SD Comic-Con 07 SOTA

"Happy to assassinate on your order, sir!"

Since their acquisition of the license years ago, SOTA have made some amazing figures of the popular Street Fighter series. Patrolled by a couple of M. Bison's doll assassins, SOTA's booth had many of their upcoming Street Fighter and Darkstalkers figures on display, some of which hadn't been seen before.

SOTA's fifth series of Street Fighter figures should be out in a coupe of months. Instead of being called Round 5 to follow up their previous four series of Street Fighter figures, it is being called Revolutions-1 because of SOTA's new, improved detailed sculpting and more character-specific articulation. Some characters with the new improvements have already been released with the Previews series consisting of Ryu, Ken, and Akuma. Two very limited edition figures of Evil Ryu and Shin Akuma were also produced, but good luck trying to find one now as they were limited to only 250 of each.

The SOTA booth had double-sized prototypes of the new series of Street Fighter figures on display with E. Honda, Dhalsim, Mika, and Zangief. If you are familiar with the previous figures, then the increased detail actually is more apparent yet they still look like they belong with the previous series (which they do). The figures look utterly fantastic and stay very true to the characters. Dhalsim is easily SOTA's best looking Street Fighter figure yet and I rarely ever play the games as Dhalsim. His skull necklace just rocks. Mika continues the cute and busty Capcom ladies trend. E. Honda is simply one massive figure. And his hands are huge! That hundred hand slap seems even more painful after seeing the figure.

The figure for Zangief had not been finalized when pictures of the other three were released a couple months ago, and it still looks that way. While the Zangief prototype was on display, his head was unpainted and brown. It looks like the 'Gief's head will be going through a little more fine tuning and approval yet. Regardless, the figure itself looked great. No fan of the 'Gief should be without one. SOTA also had a little surprise with the prototype for Alex on display. Alex will be a part of Revolutions-2 to be released in 2008.

Nothing is better in the cold Russian winter than a chocolate-dipped Zangief head.

Along with Darkstalkers series 1's Demitri and Lord Raptor figures, SOTA also had series 2 on display. The second series of Darkstalkers figures looks to be the succubus Morrigan, her younger sister Lilith, and Dee, Darkstalkers ultra secret character that resembles the vampire Demitri. However, I have a feeling that Dee may be some kind of an exclusive. Morrigan and Lilith were looking good in SOTA style and it was nice to see that SOTA made at least two of the female Darkstalkers characters.

When the first series of figures was announced, I was very surprised that it was only consisted of two figures and that they were Demitri and Lord Raptor. Demitri I could understand being in series 1, but Lord Raptor? Is he really that popular among the Darkstalkers fan base or was he picked because he's a zombie with a guitar? One of the female characters would have been a much better choice than him and would have assuredly increased the number of orders for the figures. Just look at the Capcom fighting game based figures in Japan with lines dedicated to only Capcom's female characters.

As is the case, series 1 of Darkstalkers has been delayed time and again and will only begin actual production once SOTA has enough orders in. I'm not big into Demitri or Lord Raptor, but I think I may pre-order them just so there is a greater chance that we can all get a series 2. So far they need a little less than 3000 more orders to begin production. I sincerely hope they make it. If you are a Darkstalkers fan and want to help SOTA meet their production run and increase the chances of more Darkstalkers figures, you can pre-order Demitri and Lord Raptor at SOTA's website.

For a few non-figure Street Fighter items on display, SOTA had the Sagat and Blanka 12" resin statues. Sagat always looks bad-ass and this statue was no exception. The Blanka was by far the best representation of the character I have ever seen. If I was into statues it would no doubt be a future part of my collection.

Tucked away in its own case was SOTA's Transformers Chess prototype. The pieces are done in the classic Generation 1 style and while it didn't have all the pieces on display, what was there looked great. Optimus, Grimlock, Bumblebee, Jazz, Ultra Magnus, and Rodimus were on the Autobot side with Megatron, Galvatron, Shockwave, Soundwave, Starscream, and Quick Kick on the Decepticon side. Wait, Megatron and Galvatron are on the chess board together? Won't that cause some sort of temporal time displacement and destroy the galaxy or something? Anyways, Soundwave comes with a little Ravage and Laserbeak, which should probably give his piece some added advantage in strategizing. The board is nicely elevated and looks like a solid piece to play with or just have on display. I feel like I would forget which character was supposed to be what chess piece, though.

SOTA had a number of Comic-Con exclusives available this year. The repainted turquoise Dan figure was their Street Fighter figure exclusive. Turquoise Dan is limited to 1000 pieces. The Wizard booth had their own exclusive version of Dan in his regular pink garb. The rest of SOTA's exclusives were an Evil Ryu resin statue and three Darkstalkers items: a pink Felicia PVC statue, and micro busts of Demitri and Dee. Each of these were limited to 250 pieces. The remainder of a few of the exclusives are available on SOTA's website.

Now that I've finished discussing SOTA's figures, I need to go on a rant about their recent Street Fighter packaging they have used for the Previews line and the Dan figures. The figures used to come in blister cards that would be closer in size to the actual figure. The new packages are basically window boxes that measure approximately 10" x 7" x 6" which is an excessively large package for a 7or 8-inch figure. While it look nice and all, the packaging is simply a large waste of space. Hopefully the Street Fighter Revolutions-1 figures will be back in a normal, smaller blister card or something.

I'm already a fan of many things Street Fighter, but seeing the new series of figures in person got me a bit more excited. Hopefully everything is running smoothly and we will see them become available later this year and not be delayed again.


Pointing guy: "Stop posing and go assassinate me a bacon wrapped hot dog!"	Alex from the far-off Street Fighter Revolution-2 series.	The 12" Blank resin statue comes in a box full of anger.	Sagat always looks bad-ass, even if he's just standing there.

The only way to end the war between Autobots and Decepticons is a game of chess.