A History of Hot Toys, Part 5: Iron Man Mark III (2008–2015)

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 traumatised, 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.

Cover Reveal: The DC Encyclopedia New Edition, Coauthored by Nick Jones

Interrupting my series of idiosyncratic posts on Hot Toys, I noticed over the festive period there was a cover up on Amazon (and other online retailers) for my next book, namely the latest edition of The DC Encyclopedia. This is the third edition of the book I've cowritten (following the 2016 All-New Edition and the 2021 New Edition), but this time I also acted as consultant, contributed some picture research and helped out on project management (mostly marshalling the other authors), so I'm (almost) literally all over this one. It's out in March, so I'll endeavour to post something nearer the time about my contributions and those of my excellent coauthors, editors and designers, but for now I thought showcasing Wonder Woman and Dark Crisis artist Daniel Sampere's splendid cover composition, arranged around the restored classic DC logo, would be a fine way to kick off 2026. Happy new year!

A History of Hot Toys, Part 4: The Dark Knight Batman Begins Original Costume (2008)

In summer 2008, as The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's sequel to 2005's Batman Begins, sent box office records toppling on its way to becoming the biggest film of the year, Hot Toys released the first of their licensed tie-in high-end 1/6th-scale action figures. For Batman Begins, Howard Chan's company, at that point still in the early stages of its Movie Masterpiece Series, had issued just one 1/6th-scale figure: MMS 13 Batman Begins – Batman, released in summer 2006, over a year after the movie's cinema debut. For The Dark Knight, the now firmly established and increasingly feted Hot Toys had over a dozen releases lined up, from figures based on Christian Bale/Bruce Wayne's new Batsuit and Heath Ledger's Joker to a 1/6th-scale Batmobile/Tumbler and Bat-Pod. 

First out of the blocks, though, was a new take on the Batsuit from Batman Begins and the opening act of The Dark Knight: Hot Toys MMS 67 The Dark Knight (Original Costume).

As fine a figure as Hot Toys' 2006 take on the Batman Begins suit had been, certainly for the time, the revamped version was in a different league. Hot Toys' first attempt had featured an outfit comprising segmented rubber panels affixed to rubberised bodysuit, while the masked head sculpt, although nicely crafted and painted, wasn't as lifelike or evocative of a cowled Christian Bale as one might have wished. For The Dark Knight, the Begins Batsuit was realised as moulded, sculpted, matte rubber, more closely approximating the look of the adapted "Nomex survival suit" of the films, while the masked head sculpt was a remarkably realistic representation of Bale in a cowl.

By this juncture, Howard Chan's creative team had been bolstered by co-producer and lead painter JC Hong and sculptor Yulli, whose exceptional work could be seen not just in the cowled head sculpt of MMS 67, but in the unmasked head sculpt that came as part of the package. The year before, Hot Toys had released a military figure, USMC Three Infantry Battalions in Fallujah M29 Saw Gunner, which sported a head sculpt clearly inspired by Christian Bale, but MMS 67 was better still.

Hong and Yulli would achieve an even more accurate Bale likeness with the unmasked head sculpt of Hot Toys' take on the new, more flexible "hardened Kevlar plates over titanium-dipped tri-weave fibre" Batsuit unveiled in The Dark Knight, MMS 71, and produce yet more lifelike portraits of Heath Ledger's Joker – MMS 68, and especially the extraordinary MMS 79, alias the Bank Robber Joker, still one of Yulli's favourites – plus a fine attempt at Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent/Two-Face, MMS 81. 

Over the ensuing two decades, Hot Toys would revisit and revamp all of those initial Dark Knight figures multiple times, not just in the Movie Masterpiece Series but as part of the Deluxe (DX) Series, often improving on the originals. But despite at least two further 1/6th-scale attempts at the Begins Batsuit, for my money MMS 67 remains the high-water mark for that particular suit. While the unmasked head sculpt has since been surpassed, the cowled sculpt stands as a fine piece of craftsmanship, so much so that Hot Toys have reused it several times. The Batsuit boasts a movie-accurate matte finish and shows no signs of deterioration even after nearly 20 years, and unlike subsequent Hot Toys takes on the Begins Batsuit, the accessories include the Pneumatic Mangler, used by Batman to apprehend Scarecrow in The Dark Knight. 

For a Dark Knight Trilogy devotee like myself – I still vividly recall seeing Batman Begins on the big screen back in 2005 when I was working at Titan Books and we were releasing tie-in graphic novels and art books, and I got to write about all three films in my 2024/2025 book DC Cinematic Universe – MMS 67 The Dark Knight (Original Costume) stands as a figure to cherish: a fairly faithful 1/6th-scale recreation of the first Bale Batsuit, and a relatively scarce item to boot (unlike MMS 71 Batman The Dark Knight Version, which was distributed in the US and UK by Diamond, MMS 67 wasn't distributed in the West).

The Dark Knight may have been the biggest film of 2008, but that year also saw the release of another significant comic book movie, one that marked the start of not just a soon-to-be all-conquering cinematic universe, but an accompanying line of figures from Hot Toys...

A History of Hot Toys, Part 3: Batman Begins (2005/2006)

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...