Pop Culture Shock 1/3 scale Chun-Li statue

I love Street Fighter, and have been playing since high school back in the 1990s. My favourite character is Ryu, and I have the previously released 1/3 scale Ryu statue from Pop Culture Shock (PCS). When I saw the prototype for the new Chun-Li, I knew I had to have this classic rendition of her too!

Click through below to check out my full video review on the Kool Kollectibles YouTube channel. Hope you can give the video a thumbsup and subscribe too! 😃

When a statue of this size and presence arrives in the post, it's always a great day. My smile couldn't get much bigger could it? 😄

After setting her up, she absolutely looks amazing. The level of sculpting detail is pretty good, and the material used for the mixed media is great too. The stockings look nice, and I'm glad they moved the seam from the outside of the legs to the inside. It's mostly hidden, but from some angles you can still see some unsightly stitching. Luckily it's not that noticeable from most angles.

The qipao has a nice material, but I wish some of the gold stitching was done with more attention to symmetry. From the front it looks OK, but some of the stitchning along her back is noticeably off centre. The front gold stitching fares a bit better.

Placing the wrist bracelets and hands was a little tricky, especially on the left hand to get it sitting close to her chest. But just make sure the bracelets sit low enough on the arms to allow the hands and their magnets to connect properly and it'll be fine.

The paint application on the visible skin is a little flat. I was expecting to see more skin texture and freckling like they did with the Ryu. That sort of detail always adds to the realism, especially at this scale. The lack of much skin texture and shading is a little disappointing, but from regular viewing distances it holds up OK.

Now on to some of the more annoying QC issues that have resulted in me asking for a replacement head sculpt. The issues I have with my statue are:

1) The red satin material used to wrap parts of the statue actually rubbed off red colour onto white painted parts of the statue. This included the hair buns and it was worst on the right shoe. The red cannot be wiped off with water.

2) The bridge of her nose has a strange small patch that is a lighter shade than the surrounding skin colour. It's like the top layer of paint was removed from that small area.

3) The sculpt along her underwear near the stocking seam has a crack. This is luckily hidden when the back of the skirt is in the normal down position.

It's the red stains on her hair buns and that light patch on her nose that mar an otherwise great sculpt. I've contacted the retailer, so will hopefully find out soon if I can get an exchange on the head sculpt. I really hope PCS learn from this and use a white satin material instead of red!

In the end, it's a fantastic statue that I love in the collection. Once an unblemished head sculpt arrives, she'll be damn near perfect!

Pop Culture Shock Collectibles Ryu Ansatsuken Exclusive 1/4 scale statue

I still remember the preorder time like it was yesterday! I love Street Fighter and Ryu, so once I saw the teaser pics of this Ryu 1/4 scale statue, I knew I had to have it! Being my first PCS statue, I was warned that the preorder frenzy could be very stressful, with website drop outs and cancelled orders etc. Being in Australia, the preorder open was in the middle of the night, so I stayed up until the time it started.

It was a heart-stopping 4-5 minutes trying to enter all the information and push through the payment via PayPal. Luckily for me the timestamp on the order was within 10 mins, as that was essentially the cutoff to get an approved order for the Ansatsuken exclusive version that had a smaller edition size.

I was so happy to secure the preorder, and pretty much sat back for about 21 months for this to finally be released! I had no idea that it would take this long to release, but since the AUD dropped significantly in that period, I was actually lucky to have paid upfront with the upfront discount and much higher AUD!

So was it worth the wait? Click through below to watch my full video review on the Kool Kollectibles YouTube channel and find out! :) Or scroll down further below for more pics and thoughts :)

The packaging itself was simple, yet protected the statue well inside with sturdy foam.

Immediate out of the box still in the foam, it was immediately obvious that the costume (the gi) was a very weathered yellow colour that had been the source of much complaint. Still in the plastic wrapping, I got a sense of what the other collectors were debating, but I hoped for the best when taking it all out for full display.

Before I go further on the yellowing, I must say that I love the underlying sculpt and paint application of the statue. My photos tend to make the statue seem a bit too shiny, but it's definitely not like that in hand. I think it's more to do with my bright cold white LED lighting that gives that effect.

The three head sculpts included with the Ansatsuken exclusive are all pretty fantastic, with my favourite definitely being the angry snarling face. The skin texture perhaps doesn't have that ultra realistic freckling like Hot Toys figures, but it certainly has some texture that looks great up close.

The paint app on the arms in particular is outstanding, with the faint blue of the veins and all the shadowing that accentuates the musculature of the sculpt. Overall I'm really happy with the pose and proportions of the statue.

For the mixed media, I love the fabric head band, and the costume itself is made of a great canvas type material that isn't overly delicate. The intentional fraying around the shoulders and ankles looks quite realistic and is nicely done.

The belt is also a nice material with clear gold kanji on the front. The gloves, although not fabric or leather like, still have a nice paint app that accentuates the detail in the fist and knuckles.

Of course not everything is perfect. I have to agree with many collectors who are complaining about the degree of yellowing in the costume. The prototype pictures certainly show that there is some weathering, but it is much more subtle that was is on the final production costume.

As I show in my video review, the biggest problem I think is that the weathering is not consistently applied throughout. This makes for some jarring transitions between yellow and bright white areas of the costume that give it an incomplete or messy job.

I think that if the weathering was more subtly applied, or at least more consistently applied, then it wouldn't look off in those areas. For what it is, it does come across a bit like Ryu has spilled some coffee on himself. Luckily in most natural lighting, the yellowing effect isn't too distracting.

The costume also have wiring across the front stitching and neck area, so you can futz around with it to give it a looser appearance and show off the great musculature of the torso area a bit more.

In the end, as my first PCS statue, I'm pretty happy with it. The pose is iconic Ryu for sure, and the quality of the paint app is great. The mixed media is also really nice material that is not overly delicate to adjust. With the three head sculpts to give some variety in the display cabinet, I think it's certainly worth the preorder price that I paid. Aside from the yellowing, the only other complaint I have is that now I want the Gouken statue as well lol!! :)