Review: Hot Toys TrueType Regular Body! Plus Surprise Stark! Sort of.

What’s this that I have from Hong Kong today? Why it’s the new Hot Toys Truetype regular body, i.e. a naked, headless, 12 inch man. What is it for? How will it prove essential to my eerily expanding high end Hot Toys collection? And what does billionaire industrialist Tony Stark have to do with all this?

I’m going to answer all these highly pertinent questions and more... after the jump!


Many recent Hot Toys releases have additional heads or costume pieces so the usefulness of extra twelve inch bodies is growing. And while there are plenty of cheaper bodies available on ebay and such, I really want to be assured of not only the Hot Toys quality, but also compatibility with my spare heads. Sounds weird out of context, right? Recognising this need, Hot Toys have just released three separately purchased male Truetype bodies: one slim, one regular, and one muscular. It’s the regular that’s going to suit my needs.

As you can see it’s attractively packed in a transparent blister with little wasted space. 

As you can see from the back, there's not a lot of extraneous information but it’s very clear what you’re getting here - the body, an extra set of hands (one fist, and one for holding a gun) and an extra neck peg for different types of heads. 

You also get a basic black figure stand (which is the same as regular release stands but obviously lacks a nameplate) and there are two removable thigh pieces...

This gives you the option of bulking up his legs, which won’t be necessary for our purposes right now. Away with them!

It’s kind of cool to actually get a sense of how all the articulation actually works. It reminds me of one of those artist dummies. I have a lot of figures that are wearing restrictive costumes and don’t move around too much, but it’s reassuring to see that they’re actually very flexible underneath all that and can be displayed in a huge range of poses. I wasn’t expecting the joint in the foot which allows the character to stand on his toes with a raised heel. All the figures I’ve seen before have been wearing shoes.

Now, let’s be honest, this is all a little bit bizarre right now as we’re essentially looking at a naked doll. So we’re going to have to put on some clothes. Doll’s clothes? What on earth is going on. But look at what else I just so happened to get from Magic Cube Toys...

A suspicious little bag. What's inside? Well, do you recognise these miniature duds?

How about now?

Yes, it’s Tony Stark’s casual wear from his S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier scenes in The Avengers! Magic Cube has painstakingly recreated his entire costume and made it available in a handy ziplock bag. There’s a lot of buzz about this set online right now. I grabbed it from ebay for a very reasonable price which, when coupled with the new Truetype figure, puts a custom Tony Stark figure easily in reach.

But this is the worst part... we have to dress him and I have to admit that it felt super weird to be putting clothes on this doll. Now I have two sisters who are 15 years younger than me and I babysat them plenty and I helped put clothes on their dolls. So I do know what I’m doing, but it still felt a little creepy. In a kind of, “Wait a minute, what am I doing? Has it really come to this?” kind of way. At least we just have to do it once and then it’s done with. So let’s get past our awkward self-consciousness about our doll and its dolly clothes, and see if it was worth all the angst...

That’s pretty good, right? They did a good job here and I think that the regular body has proven to be a really good fit. Phew! So far so good. Now he just needs a head.

OK, so I don’t have the Tony Stark head yet. In the next couple of months the Hot Toys Mark VII Iron Man should be released and he has both an Iron Man helmet head and an unmasked Tony Stark head. I plan to display him fully armoured up, but the Robert Downey Jnr. Tony head will be going on this custom figure. So once that figure arrives I’ll be sorted. Plus that particular head sculpt is oddly smiling which I think will work well for the casual clothes.

But in the meantime, I do have a few spare heads just lying around. Chris Evans? Hugo Weaving? No... I think we’ll go...

Christian Bale! Who now looks like he had a wild night on the Helicarrier and ended up wearing Tony’s clothes. But still, it gives you a good indication of how this all goes together. There was no issue at all with attaching the head - very easy to do and looks great. I actually detached the neck as well and used Christian’s neck so that the skin tones matched.

It also highlights the importance of these detailed, realistic head sculpts. Without that they are very much dolls, but once you put the head on they transform into detail, eerily realistic dolls. Hooray!

I definitely recommend the Truetype bodies if you are interested in crafting your own unique figure, or simply want to use up some of the extra bits and pieces you have on hand. They have not yet announced female versions but I hope that this too will happen soon as it would also open up plenty of customisation options. I know that I’d personally love to have more unique pieces in my collection that I have put together myself.

You can grab the Truetype bodies from our pals at Sideshow right here:
Hot Toys - TrueType Basic Series TrueType Basic - Regular Body - Hot Toys