Atlus' demon series is joining the Funko catalog in December 2026, thirty-four years after its first installment. And the character chosen to launch the license is neither a hero nor a boss: it is a smiling snowman who only says one thing.
A first figure for a thirty-four-year-old license
Shin Megami Tensei has existed since 1992 and had never received a single POP. For a franchise that gave birth to Persona, one of the best-selling Japanese game series of the past decade, that absence was rather surprising.
The timing is curious as well. Kazuyuki Yamai, producer of the fourth and fifth installments, publicly acknowledged that Atlus has several anniversaries to celebrate in the near future, but that Shin Megami Tensei is not one of them. He described 2026 as a “year of preparation” for the titles under his supervision.
In other words, the series is not currently in the spotlight. It is receiving its first figure during a relatively quiet period, which makes the choice of character even more telling.
Why Jack Frost and not someone else?
Funko's official description leaves no doubt about what this figure is paying tribute to: « Instantly recognizable by his mischievous grin and iconic ""Hee-ho!"", Jack Frost is one of Shin Megami Tensei V's most beloved demons. »
There are two things worth noting in that sentence.
The first is the explicit connection to the fifth installment. This is not a generic franchise figure, but a reference to the 2021 game that established the series on Switch and whose Vengeance re-release expanded its audience in 2024. Funko is documenting a specific version of the character, not simply the archetype.
The second is the “Hee-ho.” Jack Frost does not really speak; he punctuates. The interjection has become a calling card for a series otherwise known for its severity and difficulty, and it works as a counterpoint: in the middle of a bestiary filled with fallen deities and disturbing mythological creatures, Atlus placed an adorable mascot who giggles.
He had already carried the franchise in the West
In hindsight, that is what makes this choice feel inevitable.
In 1995, the very first game in the Megami Tensei franchise to be released outside Japan was neither a Shin Megami Tensei nor a Persona. It was Jack Bros., a maze game developed by Atlus for the Virtual Boy, released in September in Japan and October in North America, with Jack Frost as its star.
The game went down in history for two reasons. It became an accidental ambassador for a series that Western audiences would not truly discover until years later. And thanks to the console's commercial failure, it became one of the rarest North American Virtual Boy releases.
Thirty-one years later, the same character is opening the license at Funko. The parallel is almost too perfect to be a coincidence.
My take on this release
Jack Frost is the only truly defensible choice for the first Shin Megami Tensei POP, and Funko was right not to hesitate. Neither Nahobino, the protagonist of the fifth installment, nor Lucifer would have worked as well: the former is a silent hero that nobody outside his own game would recognize, while the latter appears in too many other licenses to mean anything specific. Jack Frost, by contrast, is recognizable even to people who have never played an SMT game.
But releasing only one figure for this particular license feels like a miscalculation.
Shin Megami Tensei is not a character-driven series, it is a series built around a bestiary. Its appeal comes from collecting, negotiating with and fusing hundreds of demons drawn from mythologies around the world. A single demon sitting alone on a shelf does not tell much of a story. It needs a counterpart.
And the obvious counterpart was Pixie. Jack Frost and Pixie form the starting duo of practically every installment in the series, the first two demons almost any player recruits within their first hour, and a pair the fandom has treated as inseparable for thirty years. Releasing one without the other feels like releasing half of a joke.
That leaves this figure hanging for now. If Funko follows it with Pixie, Mothman or Alice, this POP could become the foundation of one of the richest possible lines on paper. If the license stops here, it will remain an orphaned collectible, attractive but lacking context. Pre-orders are open, with the release scheduled for December 2026.
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