Sota Street Fighter question

[Mindwipe]

Hello all,

Got a question for all the Sota Street Fighter collectors out there. I'm kicking around the idea of starting up a SF collection of 16-20 figures and I've noticed some talk about bootlegs regarding Sota. I'd like to get most of these figures MOC but will most likely also grab loose/complete as they will all be opened and displayed anyway.

From what I've gathered so far is that the Sota Revolution series is suppose to be lower quality than previous Sota releases. But what is up with the bootlegs? Are these bootlegs sold MOC in original looking packages as well, or are these only available loose? Are they going to fall apart just by touching them? etc...

Bootleg or not, at the end of the day I just want some nice looking figures with tight joints and decent paint apps. At the same time I'd also like to avoid paying crazy money and getting knock-offs.

Any info on these will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[BadMuthaDude]

SOTA revolution is definitely lower quality. Poor sculpting that is really unrefined. E Honda and Dhalsim in particular look bad. You can almost make out a thumb print on Honda. The pegs are smaller and ridiculously so on the bigger guys. I've had breakages with all of them but Honda, but he is the worst offender for bad paint with eyes looking in different directions.

Also beware of round 4. I think the factory knew that SOTA was moving to a new one and responded by doing a sloppy job during production. The sculpts are all good, but the paint is somewhat sloppy and sometimes appears to not have dried properly. Watch out for sticky, peeling paint in Remy's hair.

All rounds can suffer from breakage due to paint making the joints stick. Mostly legs at the hip joint are victims of it. Don't force the joints if they're stuck. Some people prefer to freeze the figure and some prefer to put it in boiling water to get the joint to free itself.

The bootlegs are pretty well done. You won't tell the difference until you have it in hand. To my knowledge, bootlegs were only made of 3 round 1 figures: Ryu, Sagat, and M. Bison. They were made with the original molds so the sculpts are just fine. I haven't seen Ryu or Sagat in person, but I suspect the paint is much like the 2 pack version which, compared to round one, the only difference is that there is less blue wash on Ryu's gi. That's a good thing IMO. M. Bison is missing the highlights on his uniform and skin, making him look significantly cheaper compared to the original.

The bootleg packaging is copied right from the original but there are some giveaways. The artwork is scanned so you can see the slight quality loss: pixelation and the colours aren't as solid. On Sagat and Bison, the UPC is a sticker stuck over the insert's UPC since they only only used a Ryu insert to scan for all 3 figures.

Hope that helps.

 

[Mindwipe]

Wow, thanks a lot for the in-depth explanation BadMuthaDude

 

[BadMuthaDude]

No problem!

I had a pretty big collection back in the day when action-figure.com existed and we could communicate directly with SOTA. It was really a high point of collecting but I let go of most of my collection last year and started a (hopefully) smaller 1/6 collection.

 

[Mindwipe]

Well.... I just pulled the trigger on several of the figures in one shot to save on combined shipping, no going back now Like yourself, I also want to keep my 1/6th collection very small. Thanks again for the info.