From Capcoms Street Fighter game series, this Sakura and Chun-li twinpack are the latest Pinky:Chara (a spin-off from the Pinky:St cute fashion figure line featuring anime and game characters) release. Very cute ^^

Above are all the Pinky:Chara figures I’ve managed to pick up so far – we have Rei and Asuka from Eva (actually, those are Pinky:Cos figures – remodeled versions of other Pinky figures cosplaying), the Natsume sisters and Isuzu Emi from Tenjo Tenge, Athena and Mai from King of Fighters, this new twinpack, and my obvious favorite – Tsukihimes Arcueid Brunstud. There are a couple of other Pinky:Chara figures available, although available is a term I use very loosely – there was a figure of Henrietta from Gunslinger Girl which was only available via a magazine drawing and as such is very, very limited, and there is a Tohru Honda (of Fruits Basket fame) due soon which is going to be available via much the same method, not to mention differently coloured KoF figures. Due in a couple of weeks is another Oh!Great Pinky, coming with the next volume of the Air Gear manga (which, annoyingly, I’ve failed to manage to source a retailer for! Grrr!), and next year will see Shinguji Sakura from Sakura Taisen being imortalised in Pinky form.

The Street Fighter pinkys, like the Eva and King of Fighter ones, are fairly light weight releases (though the figures themselves are really nice). Its just the two figures in a blister pack. In contrast, the Arcueid and TenTen Pinkys came in some rather wonderful boxes, with a change in costume (Arcueid had PJs, whilst the TenTen figures had school uniforms), colour booklets with design pictures, modelling advice and other artwork, and in the case of the TenTen figures each came with a set of postcards featuring Oh!Great artwork.

The fact that the SF pinkys didn’t come with a change of clothes doen’t mean much if you have a neat collection of other pinkys, Chara or otherwise, since the parts are interchangable. You can switch the heads, obviously, but the tops and bottoms of the body are also swappable, and even the bits of the hair. This brings us onto the next thing of interest – custom pinkys. There is a huge fanbase of non-anime fans who collect pinky figures who like to come up with their own parts. More extremely, some more rabid anime fans make their own customised Pinky figures for their favorite characters. Browsing Yahoo Auctions always turns up some rather wonderful looking figures – in the last couple of weeks I’ve seen some amazing custom Saber (Fate/Stay Night), Belldandy (A!MG) and Souseiseki (Rozen Maiden) pinkys among others, and there have been custom kits sold at various hobby shows to allow you to fashion your own Ilya or Rider (Fate) among others. If you actually want any of these custom kits (assuming, like me, you suck at modelling) you’ll be looking at paying a small fortune for them.

But, hey, they are damn cute ^^