We spent the rest of the day in the Toy Buildings a bit across town, and the first stop in these was SOTA, best known for their wildly succesful Street Fighter toys. They're parlaying this incredible success, both creatively and financially, into even more innovative and exciting toy lines, since they're one of those companies that really popped into the headlines only during this past year.

Right inside the showroom doorway were large-scale prototypes of the second series of Charmed figures, the first series having not fared too well due to sketchy likenesses. These, however, were scanned from the actual faces of the actresses and do not suffer from the problems that the originals did. One might note that SOTA has a lot of fun with these scanning devices and has a lot of experience with them, since they also run Plastic Fantasy. You know, the action figures with rubber clothes and real girl parts that made ANR feel funny.

Charmed series two, in episode specific costumes, looks really dead-on close up and are bound to be far more successful. These first two photos are ANR originals, while the remaining Charmed photos are press shots provided by SOTA. Apparently, the first series of figures were pretty hotly contested by the actresses, who refused to allow articulated figures of themselves, and presumably didn't sit still for the scanning device. This time around, the details are finer and SOTA fought for the articulation necessary to make these complete figures. No word if these are as secretly detailed as the Plastic Fantasy figures.

Next in line were about three series worth of SOTA's beautifully obscure, fan favorite, crazy detailed Now Playing line, which picks up where McFarlane left off in their beautiful, but limited, Movie Maniacs line. Now Playing is really a collection of dream figures from movies that weren't top grossing, but have cult followings. From the look of these sculpts, they're every bit as good as McFarlane.

The Killer Klown comes with an rockin' ray gun, which will have a clear dome filed with popcorn in final production, and the Darkness figure seen here will be in 18" scale. Jerry Macaluso explained that while McFarlane's Darkness figure was very well done, it had a very regal, stoic quality. This Darkness is culled from a specific scene in which he's about to charge with his sword, enraged and active, a dynamic opposite to the other version.

Following Darkness was Meg Mucklebones, also from Legend, which will be in 6" scale. I presume that her final, on-shelf version will be naked like this, and I really feel tremendous amounts of sympathy for the sculptors who had to photo-reference this. Follow this by a tremendously creepy figure from Dune (which I have not seen but now seriously want to), and Wave 1's Toxic Avenger. SOTA has solemnly sworn to keep far away from the themes of bondage and torture that have been prevalent in other monster lines.

Next up, the Micronauts Evolution line, which takes all of your favorite Micronauts and re-sculpts them into what you saw in your head when you played with them as a kid, crazy dynamic and powerful.

The line that I'm most completely excited for is the H. P. Lovecraft line, which will for the first time bring a series of Lovecraft's amazingly surreal monsters to life. Being a fan of the literature, and forever impressed that this dark imagination created these deeply hellish tales at the turn of the century, these large horror trophies keep true to Lovecraft's visions, without heaping on any inappropriate blood and gore. Sometimes, the creepiest details are entirely biological.

And finally, the money shot - Street Fighter stuff, with samples of Rounds One through Three, with some of the first shots of Sakura that we've been given, and some upcoming 12" rotocast figures, which will expand into further waves of 4 figures each, unlike the first wave, which will be two figures with a variant each. The various repaints of the 6" scale figures seen throughout the photos are various retail exclusives, as well as gifts from SOTA to supporting retailers.

That was it for SOTA's stuff, but enjoy a few press photos that we recieved from SOTA's PR of some of the items above.

Following SOTA's display and completely unaffilated with the company was the work of Paul Sciacca, a sculptor-type guy with a lot of well-sculpted, insteresting items on display, which will be produced under his soon-to-be-official company name, Goomba Studios. For now, find more about his stuff at Sciacca Studios. These below are an array of skulls 'n' pumpkins along the Halloween theme. Paul mentioned future lines of heads under the theme of hunting accidents and injured rescuers, which might be a touch socially offensive at this point given the political climate, and the fact that he was showing them off in Manhattan. Possibly, these will be squishy and harmlessly chuckable at others, and possibly, they'llbe more traditionally sculptural and have head cavities to store things.

Undeniable, though, was the expertise with which Mr. Sciacca sculpted these things, tasteful or not. Below are some samples of his goods. Forbidden from photography was a large, beautiful, forboding and as-yet-unapproved item vaguely related to some of the SOTA stuff immediately to the right of his display.

That last skull is OFFICIALLY not a baby skull, but the skull of a Grey. Really. Babies never die.

We left and took the elevator to BanDai, one floor up.