After five years of making meticulously crafted, tailored and accessorised 1/6th-scale military action figures, in 2005 Hong Kong company Hot Toys made a return to high-end movie figures. Back at the turn of the millennium the then-neophyte outfit had released three 1/6th-scale action figures based on film stars and directors, the Famous Type Figure. Those had been unofficial, however. This time, Hot Toys' movie figures would be fully licensed.
Ever since Hot Toys had released their first military figure in 2000 – the U.S. Air Force Combat Aircrew Pilot, based on Tom Cruise in 1986's Top Gun – company founder (and former TV screenwriter) Howard Chan had believed there was scope for a line of high-end figures based on movie properties. Convincing the Hollywood studios he was right proved to be another matter though. "That was a huge hurdle," Chan told the South China Morning Post in 2015. "We were trying to get licenses through Hong Kong agents, and we said we wanted to make action figures. But the agents said, 'What are action figures?'" Chan had little luck getting the agents to understand the kind of adult collectibles market he had in mind, until he went through a Japanese agent instead and landed licenses to create upscale figures based on James Cameron's Terminator (1984) and Aliens (1986). The Movie Masterpiece Series was born.
Released towards the tail end of 2005, the initial wave of 1/6th-scale Movie Masterpiece action figures – Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese in Terminator (MMS 01), a battle-damaged T-800 from Terminator (MMS 02) and Michael Biehn again as Corporal Hicks in Aliens (MMS 03) – bore the benefits of the years of hard craft Hot Toys' artisans had been putting in on the company's military figures, refining articulation, outfitting, sculpting and painting. (As noted in the previous post in this series, Hot Toys had been taking inspiration for the head sculpt likenesses of their military figures from film stars and other famous folk, but in 2004 they'd also made a tentative return to movie figures by collaborating with artist and figure designer Eric So on a 12-inch James Dean figure.) By the first half of the following year, the Movie Masterpiece line had expanded to include Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Robocop (1987) and Alien vs. Predator (2004) figures. Then, in summer 2006, Hot Toys released an action figure based on an even bigger blockbuster from 2005: Christopher Nolan's Christian Bale-starring Batman Begins.
The previous year Hot Toys had secured the rights to produce smaller scale Batman Begins blind box diorama snap kits, with the boxes containing variously a Batman bust, a small action figure, a Batmobile/Tumbler and other snap-together models.
Now, over a year on from the release of the film, Hot Toys unveiled their first ever 1/6th-scale high-end Batman figure, MMS 13.
Limited to just 1100 pieces, each figure came accompanied by a hand-numbered certificate of authenticity, and featured several interchangeable hands, Grapnel Gun, Batarang and mini-mine accessories, and an epically voluminous cape.
For the time it was an impressive piece, as contemporaneous reviewer Anti-Hero pointed out on Michael Crawford's Captain Toy site, and even today it stands up as an evocative, cleverly engineered and costumed representation of Christin Bale's Batman Begins suit.
Just two years later, however, Hot Toys would take a second crack at the Batman Begins costume, to coincide with the release of Christopher Nolan and co.'s sequel The Dark Knight – and this time the results would be even more impressive...
