If you follow IAT on Facebook or Twitter (you do, don’t you?) then you probably already know that I’ve caught the Hot Toys bug. I spent a long time staying away from sixth scale. I’m not a fan of soft goods typically. Plus, the figures, by definition, are big. And they can be expensive. I could go on, but essentially I spent a long time looking at the cool stuff that Sideshow, Hot Toys, etc. were putting out and thinking is was nifty, but not for me.

Until two years ago, when Hot Toys veered a little too close to my interests with figures from the 1989 Batman film. I love that movie, warts and all, but I particularly love the designs. I bought Joker & Batman. That started a trickle. Reeves Superman. Go Hero’s Shadow. Hot Toys Indiana Jones. But then it dried up. I decided that when I would dabble in Sixth Scale, it would have to be things that I absolutely loved. Things mostly from my childhood. The upcoming Robocop. The long, uncertain Batman Returns figures. Or the even more uncertain Back to the Futures ones. That was my line in the sand.

Well, here we are in an Iron Patriot review. Obviously, I crossed that line. It’s Marvel’s fault. And their damn movies. DC has sent me all but running into the arms of Marvel in recent years. And this during a time when the Marvel films have been… stunning might be an understatement. After a Marvel blu-ray marathon a few months ago, I came to the conclusion that I’m more than likely going to look back on these movies as fondly as I look back on my 80s favorites. And I’m going to want to have killer toys to remember them by (it’s what I do). So I talked to my wife and then we (I) started the wallet-crushing saga of assembling a sixth scale Marvel shelf. I don’t need every release or even that many of the ones I’ve missed, but I’ve grabbed more than a few.

But I haven’t reviewed any of them. Not one. If I’m being honest – they’re intimidating. I know twelfth and eighteenth scale pretty thoroughly. But sixth scale? My lightbox isn’t big enough for one thing. Adjusting the clothing to be just right. Heck, just knowing what I’m talking about – is there special vocab I need to learn? It sounds silly. It probably is. But sixth scale sort of became my private thing. I bought & reviewed the little guys, gave ‘em fun reviews and kept the biguns to myself. Well, that needs to stop.

And I’m cheating a bit here with Iron Patriot. There are no clothes. No little oddities. The good thing about Hot Toys Iron Man obsession is that they’re churning out giant figures with no soft goods. I feel like I have a better handle on that. It’s a 6″ figure at twice the size! I can review that! I think.

Among my earnest HT collection, I have three IM Armors. My first was the Midas Armor released late last year. There’s just something I enjoy about the all-gold armor and it easily became my first purchase. I may get around to reviewing it, but suffice to say I loved everything about it – except the weight. It kinda feels hollow and just didn’t jive with being an “Iron Man”. Then I found out about Hot Toys Die-Cast series. I had to try it.

And why not in the form of this great melding of Captain America & Iron Man? Iron Patriot first appeared in the comics as Norman Osborn (i.e., Green Goblin) during part of the Civil Infinity Gauntlet Invasion or some such. I don’t know if it was cool when he showed up, but the idea is solid and I loved that Iron Man 3 adapted it. As stated several times at IAT, I do love War Machine and I lament losing that to Iron Patriot (it’s cool, but not cooler). I do admit that the IP color scheme looked excellent in the movie and now enjoy that it’s now faithfully recreated on my shelf.

I haven’t gone and researched stills from the movie to say that with confidence, but it looks pretty damn faithfully executed to me. It’s like having a not-so little version of Iron Patriot just pop out of the movie. The sculpting is fantastic throughout with little details acting as eye candy just about everywhere.

The real gem for Hot Toys is typically the likenesses though and this figure doesn’t disappoint in the department. Obviously, the IM head looks amazing! But while the head in-use when you open the figure has a light-up feature, there is also a second head with two face plates (one sculpted to be down and the other up) which attach to the figure with magnets. On this head, there is a fantastic little Don Cheadle visage. He even already looks annoyed with Tony. It’s great! One face plate covers that up for normal posing, but the other uses those same magnets higher to give the look that it’s open. It also has ome raised panels on the face for when adn if we need them.

The sharp paint job further brings out the sculpt and makes him even more unique from the War Machine figure that he shares a ton of parts with. Now, I did have some paint issues here and there. The red paint line on one of the helmets has blue where it shouldn’t be. There’s a chip in the paint on one of the shoulders. The irony is that HT including a fair amount of wear & tear in the paint already to increase the accuracy and reality of the figure and these little defects almost blend out. There’s a spot or two where I wonder if I scratched it or if it did indeed come that way. Essentially though, I’m not worried about these little blips right now, but am hopeful he fares better than the Cap shield you’ll see in the pictures. Sheesh. Continue to Page 2…