Collectible: Naked Snake (Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater)

Hot Toys has a reputation -- at least as much as I can put together -- of being the top tier action figure house when it comes to source material accuracy, accessories and the overall quality of construction for figures in the 12" (or 30cm) range). It's something that was pointed out to me when J'Tonello reviewed the The Joker (The Dark Knight).

Maybe a better way to describe Hot Toys overarching mandate is that they produce the Big Mac you see in the print ads. There are no camera tricks or sleight of hand here. What you see is what you get with offerings from Hot Toys. Of course, for a little more than $200 you should be expecting as much. You don't want to be opening that box to a bunch of loose lettuce, patties that have slid sideways from a squashed bun, the cheese congealed on side of the box.

Right from the box that Naked Snake (Sneaking Suite Version) comes in, there's an attention to detail that only Metal Gear Solid fans may notice. The large exclamation point under the top flap, for one, but it's the small details of Snake that really do make this a remarkable figure.

Collectible: Chun-Li (Street Fighter)

For every thing right that Pop Culture Shock did with Chun-Li there's one aspect that only stopped bothering me recently. It's the eyes! But before those specifics, we should probably take a look at the rest of the figure, which fits in easily with a couple of other fighting game collectibles I reviewed in the past.

Collectible: Zartan vs. Flint Diorama

Sideshow Toys and Hasbro have teamed up produce a collectible that my 7-year old self would have been (figuratively) drooling over.

Members of Cobra Command were always somehow cooler than the GI Joe forces. Snake Eyes was the most memorable character for the Joes. Cobra had Destro, Serpentor, Cobra Commander, and empathic twins Tomax and Xamot, to name only a handful of the better known misfits that were always causing problems for GI Joe. But Destro, Serpentor, and Cobra Commander would have been hard pressed to blend into a crowd. On that issue alone, the coolest of them all was Zartan, master of disguise, who could blend in anywhere.