If you’re into the collectibles scene, then you’re probably already familiar with the excellent line of Play Arts figures produced by Square Enix. Originally, the Play Arts line acted as an avenue for the game publisher to deliver high quality figures to fans of its games. As the team's expertise grew, other external brands began to join the collection. Today, Play Arts figures are available for a broad variety of game, comic, and movie characters, and are some of the most sought after and prized display pieces for toy enthusiasts.
We asked Square Enix’s senior director of merchandise, Kanji Romeo Tashiro, to tell us more about the success of the Play Arts line.
How long has the Play Arts line of toys been around? How and why did the line of figures get started?
The first action figures we developed in-house were Final Fantasy X-2 Play Arts Yuna, Rikku, and Paine in 2003. This marked the beginning of our Play Arts series.
Until then all of the Final Fantasy merchandise had been licensed to other manufacturers, which had some drawbacks. Regardless of the review process that went into developing the product, we were ultimately not in control of the final quality level. Additionally, we found it increasingly difficult to ensure that the products would release according to our desired schedule.
In creating our own Square Enix character products, we set out with very high quality standards. And because we can consult directly with the creators who breathed life to these characters we are able to ensure that their vision is realized in the final products. Ultimately, we believed that regardless of the challenges we faced (especially since we were inexperienced in the toy industry), producing these products in-house was in the best interest of our fans, who love our characters. Also, it was the only way that we could ensure that our characters were presented in the best possible manner.
It was not an easy road for us. However, with each new character added to our Play Arts line, we continuously improved the quality of our merchandise—from modeling to coloring to articulation and pretty much every aspect of an action figure. The validation of our efforts can be seen in the responses from our fans, which has only gotten better and better over time.
Play Arts figures are a combination of internal Square Enix properties, like Final Fantasy, and external properties, like Batman and Halo. When and how did the series expand to include external properties?
As our products were evolving and improving, as mentioned earlier, the Play Arts series entered into a new chapter of product development in 2009. This is when we shifted gears, creating the Play Arts -KAI- series, which is larger in scale than its predecessor, and has finer detailing and coloring. The first line of figures released in this new series was from Resident Evil 5. Thinking about it now, it’s very moving since it marked our first release of a product licensed from an external company, Capcom in this case.
There are two main reasons for deciding to produce figures for characters from other companies, and not just our own.
Frankly speaking, the first was the limited number of products we could create just using characters from Square Enix titles. After all, new Final Fantasy games were not released every year. Additionally, we did not want to continue producing redundant merchandise from the same titles in a short amount of time.
The second reason was that, as we continued to improve our Play Arts series, we had gained confidence as a manufacturer. We wanted to take on new challenges as a collectible toys manufacturer rather than just a department in a video game company.
We already had a long-running relationship with Capcom through Square Enix’s publishing department which published comic books based on their games. After numerous discussions with Capcom, they agreed to license their IP to us so we could develop action figures.
In that sense, the shift to Play Arts -KAI- was also a big turning point.
The Play Arts -KAI- series has been growing ever since, partnering with various video game companies including Capcom with their Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Street Fighter 4 series, Konami with their Metal Gear Solid series, and Microsoft with their Halo series, just to name a few.
And in 2012, we were able to license Batman: Arkham Asylum from Warner Bros. Interactive to release a Play Arts -KAI- figure line. Though it was for a Batman video game, it was still a huge leap for us to be able to produce a figure of an American comic book hero, since comics are synonymous with action figures.
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