For Beginner Figure Collectors #12: Figure Companies

By TReina - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - No Comments

To All,

Greetings, I have returned with another long-awaited tutorial and this time, since we have finished the arduous journey of looking at some of the various types of figures available, from now on, I'll be focusing on the mechanics of getting a figure (where and how to purchase them), how to care for and store your figures, as well as where you can sell your old figures.

This session would be dedicated to figure companies. And I'll like to cover my three main scale figure companies which I love to order from, and I'm sure that readers who follow my posts can already guess which three I would be talking about!

They are Good Smile Company, Alter and Kotobukiya. And I'll like to give a shoutout for Myethos as well!

Good Smile Company

I'm sure the majority of us know Good Smile Company (GSC). In fact, GSC is one of the most popular figure companies in Singapore, mainly renowned locally for their Nendoroid line. They are also famous for their scale figures in Singapore, though to a lesser extent.

Similarly, I adore GSC for the two points as well, but I'll like to give them recognition for their customer service!

GSC has one of the best customer service overseas as compared to other Japanese figure companies. No matter which distributor you purchased from (even from your local store), you can always send pictures or videos of your defects to GSC, and they'll do their best to get you replacements, but only if it fits into their margins for 'defects'!

Not to mention, their site is available in English and thus is quite easy to maneuver around. All my attempts to get replacement parts for paint transfers, chips and smudges have been quite successful thus far. The only one which I had a rejected on was with a loose part on my Nendoroid, and I can't blame them as loose parts aren't that easy to demonstrate with videos or photographs. And that is something which I can live with, if I'm careful. Anything is better than random black streaks of paint on a otherwise white area -- glad GSC was willing to replace that one part for me!

Also, GSC allows you to send in requests for new figures and re-releases, though I have no idea how much they count on those requests to decide for new figures and re-releases. Luckily most of their website which you can contact them on have forms, and I love forms because I know instantly what information I need to provide them with.

So yeah, kudos to GSC's customer service!

Alter

I look to Alter for details and intricacies of sculpt. Given, many other figure companies regularly come up with glorious sculpts, but I find Alter the best at producing consistently good sculpts! Of course, their prices are really epic as well, but that is a story for another day...

But for fans of Alter, you might also know Alter as the King of Delays . And what I mean by that would be how often they delay a figure back month by month until it takes a grand total of three or four months of delay before the figure is finally released.

Another issue that they have would be their lack of customer service for overseas customers. Many users on myfigurecollection have mentioned that Alter doesn't reply to messages about defects to their figures, neither do they send any replacement parts. Of course, it doesn't help that their site is in Japanese and the email to Alter might need to be in Japanese as well.

Kotobukiya

I can't reiterate how much I count on Kotobukiya to deliver elaborate bases, and they usually don't disappoint. At least not with the figures which I yearn for. And the classic example which I always use to demonstrate my point on Kotobukiya's bases would be Kusuriuri

Even from the back, his base is simply gorgeous!

See what I mean?

The extreme amount of effort which Kotobukiya puts into the bases is obvious in their final products. Of course, not ever single one of their bases are as beautiful as this, but even at its worse, Kotobukiya will still manage to come up with a base that is acceptable for a scale figure!

And frankly, these over-the-top bases alone are enough to fuel my love for Kotobukiya, the main figure (as beautiful as they also are) aside.

Myethos

Myethos is a fairly new figure company to date and they are a Chinese-based company. However, being based in Hong Kong does not directly mean that they are selling bootlegs. They are considered legit figure companies as they make the effort to obtain licenses for making figures, which is something bootleg companies do not have -- the license to make a figure based on a particular series, that is.

And also of course, there are bootlegs of Myethos products, which is hilarious in a sense, if you consider Chinese companies ripping each other off.

Myethos doesn't have many figures yet, but they have announced quite a couple of Original Characters from their Fairy Tale series as well as Nia Teppelin from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Of these, quite a few from the Fairy Tale theme is already out on the market and the main reason for them to dabble with these instead of diving straight into the Japanese figure market is to improve their skills so they'll be able to deliver better quality and more dynamic figures that are able to withstand leaning issues for a longer period of time.

If you are contemplating that such figures would be badly designed just because they are original characters, think again after seeing the following pictures!

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of OC figures as I don't feel that much of a connection with them, however I couldn't resist pre-ordering after seeing how Queen of Hearts (2nd picture) turned out to be. This made me regret that I didn't pre-order Alice (1st picture), and she is now out of stock even on Amiami. These figures are actually quite well-received in Japan, at least better than how much I expected them to be! So it's time for me to try to get my hands on an Alice before Queen of Hearts arrive in October...

All the images and information about Meythos are taken from Amiami or from a blog interview with Myethos which you can read here! If you have been inspired by the images, or have become even slightly interested in Myethos, feel free to click on the link to the interview to learn more about Myethos!

From Your Fellow Collector,

Reina-rin