While Scott Lang may have proclaimed Steve Rogers as being "America's Ass". but Captain America started his career as "The First Avenger". The 2011 movie came out right before The Avengers, and even back then, Hot Toys was cranking out Marvel figures. I think they did at least three from the first movie, including what eventually became the default suit for Cap in the movie. Finding one of these older figures is generally hit and miss, but sometimes the stars align, and you're able to score a deal. I managed to luck out and actually score this figure for $80 CAD, second hand mind you, with the only "flaw" being a widely known paint flaking issue on the shield. But when you're buying these older figures, you're bound to run into these things, so it's not exactly a surprise. Besides, there are worse things that could happen beside a bit of battle damage on the shield.
Packaging is the standard shoe box type of deal. As I said with Antman, this type of packaging has been used with Hot Toy releases pretty much since the beginning of time.
Content wise, they were a bit more.. luxurious with the presentation. The actual contents were pretty minimal - you get the figure, 9 total hands, a shield, machine gun, pistol, and shield attachment harness. What you'll notice tis that the tray with the weaponry is actually inside the box cover, as opposed to a second layer within the main tray, or crammed into the tray itself. Presentation was a bit more important back in the day, as opposed to just cramming it in as efficiently as possible.
There's really no point critiquing this figure. Traditionally, Captain America figures didn't have the greatest articulation due to the restrictive nature of the suits. Whatever articulation the current figures have now were the result of many, many attempts, so you can imagine what the first attempt was like.
While the legs had decent range of movement due to the large amount of slack available at the hips, I couldn't get the arms to do the advertised 95 degrees of shoulder rotation. Couple with that the fact that the joints being stiff on this particular figure, Cap is basically going to be staying in standing or museum poses.
No, when you're buying a figure this old, you're doing it out of respect for the artistry and craftsmanship required to bring something like this to life. The head sculpt isn't terrible - it has the benefit of hiding most of the facial features of Chris Evans as well as his hair. Overall, the helmeted Captain America heads have been pretty good across the board - it's the unhelmeted heads that took more imagination to see the actor in. Paint work is superb across most of the figure - the peeling paint on the shield, is a known problem, and affects pretty much all of the first generation shields. I've heard the paint process changed ever since Age of Ultron.
Build Quality is generally good, with some of the holes in the hands being kind of iffy - it seems that the hands were made of a much harder plastic back in the day. While all the aforementioned are great, the star of the show is the actual outfit and the other soft goods. Suit on figures these days are typically body socks, or if you're lucky, body socks featuring some fabric elements or hard plastic elements. This suit, being effectively a military uniform, is fully fabric, including the shoulder pads and most of the straps you see on the figure. While Hot Toys can technically do these sort of things, there just isn't that great of a need to anymore.
So there you have it. Nothing major, no real critique or true analysis. Sometimes, it's just nice to find an old figure for a great price that reminds you of just far things have come, while at the same time reminding you of just how old school things were able to dazzle collectors in their heyday.
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