At the turn of the millennium, Hong Kong designer and TVB screenwriter Howard Chan channelled his love of action figures into first a pop culture toy and collectible shop – Cool Toys on Causeway Bay – then a line of high-end 1/6th-scale action figures: Hot Toys. Chan's initial foray into the 1/6th figure scene was the Famous Type Figure. Unlicensed and unofficial, each of the three released Famous Type Figures was based on film stars or directors: Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible 2, Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix, and George Lucas as, well, George Lucas in his signature plaid shirt and jeans.
Thereafter, for their first major release, Chan and his cohorts turned their attention to modern military figures, no doubt inspired by the success of fellow Hong Kong outfit Dragon Models, who in 1999 had launched their 1/6th-scale military New Generation Life Action Figures. But though Hot Toys would spend the ensuing five years concentrating on military figures, not returning to movie figures until 2005, that didn't stop Chan and co. from basing the likenesses of their military types on famous film folk...
Released in 2000, Hot Toys' first official 1/6th action figure was the U.S. Combat Aircrew Pilot F-14 Tomcat Pilot. Identified on the back of the box as one "Jack Carter", there was no mistaking who the figure was actually inspired by: Tom Cruise's Pete "Maverick" Mitchell from 1986's Top Gun.
For the time, the quality and attention to detail on the figure was remarkable, from the head sculpt to the body, the outfit to the accessories. Interviewed by the South China Morning Post in February 2015, Howard Chan recalled that in order to ensure the accuracy of the walkie-talkie accessory, he slept in the Chinese factory producing the figure for three days. "You know how those old walkie-talkies had these twisted wires?" he explained. "We ended up taking a huge spool of wire, dipping it in hot water to soften it, then a worker would take a needle and coil it by hand."
The same year, Hot Toys released a second Combat Aircrew Pilot, an F/A-18 Strike Fighter Pilot by the name of "Alan J. Nance", clearly based on Will Smith' Captain Steve Hiller from 1996's Independence Day. Thus the company's course was set for the next few years, as Hot Toys issued a succession of highly detailed and accessorised military figures featuring head sculpts bearing striking resemblances to everyone from Ice Cube (Nuclear, Biological & Chemical Protective Gear, 2002) to David Beckham (U.S. Airborne Ranger, 2006), Jake Gyllenhaal (Air Force T.A.C.P., 2006) to Russell Crowe (U.S. NSW Forces Desert Ops Mk43, 2008).
By the mid-2000s Hot Toys had returned to producing film-based figures with the Movie Masterpiece series – this time fully licensed and official – yet the company carried on creating military figures well into the late 2000s, its sculptors and painters continuing to hone their talents on ever more realistic head sculpts. One of the most significant of these came with the USMC Three Infantry Battalions in Fallujah M249 Saw Gunner in 2007, a figure which sported a sculpt based on an actor who would feature prominently in Hot Toys' plans going forward – and who in a different guise had already made an appearance the year before as a Movie Masterpiece figure...
