Tag Archives: king of fighters

Oct 2 2024

Popup Parade (King of Fighters): Mai Shiranui by Max Factory

I just did an SNK figure review last week when I checked out Tunshi Studio’s Fio from Metal Slug 3 and it’s crazy that there’s enough SNK toys and merch on the market that I could be back with another one already. Honestly, I could keep this going for a while with what I’ve got stockpiled, but let’s not get ahead ourselves. Today I’m popping back to Max Factory’s Popup Parade line to have a look at their newest release of the lovely Mai Shiranui from King of Fighters! Of course, Mai is no stranger around here, as I checked out Kotobukiya’s Bishoujo take on her not that long ago, and eventually I’ll get around to her action figure from Storm Collectibles. Popup Parade became a viable alternative for me when Kotobukiya priced me out of the Bishoujo market with the constant price hikes, but I’m not trying to suggest the two lines are in any way comparable, as these figures are basically a budget line, roughly equivalent to higher end prize figures. Either way, Popup Parade has been hitting the fighting games pretty hard lately. They did a couple of Succubi from Capcom’s DarkStalkers and as well as some ladies from Street Fighter and I guess now it’s SNK’s turn.

The packaging has its ups and downs. On the good side, these boxes are entirely clear plastic with some inserts to make up the back and part of the front. They are collector friendly and show off the figure well, especially if you remove the plastic wrap from around the figure. On the downside, there’s no real artistic value to the package presentation and even the franchise branding is almost non-existent. I do actually save these boxes to store the figures when they aren’t on display, but the only reason I make the space to be able to do that is because I don’t buy a lot of these. Some of them can be really big, but Mai’s is fairly economical.

NIPPON ICHI! Out of the box, Mai is just about ready for display. You just have to peg her feet into the base and she’s ready to make your shelf look a lot prettier. The composition here is about as conservative as you can get, and that’s not a complaint. It’s not like there are a ton of Mai statues in this price range, so I’m happy to get her in a very iconic and familiar pose. She stands triumphant, with her left hip tossed to the side and her left hand resting on her ample caboose. Her right hand holds up her Kachousen, offering her opponent a taunt. The sculpting here is excellent for a figure in this price range, with great little touches like the detailed wrappings around her wrists and feet. The sculpt can be a little soft in areas, particularly around the shoulder cords and the tails spilling out the back, but I think it suits the theme.

The colors here are beautiful! The red and white of her kunoichi outfit pops brilliantly and her skin tone is warm and soft with some shading to bring out the contours. It’s also completely lacking that awful waxiness that you often see in lower quality prize figures. I’m even going to go so far as to say I like the skin tone on this figure a bit better than what Koto gave us, and that’s not just crazy talk. The paint lines are all very clean and I love that they used a high gloss for the red and white balls at the end of her costume tails.

The portrait is very well done. She offers a little smile and a knowing side glance, all perfectly printed. The hair is particularly nice, hanging over the edges of her face and pulled back into a snaking ponytail that cascades from the back top of her head. For what is largely a passively pose, the hair offers a little bit of dynamic energy.

The base is a raised circular platform cast in a smoked black plastic. It’s got a slight transparency to it, but sitting on the shelf it looks solid black. Simple and serviceable, as is the case with most of these Popup Parade figures. I don’t mind getting a diorama style base, but with lower priced figures like this one, I find that simple is often better. Plus, the figure is certainly nice enough that it doesn’t need any additional window dressing in the base.

Here’s Mai with some of her Popup Parade Capcom peers. I think she scales ever so slightly bigger, but they’re close enough that I will have no problem displaying them together for a little SNK vs Capcom action.

Occasionally, Popup Parade has disappointed me, but that’s certainly not the case here. And at just a little over $40, this lady certainly has nothing to apologize for. She doesn’t have the depth of sculpt as Kotobukiya’s Bishoujo, but then that figure costs three times what this one does, so all things considered I think this Mai can hold her own. Indeed, some may even prefer this one as it’s styled more on the game art and less on the Bishoujo style. And I actually like her more than a few Mai’s that have been produced by lesser known companies in the $100+ range. So, if you want something to brighten up that shelf in your game room, and don’t want to blow a lot of money, this Mai is just the ticket!

Nov 6 2023

King of Fighters ’98: Mai Shiranui Bishoujo Statue by Kotobukiya

I already talked about the cornucopia of King of Fighters merch that’s been hitting the shelves, back when I looked at Storm’s Blue Mary figure and a lot of that merch mostly seems to be centered around KOF 98, which works for me, because it’s definitely the game in the series I played the most when it was released as KOF Dream Match 99 on the SEGA Dreamcast. Of course, since then I’ve collected a ton of KOF releases for just about every platform imaginable and have access to the actual arcade games on my Neo Geo Arcade Stick Pro so it’s a pretty great time to be a fan of the franchise. And even Kotobukiya is getting in on the action with 1:7 scale statues in their Bishoujo series.

Here she is in the box, which features some colorful artwork and some generously sized windows to let in plenty of light. Indeed, once you remove the plastic wrap, she displays really well in the package! The box also feels a lot more durable than the super thin cardboard they were using for a while. Some of you may know that I have a pretty sizeable collection of Koto’s Bishoujo statues, most of which have been reviewed here on FFZ, and I was fond of ending most of those reviews by stating that these statues were the best value to be had on the statue market. Well, those days are long gone as the retail price of most of Koto’s releases have doubled in the last ten years or so. I can remember getting most of mine back in the day for around $59-69.99 and nowadays most release at over $120. Yikes! The quality is still there, but because of the price hike, I’ve pulled back on collecting them and even let some of my Street Fighter Bishoujos go. Heck, the last Bishoujo I reviewed was Ibuki from Street Fighter and that was six years ago! But, here we are today and Mai turned up at a pretty deep discount a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t resist.

Sporting what I would consider her most iconic pose, I can practically see her going through the fluid motions of her idle animation and hear her exclaim.. NIPPON ICHI! Her pose places her left hand upon her jutting backside while her right hand clutches her butterfly fan. She sports her red and white kunoichi regalia, which is sculpted separately from the body to really give the figure some wonderful depth. She has has heavy braided cords that cross her back and loop under her arms, while the split running down the middle front of her top can barely contain her great assets. It’s belted in white around her slender waist and spills down between her legs, stopping at her knees in the front, but bisecting into two flowing forms out the back, each girded with a giant ball. The outfit is rounded out with a pair of red and black tabi on her feet. Koto did a wonderful job capturing the flow of the outfit as well as the sensual curves of her amazing body.

As is always the case with Koto’s work, the colors are gorgeous. The whites feature a clean matte finish while and the red pops with a vibrant glossy sheen. The plastic they use for the skin holds a beautiful warm tone with some added shading to bring it to life, with none of that waxy finish you get on lesser quality statues.

The portrait is spot-on with the Bishoujo style matching the KOF artwork quite nicely. Mai looks up and off to the side with a thin smile on her lips. Her hair features a top knot that cascades down in a ponytail while her bangs part to perfectly frame each side of her face on the front. So beautiful!

For the base, Koto went for more of a diorama style than usual. I’ve been used to seeing either stylized logo bases or just plain generic black or clear disks for a while. This one is just a section of a street with a manhole cover. It looks OK, but it’s nothing special.

There’s no doubt about it, Kotobukiya still knows how to put out quality figures, and unfortunately they know it, so those prices keep going up. Mai retails for around $120, but I nabbed her for $80. It was still a bit more than I felt comfortable spending, but she went up right before I was going into a spending moratorium for a while, so I decided to splurge. Ultimately, I’m glad I picked her up as she looks gorgeous, but I really wish Max Factory would give us some KOF PopUp Parade figures so Koto’s wouldn’t tempt me so much. Koto also did a Bishoujo of Athena from KOF 98, but I’m not a big enough fan of hers to get her unless she went on a serious clearance sell-out price. And, of course they did a female version of Terry Bogard, and I swear the first release pre-dated the SNK Heroines game that gender-swapped Terry. I wasn’t interested in it back then, but now it’s actually branded under the game and I kind of want her, but it’s not a $130 kind of want.

Sep 29 2023

King of Fighters ’98: Blue Mary by Storm Collectibles

SNK has had an interesting couple of decades since it’s bankruptcy and well… whatever the state of the company is these days. And yet in a way, it’s been enjoying a renaissance with there being more ways to access the Neo Geo library now than probably ever. Even legally! We’re also getting a decent number of toys and collectibles as well. I’ll refer you back to my look at Metal Slug 3’s Marco Rossi figure if you want to hear me gushing on about what it was like to live in envy of Neo Geo owners in the 90s. And yeah, most of that envy was aimed at Metal Slug and the shoot-em-ups, but it certainly applied to the fighting games too. Case in point, it wasn’t until almost 10 games into the series, when Dream Match ’99 arrived on the Dreamcast that I was finally able to play a decent port of a King of Fighters game. And boy was that a blissful weekend spent with that game and my ASCII Arcade Stick. Good times! And now, Storm Collectibles has been releasing figures based on the KOF 98 roster. I pre-ordered late in the game and all but Blue Mary got cancelled. I sat on her for a while, trying to decide whether to keep her or not, when just this past week Storm announced reissues of Terry Bogard and Iori. I was able to get these pre-ordered (along with Mai!) and now I’m excited to get Mary opened knowing the others will eventually be on the way!

Storm does a wonderful presentation for these figures. Mary comes in a big window box with the game logo on the front, along with a shot of Blue Mary. The window is huge and shows off the figure and some of her extras, and there’s a printed backdrop based on one of the level backgrounds behind the tray. Everything is collector friendly.

KOF 98 was Mary’s second appearance in a KOF title, but the character actually premiered back in Fatal Fury 3. When I play Dream Match 99, I tend to gravitate toward Terry first but I’m quick to take Mary or Mai for a spin when I’m feeling adventurous. And it’s probably because of how many hours I burned on Dream Match 99 that this version will always be Mary’s most iconic look to me. Casting off the jacket from the Fatal Fury series, she dons her mid-riff exposing red top, blue baggie pants and fingerless gloves, and a pair of reddish-brown sneakers. The whole ensemble is rounded out by a loose brown belt that rests on her hips. It’s a simple character design that makes for a great looking figure.

And as always, Storm did a beautiful job sculpting this figure. Her top is part of the upper body, but it still hangs down over her midriff hiding that joint. The pants go light on the rumples, but bag up down by the highly cinched ankle cuffs. The ringed stars on the thighs are sculpted on as is the smaller black belt with the gold buckle. The wider brown belt has a peg to secure it, but the peg is too soft to go in and hold there, so I just let it float off one hip or the other, which works well enough. The colors on this figure are absolutely gorgeous and she pops just like the original pixel art. The vibrant blue and red compliment each other perfectly, the skin tone looks good, and the added orange on the stars is nice. I think the boots could have been a tad more brown, but that’s just me nitpicking.

You get a whopping four different heads, which is pretty impressive. These include smiling, pissed off, playful wink, and dynamic wind blown hair with a shouty mouth. All of these are wonderfully expressive and work for some pretty fun poses. I think my favorite are the last two. The wind blown look to the hair is great. My only nitpick on any of these is the seam running across just above her hairline. It’s not really a big deal, but since there’s no face plates to swap, I think they could have done a little better with that.

If you’ve played around with any of Storm’s figures, you should know what to expect from the articulation here. Mary is very agile and limber, just as she should be. The elbows and knees are fabulous with double joints that give you all the range of motion you can ask for. Hips allow for plenty of movement, there’s a ball joint under the chest, and you get rotating hinges in the ankles and hinges just behind the toes of the boots. Lateral crunches in the shoulders enhance those rotating hinges, there are swivels in the biceps and pegged hinges in the wrists to allow you to swap hands. How many hands? Five pairs total! You get a pair of finger pointing hands, fists, relaxed hands, slightly more relaxed hands, and grapple hands. Not bad!

Mary comes with one effect part and it’s a giant energy circle from slamming her opponents into the ground. Alas, I only have Mary right now, so I’ll have to wait to get some real use out of it. But it’s a great looking piece with a translucent effect starting relatively clear at the ground and working up to a fiery red-orange along the tops of the flames.

The illustrated backgrounds Storm includes with these figures are also a nice bonus and they stand pretty well if you want to use them as a display behind your figure. Mary comes with the US Train Yard Stage which is wonderfully recreated here right down to the pixelated edges on the art.

Storm’s figures sure ain’t cheap, and Mary goes for about $105, which is no doubt a lot of money for a 7-inch scale figure. Heck, it’s even a lot by this line’s standards as both Terry and Iori reissued at under $100 each. But it’s hard to argue with quality and Storm never ceases to deliver on it in spades. Mary is a ridiculously fun figure to play with, thanks to the smooth jointing system, near perfect balance, and the crazy range of motion you can get out of her. And the passel of extra heads and hands certainly adds to that value. She’s hard to put down and she’s been standing on my desk ready for action since I opened her. It’s great to see KOF figures on the market and I can’t wait to expand my character roster.