Thought First 4 Figures was done for the week news-wise after the surprise unveiling of  the Dark Souls Mimic statue at E3 2018? You thought wrong! In this week’s episode of the First 4 Figures Q&A with CEO Alex Davis and Lieutenant Tsoek Cheung…

WHO would win a rap battle between Alex and Chockles?
WHAT kind of statues would F4F be able to produce in a potential Resident Evil series?
WHEN is the next Legend of Zelda statue (the Sheikah Slate) targeted for a pre-order?
WHERE has the increased price of statues over the last decade-plus come from?
HOW does Alex feel about the growth of First4Figures as a company?
WHY is Mimic’s ass covered in hair?

And more!

Notices and The Week in Review:

• Dark Souls Mimic statue debuted at the E3 2018 Bandai Namco booth this week, where he was displayed alongside Artorias, Prince and Nightmare
• No more DS hype after today (for now)–“10 solid straight days of Dark Souls hype!” [Actually, there’s been 14 since they started on SD Solaire Reservation Friday.]
• Two Darks Souls Remastered winners will be chosen from this stream; use hashtag #F4FDS4LIFE in the livestream to be entered
• Pre-orders for True Form Midna exclusive closed during the week
• Sheikah Slate has not been approved by Nintendo yet–quite a few changes that need to be made before it will be; loose aim is for pre-order in 3.5 months and Rider Link in 7 months
• Sonic Boom8 Partnership Combo Packs are both open for order until July 9th for this round of pre-ordering; if these do well then they’ll be available again for another batch later
• 250 Reward Point secret code in the Rap post that Alex made last weekend–if you haven’t claimed it yet, you should! 254 people have as of the livestream.
• New hire for the F4F staff this week; can do photography, video, etc. so that Sandy doesn’t have to do all of that; will hopefully lead to more content in the future; hiring in a safe way and not expanding too quickly
• True Form Midna’s all-black leg has been added
• Looking into whether or not it’s worth it to make any alteration to the pose for Mega Man Zero–not much traffic or interest in the poll so far
• Blue Kirby is the one Warp Star Kirby colorway that Alex is planning right now
• Bower shipping will probably be more like Q4 than Q3, because he’s scheduled to go into production after Varia Suit Samus (who’s deep in development now)
• Kill La Kill Poll has 820+ votes already so Alex posted a character poll to see if 3 or more characters can get 800+ votes; Alex wants to see that this isn’t a “one-and-done”; F4F is not looking for new licenses, so a license really has to be impressive for F4F to go after it
• 8 statues are going through production right now and Alex posted videos of them all this week
• Kingdom Hearts would require a ton more resources, which is why First 4 Figures isn’t doing it right now
• Sonic 25th Anniversary is finished at the factory and en route to collectors now
• Skull Knight is the next Berserk statue after Guts
• Artorias SD EX is finishing at the factory in a week’s time–some problems with the LED needed fixed and slowed him down
• Spyro isn’t ready to ship yet
• Spike has now been approved for PO and is coming in the next month or so
• Resident Evil statues would have to be monsters and not characters according to Alex’s talk with Capcom; if all you want is characters, then you don’t want F4F to get the Resident Evil license

On The King of the Ring and Temptation Thursdays:

• Future F4F King of the Ring tournaments will feature all heavy hitters in the first round so that the brackets are so predictable
• TT 105 Zone of the Enders: 151 ‘Yes’, 117 ‘No’; 50/50-ish; hopefully when the new game comes out some fans will start voting on this poll
• TT 106 Rocket Knight Adventures: 43 ‘Yes’ Votes, 194 ‘No’ Votes; Only 18% ‘Yes’ so far; Not quite the highest numbers so far
• TT 107 Sailor Moon Original Anime Next Week!
• TT 108 Wipeout (the futuristic racing game) in 2 Weeks! — Chosen by Alex
• TT 109 Vampire Hunter D anime in 3 Weeks! — Chosen by Alex
• TTs really need to have 800-850 votes to get First4Figures’ attention at this point
• Matches 3 and 4 from King of the Ring posted yesterday and today, respectively; technical difficulties with polls have now been resolved
• Match 5 will be next week: Metal Sonic vs. Pac-Man

The Q&A!:

• The chain on the Mimic statue is already metal, but is limp and hanging down on the E3 prototype despite the dynamic lunging pose of the statue–the chain will be revised to have motion in it (like the morning star that the Castlevania Simon Belmont statue came with)
• The ass hair was added to Mimic to give him a bit more detailing, since he’s otherwise all skin–From Software loved the idea for the Mimic hair; it adds a little something extra
• Will discuss the design choice for Mimic’s base during the Making of Documentary in a few weeks
• Don’t know the final count yet for True Form Midna
• Yes, F4F has favorite factories to use and they vary–which is used depends on a ton of different factors
• Just got approval from Bandai-Namco to go into production on Tekken Law. Have to figure out what to do about reopening pre-orders for Law.
• Don’t think there will be any F4F statues displayed Anime Expo (AX) this year
• Trying to possibly get Spike to the Japan Expo in France in July for the 20th Anniversary
• No plans for NYCC any time soon; this year is all about GamesCom and ACG
• Chock ain’t got time for rap battles–Alex can rap battle all weekend, but Chock ain’t got time for that
• The engineering for the Sonic and Tails diorama statue is difficult and being worked through
• Alex will do a My Hero Academia character poll later on, even though the license is still complicated and not confirmed
• Chocks is looking forward to every single game being shown at E3
• Would F4F OCC Members be up for a Spider-Man statue based on the style in the new PS4 game? “That Spider-Man game does look amazing.”
• No concerns about replicating the hairs on Mimic in production; Alex loosely estimates a September pre-order for the Mimic statue
• “How can we host a Smash Bros. tournament? Is that possible?”; Could probably be figured out and streamed when Smash Bros. Ultimate comes out in December
• Can set up a community on Playstation 4, but have to figure out how to organize play
• Alex thought E3 Nintendo Direct was cool; is excited
• Tuesday, July 3rd probably won’t be Banjo-Kazooie’s pre-order date
• Crystal Dragon is looking sweet
• Every Dark Souls SD statue is different; won’t all necessarily have a light-up effect as the EX
• Mimic is hairy because “it’s realism”
• Crystal Dragon is coming along very, very well
• Nothing confirmed about Resident Evil
• No updates on Yoshimitsu
• Now that 25th Anniversary Sonic is finished, Amaterasu Life-Size Bust is in production; Alex puts factory photos of Amaterasu LSB from his phone on the livestream for us
• Alex hasn’t had a chance to watch Lost in Space yet on Netflix
• Morrigan in development; tweaking up the concept
• Crash and Aku Aku Mask bases are the same style, but not the same size
• If the fans rally enough, First 4 Figures will certainly have a conversation with Aniplex about Kill La Kill
• Alex’s thoughts on F4F’s growth: “We’re teeny-tiny potatoes. But! It’s definitely growing. And there are difficulties and challenging with growing. But things are manageable at the moment… have been able to expand in a kind of safe way.”; F4F almost feels like a startup because the company went almost 10 years without much staff; has expanded in a way that’s safe thanks to 10 years of experience
• Alex is considering just letting go and not micro-managing everything anymore; when you have a bigger team and it’s relatively young (Brenda has been on the team the longest and has been with the company about 2.5 years), it’s hard for Alex to step back and let people work by themselves; Alex is looking forward to removing himself from the day-to-day running of the company so that he can go to E3 and Anime Expo and go to more business meetings and events; probably something that will happen in about a year’s time possibly; right now Alex is the bottleneck on the company, but building a great foundation now with great people and a great team
• Sounds incredibly complicated from an IT POV to transfer payments from a cancelled order to store credit for another statue, but Alex can certainly look into it
• Banjo-Kazooie pre-order “semi-soonish”
• There is no real number that polls need to be considered–it’s more about how the numbers of one poll compare to those of another and what people are asking for more than others
• 500 votes for Xenoblade puts it at almost no chance right now because Nintendo licenses are very difficult resource-wise, whereas “low-hanging fruit” licenses are a bit more tempting; it’s all on a case-by-case basis though
• Polls are the single biggest influence on what gets produced
• F4F will talk more about the dimensions of the Mimic base when it comes up for pre-order in Q3
• 3-D printing is used to make the first prototypes of F4F statues now
• When painting a statue, F4F usually paints with shadow on light and not light on shadow
• Dante is coming along nicely; some changes have been made to the base
• Let’s see how Mugen does before talking about Jin
• Marketing for anime: Samurai Champloo audience that can be targeted to on Facebook is relatively tiny compared to the audiences of many other franchises; relatively hard to target to many anime like Samurai Champloo
• Those who had difficulties during the PO for Majora’s Mask will still be receiving their 1000 bonus Reward points once all the orders have shipped
• Digimon TT poll is 50/50 between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and has less than
• 400 ‘Yes’ votes, so: “Not for now.”
• Casting –> Painting –> Assembly –> Packing are the stages of production, and generally take 4-6 months once started
• Alucard is at a different factory than Bowser with no backlog, which is why Alucard is already going into production and Bowser hasn’t yet
• Meta-Ridley is almost ready to submit for final approval
• A lot of uniqueness in the design for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
• Starting to work on Yakuza slowly but surely
• No plans for Paper Mario right now, but Alex likes the thought
• Card holders would definitely come purchasable by themselves if made
• Chock would choose LTTP Link if guaranteed Nintendo would approve any Zelda statue proposed
• Alex would probably choose Tingle if he could have any Zelda character approved for a statue
• Alex has nothing he can say about any Legend of Zelda PVCs or if there will be any more Zelda POs after Sheikah Slate this year
• No plans to remake Scervo
• Alex hasn’t received what Bang mailed for Sarah yet
• Warp Star Kirby is coming along nicely; Alex just started working on the blue version
• Animal companions from Kirby’s Dreamland 2 probably not feasible
• Alex would love to make Resident Evil: Code Veronica statues
• The primary reason statue production gets delayed is backlog at the factories themselves
• Alex has a good idea of what’s possible and what’s not manufacturing-wise based on experience
• Happy birthday to Ronald Jacobs’ wife!
• Chocks knows what the next pre-order is
• Factors contributing to the increase in statue prices over the last decade-plus:
  1) Size: Can’t compare 1/4 True Form Midna to the price for much smaller OOT Link; 8 years difference between Zant and Midna POs
  2) Workers wages have increased exponentially at the resin factories; it’s a difficult and dirty job and requires a lot of skills; workers need to be offered substantially more than the minimum factory pay from a factory that isn’t so difficult; you also have to pay more money for
  3) The exchange rate has changed from ~8% to ~6%
  4) Materials and general inflation impact the prices of all things and not just high-end statues
  5) There are a ton more companies in the statue industry now–at least double what there were before and the custom market going berserk (largely because of 3D printing)–the factory now has the ability to pick-and-choose what projects/companies they want to take on and charge higher prices; F4F tries to price as low as possible, but factories don’t give a shit about what you’re charging to charge–they’re willing to take on whoever will pay them most
• Alphonse is planned for pre-order after Spike; would like to have up for pre-order this summer if everything goes smoothly; trying to get him to debut at Aniplex booth
• Chocks likes Foo Fighters
• Yoshi color variants will happen
• No Kamina Definitive Edition
• Shovel Knight will be delayed to Q4; still need to put Green Shovel Knight up for order
• Still interested in doing Metal Gear Solid Snake Life Size Bust
• Black Light in True Form Midna DE case will not damage the paint; not high-powered enough for that
• Genos PO will be in 2019
• Character poll for Kill La Kill was not created just to make people forget about Samurai Champloo; want to see if it’s a multi-character license or not
• No new tease of Morrigan for a while
• Will check on Guts’ PO numbers next week
• Next week will be the full reveal and reservation period for the Spyro Crystal Dragon statue, including the documentary, official photos, pricing details etc.
• Crystal Dragon was a tough project to make look cool because of the simplistic design–has gone through a lot of changes and really happy how it’s come out in the end

And that it’s for the F4F Q&A #74! Learn anything that gets you psyched up this week, #F4Fans?