or 5 lined up already now
• “It’s never been just about statues–it’s the F4F Experience”
• Conker’s pre-order window will continue until 1000 units are sold or until production begins
• Other pre-orders still open: Mimic, Law, Shovel Knight Player 2, Warp Star Kirby, Berserk Guts, Psycho Mantis, and Spyro PVC EX
• Shout out to Cris Tina for pointing out that Morrigan’s neck could be thinner; Darkstalkers Morrigan is coming along nicely; looking forward to going to the physical on this; F4F needs to do more females
• Ed (of “Ed & Ein”) nose and hair were tweaked this week; have a great, suitable pose chosen for Ed
• Alex will be doing an official poll for the various Samus suits
• Neo-Cortex is still waiting to be painted; Jet Pack Crash will be quite a bit afterwards; no work being done on Uka Uka Mask for now
• Doing a lot behind the scenes to prepare for Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle in March–will be a double booth with massive backdrops that cover up an on-site storage room; will bring one resin (probably Mario on Yoshi) and have a classy display of PVCs on plinths; ECCC will be much more about PVCs than about resins; couldn’t get into PAX or SDCC

TTs and the King of the Rings:

• Will do Spider-Man PS4 poll soon to compare to Arkham Batman
• Gungrave TT: 159 Votes; 140 ‘No’, 19 ‘Yes’
• Sword Art Online TT Next Week!
• 41 Entrants have been eliminated out of 103 for King of the Ring III: “That’s some significant blood! Let’s go!” — Alex
• Ryo vs. Light Suit Samus is next week’s KOTR Match

The Q&A!:

• Life Size Aku Aku Masks are super-deep in production
• Alex was happy with where sales were on Alphonse the last time he looked
• Tell Alex who has the license for Earthworm Jim and he’ll get in contact with him
• No word on new Zelda pieces anytime soon
• Going back to sculpting Edward
• Alex hasn’t said anything about Vaulting Phoenix Wright; haven’t decided and not confirming or denying anything
• Haven’t looked at Conker’s pre-orders much–hit its gold bars quota, so F4F is happy with it
• F4F has spent the last 2-3 years expanding the company to increase the number of statues that can be produced each year; interviews Monday for additional factory support, bringing on more 3-D and concept artists, graphic artists, etc.
• Plan to keep the Life Size Busts relatively in-scale to each other
• A ton of Zelda products in the works–will let everyone know when they can
• First Yu-Gi-Oh pre-order this year if all goes well
• No doubt Artorias LSB PO will be before Grayfox
• Improved Kiryu Yakuza PO will be in late 2019 at the very earliest
• With less than 200 Mugens ordered, it would be very difficult to get Jin and Fuu made
• Will revisit Resident Evil with Capcom come Vegas time in June
• Alex’s favorite FMA characters are Edward, Alphose and Roy Mustang
• Kill La Kill is higher on Alex’s list than Gurren Lagann, but Alex would really really like to make Kamina since he’s already been designed
• New anime lines will likely start with PVCs and move to resins
• Alex isn’t sure why Nintendo shot down Yoshi variants; perhaps because there’s a big difference between $10-$20 figures and high-end collectibles
• Life Size Aku Aku Masks will be pretty significantly done after Chinese New Year
• Alex on Earthworm Jim if anyone can determine who owns the license: “Let’s buy the whole franchise!”; Alex “would love to buy an old gaming license like that”
• “That would be the next evolution if we could ever have a game studio.”
• Bowser and other oversized characters would have to be made smaller to be made as $99.99 PVCs–wouldn’t be made larger with an increased price; would probably have larger resin versions made, however
• Solid Snake SD, Mini Aku Aku Masks and Jet Black are all still on-track for Q1 2019 pre-orders
• Regular edition PVCs could go onto F4F Amazon store later on–the website will probably continue to only sell the PVC EXs
• The only F4F statue whose battery can’t be replaced is the original Amaterasu resin; but it can still be run off of USB; all other resins will use replaceable 18650s and future PVCs will use 18500s
• Jet Black is ready to go for PO; just wanted to wait for Spike to be far in production before opening pre-orders
• With Alucard production wrapping up, that factory can focus on Psycho Mantis soon
• Looking into color of Ornstein’s spear to make sure it’s correct
• Will not open Rider Link pre-orders in March
• More game statues in 2019 than anime statues
• Still juggling what the next POs will be after Meta-Ridley; didn’t get as much done before Chinese New Year as hoped
• Every statue has its own merits–won’t just make a Definitive Edition for each My Hero Academia resin unless it’s something that really enhances the piece
• Haven’t thought any further about decreasing prices for early statue buyers
• 319 ‘Yes’ votes for Fairy Tail TT
• “Anyone who gets on my bad side will find me the biggest villain there is.” — Alex Davis
• Women F4F has released statues of: Zelda, Puppet Zelda, Taki, Sheik, Midna, Zero Suit Samus; in the works: Morrigan, Ivy, Faye, and others that can’t be disclosed
• “It’s a bit of a sausage fest, I’ve gotta be honest with you Chocks. That is embarassing–that’s almost sexist. Let’s rectify that.” — Alex Davis
• Wakka? If Oki sells well, F4F will keep on going with more secondary characters from Okami
• Would start with the default clothes for BOTW Zelda, but would love to do all the costumes
• Dark Samus would be considered for the Samus Suits line rather than villains because she’s a similar size to the bosses; nothing decided yet though; need to see how Dark Samus performs in the official polls at all before considering further
• Alex on Inuyasha TT’s 840+ ‘Yes’ votes: “Oh shit! Where the fuck did that come from?”; Inuyasha and Avatar have really caught Alex’s attention lately
• Avatar’s 884 ‘Yes’ Votes: “That can’t be ignored.”
• Ivy is next in the Soul Calibur line; Mitsurugi is “still sort of there”; Ivy pre-order is a while away, still at the 3-D stage
• Modern Super Shadow poll is at 750+ votes; Alex is going to sit down and plan things out this week for the various licenses F4F holds
• Not randomly giving out any details on Sheikah Slate or other Zelda items on a Q&A; “your patience will be rewarded”
• Alex is going to take the time to work on the website and assess projects for the team to work on  during Chinese New Year
• A new T-Shirt will be released every week on Red Bubble for the foreseeable future
• Will review Midna’s Display Case once the factory is ready to start production
• Warp Star Kirby production begins right after Chinese New Year
• Dracula–finishing up revisions
• “Where’s Genos? Indeed. Part of the list to put in front of the licensor.”
• Ganondorf LSB from Twilight Princess would be nice, but let’s establish the pattern for LSBs and Grand Scale Busts first
• “If you can get 1000 votes for anything–I don’t care what it is, within reason–we’ll look into it.”
• Making steel molds for Sonic TF PVC now
• Waiting for Alucard to go into the marketplace before working on Crystal Cloak Alucard; tweaking the other forms of Alucard
• Wait Lists will still convert doing Chinese New Year–China has nothing to do with Wait Lists
• New Amaterasu resin will be up for order some time after the TF PVC
• Gabriel Belmont: No recent progress; nothing to report
• Spike will ship pretty soon after Chinese New Year–will be out before the Q3 estimate
• Alphonse being made at the Guts/Katamari/Snake/Ornstein factory
• Roy Mustang and Edward Elric are at similar stages, so we’ll have to see which goes up for PO first
• Don’t have Bloodborne license; lots more Dark Souls coming
• Not showing Genos; got in a lot of trouble for teasing a picture of Kamina
• Will post a picture of Modern Amy Rose in a few days and see what kind of reaction it gets; Alex hasn’t done any work on her in about 5 months since Warp Star Kirby bombed
• Mirror’s Edge Faith is in the Vault
• Xenoblade character poll is under-performing for whatever reason–vote if you want Xenoblade
• Sailor Moon TT has performed respectably; keep voting

Banjo-Kazooie Revisions Revealed!:

• Banjo’s eyes are now slightly turned to his right to give him more life; also gives him a better profile since you see a bit of his snout now; Alex thinks the way the eyes were originally looking straight forward was a mistake; the revised eyes give a lot more life to the piece; this was straight-forward and easy to change
• Banjo’s hair tuft was also too long on the original sculpt due to changes between in-game model and artwork; has been greatly reduced in size on the revised prototype
• Kazooie’s eyes have also been turned to her right now, allowing you to see more of her beak
• The Jiggy base itself is unchanged, but the “swoosh” support has been revised and is now more blue, chunkier and more vertically-aligned
• The “swoosh” is far more stable than the previous design for the pole; much higher center of gravity now
• There’s now magnetic attachable sparkle effects and feathers for the “swoosh”; the standard and exclusive versions will both include these new effects; new effect is removable if you don’t want to have it displayed with your statue; will have light blue pads under the effects so that they don’t damage the Jiggy base
• Zero price change–F4F is going to eat the cost of the extra parts; Banjo already sold well before the improvements, so First 4 Figures can afford to include the new extras and improvements at no additional cost; “because you came to support us at the beginning, we are here to support you as well”
• Golden Jiggy and Musical Note are still included with EX, even though they’re not shown in the new video
• Improved Banjo-Kazooie Statue Pre-Order is only open until February 15th–this is the Last Chance and will not be extended
• For the next two weeks and starting now, those who ordered prior to the revisions may cancel their orders penalty-free; not applicable to anyone who cancelled prior to the improvements being revealed
• You can also cancel your existing standard order for the next two weeks and upgrade to the exclusive version

…And that’s a wrap for the record-breaking 105th episode of the First4Figures Q&A! The Exclusive Banjo-Kazooie statue goes back up for order today! Did you learn anything that gets you hyped, #F4Fam? Has anyone who was on the fence about Banjo-Kazooie decided to go ahead and order him now?