The Joker is Looking at You!
Action figures sure have come a long way since the old days of 5-point articulations and face sculpts that required a healthy amount of imagination to actually see them as human faces and no toy company has driven this point home better than action figure mega-designers, Hot Toys. These folks are sculpting astoundingly realistic figures that make most commercial action figures look like a clay coffee mug made at Summer camp by a 4-year-old kid wearing mittens.
And just because the level of "ultimate awesomeness" isn't quite high enough for the designers at Hot Toys, they decided to take it about a trillion steps further by creating action figures with movable eyes. I'm not sure you all heard me correctly, so I'm going to repeat that again; they are making action figures with actual movable eyes!
I heard about this a while back through the action figure blog-o-sphere, but the point was truly driven home when I watched this video from Hot Toys showcasing the effect on their new hyper-realistic Dark Knight Joker figure. Apparently, you just pop off a panel in the back of the figure's head, where you will find a small rod that will move the tiny little eyes within their tiny little eye sockets at which point the collector should be blown over by a massive wave of impressiveness with just a dash of creepy.
To see the video yourself head on over to Hot Toys' YouTube page and get ready to catch your jaw before it hits the ground.
Comments
Don’t tell anyone it can do that, then place it in your living room and every couple weeks move the eyes just a little bit (being careful not to move any of the rest of him at all.)
Eventually someone will be convinced that your Joker doll is haunted.
And every now and then, make him holding a tiny knife. And then some days he’s not holding a knife at all.
This sounds great, but has everyone forgotten that this has been done before. In the UK the Eagle Eyes Action Man had moving eyes which worked in a very similar way over 30 years ago, in the 70’s. Therefore, it is about time a manufacturer thought of doing this again.
I’ve never seen that Action Man figure before. Does it look as nice as the Joker in the video?
Thanks for the tip!
To actionfigures
Unfortunately, due to the product being made over 30 years ago, it doesn’t look as good as the Joker, but it was cool when I was playing with it as a kid. The mechanism worked in much the same way, but it had a lever which poked out, instead of being concealed inside it.
Check out the following two links for more info.
http://www.actionmanhq.co.uk/pages/history.html
and
http://www.actionmanhq.co.uk/pages/heads3.html
I hope this helps.
AF Fan