OK I have to admit, I am totally floored by the new photos Hot Toys just released of the Major Alan ‘Dutch’ Schaefer 12-inch Figure. In fact, I will go ahead and say it is the most impressive likeness I have ever seen on a prepainted scaled figure and they’ve completely changed my view of this figure since the initial announcement images popped up on the web.

Maybe I’m having a little bit of a nerdgasm on this one, but holy friggin s***balls that is INSANELY cool! I barely collect the Hot Toys stuff, I really don’t care for their Predators any more due to the body styles and I’m not a fan of the human characters either, but I think you can count on me to pick this up and keep it for my collection. Let’s face it, no one has really nailed a Dutch figure yet, and the only decent kit I’ve seen of him is from Rocco, who turned out to be a flake and the castings were questionable, not to mention no longer available. But that’s a whole other drama llama story we don’t need to rehash…

The real question here is, will it look like this out of the box? I’m afraid I don’t have any answer for you, and Hot Toys’ track record isn’t very conclusive. Let’s face it, the Hot Toys Iron Man Mark III is looking JUST as kick-ass as the prototype figures, and the first AvP figures looked pretty close to the prototype, but the Predator 2 was a complete bucket of FAIL in terms of the paint-up compared to the prototype. So I PRAY that this will look closed to the prototype, and if it does I will be VERY happy to have this in my collection.

So what’s changed you ask? The first thing I noticed is the new hair sculpt… they dumped the greased back 50s look and made his hair more spiky and rough, the way it should look. They’ve also cut back on the face paint, which totally ruined the figure for me initially. I still feel there is too much on his face, but at least it looks decent now. They need to do the same thing with Billy next, he looks positively RIDICULOUS with all that face paint. HT also seems to have widened and hardened his jaw line, and they’ve added additional texturing and frown lines, which all look just perfect now. Check out the before and after pics:

Most impressive Hot Toys! Well done! So needless to say, I just went and placed my order and you can grab one too by clicking HERE and visiting the Sideshow product page. As you can see on the Sideshow site, they’re a bit behind the ball on posting the new pics, but have them all posted in the gallery, just click on the photo icon below and look for the pics named “newdutchpics0x.jpg”:

For those of you interested in checking out Private Billy Sole, please click HERE!

So a huge round of applause for Hot Toys, but the standing ovation only comes when people start posting their in-hand photos and they look close to the prototype. You can bet I’ll have a full review, photos and video in the near future! In fact I have a ton of goodies coming in for review… coming soon will be the new Sideshow Predator 2 Diorama!

Take care guys!
Dan