Besides collecting books and comics and records (and, along with those, dust), I also collect action figures – on and off. This occasional diversion dates back to my time working at Titan in the early 2000s, when I edited Star Trek Magazine and tie-in souvenir magazines to movies like Hulk and X2, and launched and edited late lamented (by me) toy and comic collector magazine Memorabilia (a kind of British version of Wizard but with better jokes). Back then it was American companies like Marvel/Toy Biz and their early super-posable 6-inch action figures – Spider-Man, Daredevil, the 2002 Spider-Man movie range – or DC Direct and their superhero figures that I tended to gravitate to, but I also nurtured a fascination for Japanese companies like Sega and their 7-inch Real Model Neon Genesis Evangelion range or Medicom's Lego-like Kubrick figures (some of which I might blog about at some point).
My interest in action figures has waxed and waned over the years, but whenever my curiosity has been piqued in the past two decades it's tended to be by Japanese and Hong Kongese figures: Kaiyodo's Revoltech and Yamaguchi ranges (Evangelion again, but other anime/mecha too, plus sci-fi and Iron Man figures); Bandai and Medicom's 6-inch S.H. Figuarts and Mafex lines (mostly Marvel and DC movie figures); and the 1/6th-scale (i.e. 12-inch) high-end figures produced by Medicom in their Real Action Heroes range and Hot Toys in their Movie Masterpiece series and Deluxe DX line. While Medicom were the trailblazers as regards 1/6th-scale movie and TV tie-in action figures, producing Judge Dredd and Alien figures as far back as 1995, since the early 2000s Hong Kong-based Hot Toys have risen to become leaders in the field, innovating in everything from articulation and artistry to craftsmanship and tailoring.
Naturally there have been numerous sites and YouTube channels which have charted Hot Toys' development and wares over the years: Michael Crawford's excellent Captain Toy site springs to mind, as do YouTubers like Dean Knight, Sean Long, Shartimus Prime and the seemingly surname-less Justin and his Collection. What there hasn't been so much of is historical exploration and appreciation of Hot Toys' extraordinary toys, and so that's what I thought I'd do in this series of posts, taking an idiosyncratic look at Hot Toys-gone-by in the form of figures from my own collection. Starting with this:
This is George Lucas's head. More specifically, it's a head – and neck – belonging to one of Hot Toys' first forays into 1/6th figures, the Famous Type Figure. Produced circa 2000, there were three of these, all unlicensed (i.e. unofficial): one clearly modelled on George Lucas, director of such films as THX 1138 (1971), American Graffiti (1973) and a long-forgotten space fantasy by the name of Star Wars (1977); one based on Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), and one modelled on Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix (1999).
I don't have George's body or box as I bought his head as part of a job lot of 1/6th bits and pieces, but even disembodied it's notable how even at this very early juncture, 25 years ago, the ability of Hot Toys' sculptors and painters to capture a likeness was in evidence.
Within the space of a few years Hot Toys' artisans would start to achieve uncannily lifelike head sculpts, in concert with cleverly engineered TrueType bodies that replicated the way the human body moves and outfits boasting finely detailed tailoring. But before we get to any of that, for my first post proper in this series I want to take a look at the two Famous Type Figures I own in full – these guys:
