For the first post proper in this prospective series on Hong Kong company Hot Toys and their 1/6th-scale high-end action figures – following a prelude in the form of George Lucas's head – here are a couple of examples, taken from my own collection, of the earliest Hot Toys figures:
The Famous Type Figure. Produced in limited quantities (some estimates put it at just 500 of each figure) circa 2000, there were three of these, all unlicensed (in other words, unofficial): a figure based on the aforementioned Mr. Lucas, alias The Director; a figure based on Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible 2 (directed, not entirely coincidentally I suspect, by Hong Kong action movie maestro John Woo), and a figure based on Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix. As I noted in my prelude post, I only own the head sculpt of George Lucas, but I own complete examples of the other two Famous Type Figures, in the two types of boxes they were issued in.
Opinions differ as to which was the first to be released. Some collectors say Neo came first, packaged as he is in a black box with no sign of the Hot Toys branding, unlike the yellow-and-orange boxes of Ethan and George. Others say the reverse is true, that Ethan and George came first in their bright Hot Toys boxes, with Neo following in the black box with all references to Hot Toys removed (the presumption being for legal reasons, these being unlicensed figures). The release dates of the movies in question – 1999 for The Matrix, 2000 for Mission: Impossible 2 – would suggest that Neo came first, but while there is a copyright date of 2000 on Ethan's yellow box, there's no date at all on Neo's black box. Muddying the waters still further, I've seen examples of not just Neo but Ethan and George in the black-design box. Perhaps if Hot Toys founder Howard Chan is ever passing this way, he can pronounce on which was actually the first Famous Type Figure.
In any case, the Famous Type Figure was by no means the first line of high-end 1/6th-scale action figures to be based on film characters. Takara had produced Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) Real Action Figures, albeit with limited articulation, while in 1995 fellow Japanese outfit Medicom teamed with Takara to produce Judge Dredd (1995), Alien (1979) and Predator (1987) figures, launching their Real Action Heroes line (or Real Action Series as they were originally called).
What Howard Chan and his coconspirators brought to the party was a body (or "buck" in collector parlance) with articulation comparable with the contemporaneous likes of Medicom or Dragon Models ("over 34 joints" as the box blurb puts it), outfitting and tailoring that was a cut above the 1/6th figure competition, and likenesses that were remarkable for their time.
Neo, Ethan and George are all recognisable as their celluloid/real-world counterparts, and sport outfits that hang fairly realistically on bodies that approximate how the human body moves. Neo in particular is an impressive piece considering his age. On first inspection his black outfit looks quite simple, but the tailoring is excellent, his trench coat is wired along the edges to enable dynamic blowing-in-the-wind poses, he has all the requisite gun holsters underneath, and his boots boast painted silver buckles and brushed silver toecaps. In addition, his accessories comprise four metal guns – two Berettas and two Heckler & Koch MP5Ks – and a pair of shades that sit nicely on his five o'clock-shadowed face.
It would be five years before Hot Toys returned to making 1/6th figures based on film properties, launching the Movie Masterpiece series in 2005 with figures based on The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986) and other franchises, this time fully licensed and official. In the interim, the company turned to creating modern military figures – although still taking inspiration for head sculpt likenesses from famous type figures, starting with Hot Toys' first official release...
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