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. 

In the nearly two decades since their Dark Knight releases, Hot Toys have revisited and revamped all of those initial 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...

A History of Hot Toys, Part 2: First Official Release (2000) and Modern Military Figures

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. Air Force 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...