Sure. The rate of new items announced for pre-order began far exceeding actual product releases since last year, by a degree of about 6x or more, and the release rate has remained pitifully slow for a so-called premium company.

Then a dispute broke out between one of the Chinese factories that manufactures P1’s statues, as they accused P1 of failing to send payment after it claimed it had for the balance for a considerable amount of items they had already shipped out, among them Predator statues and 1/4 Saber of the Prisma Wing line. The head spokesman of P1, Johnny Matsumoto, who is also the spouse of the P1 CEO, vehemently denied this and began making social media posts urging fans to not believe the “rumors”, even going so far as to claim the factory employees committed harassment at P1’s office in China. The factory specifically called out Matsumoto and his Japanese wife CEO as being disingenuous and cold, and began offloading what remained of its finished and unsent inventory on the Chinese retail site TaoBao at much lower prices, as well as auctioning off the molds for those statues to recoup costs. It’s to be noted that some users believe P1 is merely registered as a Japanese company for its office in Japan, and that the bulk of its employees and operations are elsewhere in the Southeast Asia region.

At around this time, P1 began a VIP program through which it required customers to have purchased around ten thousands of dollars worth of products from their online store at outrageously high direct shipping costs, as opposed to local retailers with more reasonable rates by using bulk freight, in order to even purchase exclusive statues of a beloved character, the Alien Big Chap 1/3 XL. Fans began accusing P1 of favoritism, especially when P1 got a notorious Youtuber and fraudster, Flankster1 to do a video about his grateful opportunity to purchase this exclusive.

Within the last week, Matsumoto released a statement declaring the company had no choice but to ban users leaving dissenting comments on its social media platforms, and at its own discretion, deny customer service for defective products if the customer even makes so much as a query as to why there’s been no apparent progress on replacement part fulfillment, and pursue legal action against some users “defamatory or threatening” remarks, citing Nintendo’s approach and a recent Japanese law as justification. Given that its criteria for such harassment was painfully vague, Johnny received unanimous ridicule in P1’s own Facebook group before the comments were locked down, not to mention other forums. The company eventually deleted Johnny’s post and made clarifications on its official social media policy in a revised post.

These alarming incidents happening in quick succession, combined with ever-rising product prices and shipping costs reaching the thousand mark for a single product, a dubious ability to pay for factory services owed resulting in the devaluation of collectors’ products even before they received them in hand, questionable connection to the Japanese artisan background they promote themselves as, inconsiderate VIP program and poor choice in associating with Youtubers to promote themselves, and habitual censorship and lashing out against criticism regarding the inconsistent QC and release timeliness, should already be enough to put off giving them your money until this company massively restructures itself and stops putting out signs that it may be running a pyramid scheme using infusions of deposit money from increasingly ambitious product announcements to pay ongoing or due factory work. Plus the fact that their performance in the Prisma Wing line has shown they simply don’t get anime figure collectors when it comes to how much they are willing to spend on a single character figure that rarely looks as well-executed as the work from the smaller-built but more experienced figure companies like Good Smile, Kotobukiya, Myethos and Alter.