After an interlude regarding my next book, The DC Encyclopedia New Edition (out March 2026), it's back to the idiosyncratic history of Hot Toys.
I mentioned in my last Hot Toys post how the Hong Kong company has a habit of revisiting and revamping action figures it's previously released. It's a practice that persists to this day, as advances in everything from base bodies (or bucks) to tailoring, sculpting and painting have seen Hot Toys perennially trying to improve upon older 1/6th-scale figures, or at least those deemed popular enough to warrant revisiting. A good example is the Batsuit worn by Christian Bale/Bruce Wayne/Batman in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which Hot Toys has revamped half a dozen times in 1/6 action figure form since releasing their first attempt, Movie Masterpiece Series MMS 71, in 2008. In 2010 there was a Deluxe Series version of the Dark Knight suit, DX 02; then in 2012 a Deluxe Series take on the Dark Knight Rises suit, DX 12; then in 2014 a slightly different version of DX 12 as part of three Movie Masterpiece Batman Armory sets, MMS 234, 235 and 236; then in 2022 the Deluxe Series Dark Knight Trilogy DX 19; then in 2024 a Batsuit as part of the Dark Knight Rises Armory, MMS 702; and most recently in 2025 as part of the Dark Knight Armory 2.0, MMS 750.
But this abundance of Bale Batmen, even if you include the four or so Hot Toys 1/6th versions of the Batman Begins Batsuit, is dwarfed by the cornucopia of Robert Downey Jr. Iron Men. The seemingly infinite iterations of the cinematic Tony Stark and his Iron Man armours have afforded Hot Toys the opportunity to return to the character again and again, starting with the movie that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Released early in 2009, almost a year after director Jon Favreau's Downey Jr.-starring Iron Man had debuted in cinemas in April 2008, Movie Masterpiece Series MMS 75 Iron Man – Mark III was Hot Toys' first licensed Marvel 1/6th-scale action figure. Faithfully replicating the third iteration of the Iron Man suit constructed by Tony Stark in the film – following the jerry-rigged-in-an-Afghan-cave Mark I and the riveted chrome Mark II – Hot Toys' take on the Mark III was a remarkable figure for its time, as Jeff Parker and Michael Crawford's contemporaneous reviews on Crawford's Captain Toy site expressed in glowing terms. While the Tony Stark head sculpt that came with the figure wasn't on quite the same level as some of Hot Toys' other work around the same time, the engineering of the Iron Man armour, by Jason Woo, Gary Wong and Ray Ling, was revolutionary, striking a balance between appearance and articulation and boasting an array of openable flaps and light-up features.
Within weeks, the Mark III was followed by Hot Toys' take on the Mark II (MMS 78), featuring a helmeted Tony Stark head sculpt that for Michael Crawford was an improvement on the prior sculpt. Next came a 1/6th-scale take on the Mark I armour (MMS 80), with another helmeted head sculpt, before Hot Toys made the first of many returns to the Mark III armour with a gunmetal version (MMS 101) only available in limited quantities at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, and in spring 2010, just ahead of the cinema debut of Iron Man 2, a battle-damaged version (MMS 110) boasting more vibrant colours in the paintwork. A mech-test Tony Stark (MMS 116) rounded off the Iron Man releases, but there was little respite, as by summer 2010 Hot Toys' Iron Man 2 figures had started shipping, this time encompassing not just multiple Iron Men but 1/6th-scale takes on Don Cheadle's War Machine (MMS 120), Mickey Rourke's Whiplash (MMS 121) and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow (MMS 124).
2012's The Avengers brought with it a handful more Hot Toys Iron Men in amongst some revisits of earlier armours, but it was with 2013's Iron Man 3 – to my mind the best of the three Iron Man films, due in no small part to director and cowriter Shane Black – that the floodgates fully opened. The plot point of a hyperactive Tony Stark having built dozens of Iron Man suits, up to and including the Mark 42 (my personal favourite), afforded Hot Toys the opportunity to release two dozen Iron Man 3 action figures over the next few years. Moreover, this deluge of Iron Men came accompanied by a couple of innovations. The first of these, the Power Pose Series, traded articulation for the ability to keep figures in action poses for extended periods, and petered out after half a dozen or so releases. The second innovation proved much more enduring, however: diecast metal.
I'll endeavour to return to the initial Hot Toys diecast action figures in a subsequent post – Iron Patriot, Iron Man Mark 42 and War Machine Mark II, plus some of the other non-diecast Iron Man 3 releases in my collection – but suffice to say here that the introduction of diecast parts into Hot Toys' figures not only revolutionised the way those figures were engineered, it opened the way to even more revisiting and revamping of older figures, starting with the seventh diecast release, MMS 256 D07 Iron Man – Mark III.
Arriving in summer 2015, Hot Toys' first diecast revamp of an older figure had a more vibrant paint job than the original Mark III release, better proportions, a terrific helmeted Toy Stark head sculpt, removable armour plates revealing underlying circuitry, and a midsection that could be replaced with a twisted one to recreate the Iron Man landing pose.
Best of all, it had heft, the diecast elements lending the figure a weight that previous plastic Iron Men had lacked. In turn this necessitated more durable packaging, a style of glossy outer sleeve and styrofoam inner tray that the Mark III shared in common with the diecast Iron Man 3 figures.
Henceforth, as Hot Toys' Iron Man offerings grew, more and more would feature diecast – not just the new armour iterations seen in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2016's Captain America: Civil War, 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming, 2018's Avengers: Infinity War and 2019's Avengers: Endgame, but revamped versions of the Mark I, Mark II and inevitably, again and again, the Mark III. To date, Hot Toys has released well over a dozen versions of the Mark III suit, and something in the region of 150 Iron Man-related action figures overall (out of around 400 Marvel figures in total), with no signs of stopping anytime soon.
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