Naughty or Nice by Fresh Monkey Fiction

New update - not a whole lot of new pre-orders. Two weeks left.

They shouldn't have done the lazy reuse Halloween figures before this. It makes all the reuse here feel worse and like we can't expect anything real different from this line

Yeah, by the third wave, you'd have assumed they'd get to some different characters like Mrs. Claus or something.  How many Santa figures does one person need? 

I think they might do better to launch the new wave preorders in October so the figures will make it by the next Christmas. Wave 2 not yet being in hand has to hurt the preorders for Wave 3.

That BBTS doesn't overtly promote on their site that "we need X preorders before a certain date" means it doesn't have that kickstarter ticking clock feel to it.

I assume the production runs on these are greater than 500 each anyway, so curious what the real number needs to be - my guess is they use the preorders to gauge overall interest as much as anything. Red Krampus, the Elf - just repaints, and for the Elf which needs 300, if only $6K in preorders is needed to fire up the factory, seems like that is something you choose to do or not.

@fac I definitely agree with that sentiment regarding the timing. Last year, the first wave just barely made it for Christmas and I was a bit disheartened to see Wave Two put up for preorder around the same time. I did consider that the reused tools might be all that they needed to get on the right track, but putting Wave 3 up when they did just seems silly. Maybe they have sales data that says it has more to do with when the sale is timed than when product is delivered that matters most, and that wouldn't surprise me, but I'd personally rather have these figures arrive in December than not. It's going to be a little weird to get Wave 2 later this month after already putting away the Christmas stuff.

Not that it really truly matters in the big picture. I'm not preordering any of the wave 3 figures simply because I just don't want any of them. They've definitely pushed these molds as far as they can go. And good for them in doing so. I'm just all set on their Santa figure and I'm struggling to come up with another version I want out of them. I do expect most of this third wave to go into production, even if we never see the final order numbers. The 1:18 stuff might not make it, but the amount of reuse in most of these figures suggests to me that they're pretty safe unless the sales are tanking.

@handsome I think the reindeer are the new "character". I think most folks assumed we'd get both a reindeer and a new normal fig, but from the way this line is going my guess is they don't have big enough margins for all new molds for more than one totally new fig per wave. Heck, it's possible it took both waves 1 and 2 to justify the reindeer in the first place.

I do think the line as a whole only probably has enough gas left to leverage some Mrs. Claus designs (and maybe something like a Frosty) before it's sort of done. I got my cyborg Santa from the first wave and the accessory pack this wave to turn him into a classic, and I still will probably pick up Mall Santa and Father Frost, but minus a Mrs. Claus I'm probably out after that. 

FMF posted on their Facebook page that Wave 2 is "on the water" and should be at BBTS in a few weeks. So that's exciting! 

Given Wave 3 will not be ready by Christmas regardless, I remain baffled that they would close out preorders for Wave 3 before they get some excitement in the line again from shipping Wave 2 out, maybe including in the orders from BBTS info on Wave 3. 

Not sure why I like this line so much - but it just looks good, and is fairly clever, and lends itself to some fun displays. 

I ordered the goat saddle so Halloween Boy can ride the goat, but I wish the Goat Saddle was colored more in line with how the Goat was done versus it being Christmas-y

Update from Facebook - they are extending the pre-order period, which I think makes sense.

"Naughty or Nice Christmas Collection

I did just pre-order a 1:18 Santa from BBTS.  I'm not expecting that to fund.  If it funds, great.  But if it doesn't, I won't be too heartbroken.  I do want a Santa in this scale/style.  But that it's not gonna release for over a year, that means I won't be able to really use it until Christmas 2026, so it's kind of hard to get too excited for it.  

I do recommend joining the Facebook group Fresh Monkey Fiction Fans because Fresh Monkey drops alot of exclusive previews in their

Updates -

Father Christmas unlocked at 500 - the other four Santas are all right around 400, so needing another 100 to go. (But I am going to guess that unlocking Father Christmas, which includes the new head used by Storytime Santa, the new head used by Wizard Santa, and the new hood that Winter is Here uses, makes those a lot more likely even at 400 as the remaining new tooling beyond that is very limited.)

Red Krampus is at 337 so has some work to do, but that is also a simple repaint and I think it gets there - I don't need it but I think he will look good with the Gremlin King. Nice bump on the elf, only needs 75 more.

Reindeer seem to be about 90% there.

1:18 scale does not seem likely with maybe 20% of what is needed at this stage.

I got some ice weapons from Grid Iron Studios:

I was hoping I could get a Santa to hold this with two hands like they showed in these promo pics, but it's not possible.  I guess I didn't realize neither of these figures are in the regular Santa costume and they'd have different articulation.

But I also got a couple of ice axes, and he holds those perfectly:

The blue of the axes doesn't really match the blue of the base I have him standing on, I think it's originally from a Star Wars figure:

But overall, I'm fine with it.

I think once I get the Checking It Twice Santa head on there, it'll look pretty bad ass

I see your Santa has decided coal is not a strong enough deterrent for naughty behavior.