The first one exists.

The factory sample is here. You learn more in ten seconds of holding one than in a year of looking at renders, and most of what we learned this week is what still needs fixing.

Two things came back wrong.

It's light. This sample isn't vinyl yet, and picking it up for the first time was the worst moment of the week — it felt like something you'd win at a fair. A piece this size should have weight. You should feel it before you look at it. The production run is vinyl, and we're working through the fill with the factory until it lands in the hand the way it's supposed to.

And there's an NFC chip inside every figure. What it's for is its own update. On this sample it barely reads — a phone has to sit against it for the better part of a minute before anything happens, and that's not the moment we designed. It's a placement problem, not a chip problem. The factory is moving it.

Neither of those is bad news. It's exactly what a sample is for, and we'd rather find it now, on one figure, than later in two hundred boxes on their way to two hundred people. Everything else came back right: the way the red reads against the black, the edge on the crack, the line of the ears.

Coally is the first figure out of the COAL universe. High-gloss black vinyl, one matte red broken heart. Those are the only two finishes on the whole piece. Long ears. Individually numbered, 001 through 200. Two hundred exist, and then the cast is done. This figure never runs again.

— COAL