in my opinion no one makes better ones than ht. ss have improved on their earlier attempts of 1/6 but they still dont come close to what ht can produce. i think ss should stick to pf as they have that nailed down and let someone else take the license for 1/6 scale.
I think it's safe to say, Hot Toys is at the top of the 1/6 game, not flawless, but at the top in terms of individual figure quality. Their Star Wars figures would be very impressive, no doubt.
However, on the issue of who should handle the Star Wars 1/6 license, there's two primary school's of thought I see and depending on individual's views, HT might be a worse choice.
Hot Toys makes nice individual figures, but their line qualities suck. They go for the sure fire seller and loads of variants but do not take chances on background guys that might make a collection more interesting. Under Hot Toys, more than half of what Sideshow's done for characters in 1/6 would likely never have seen the light of day. You'd most likely end up with all the variations of the core guys and that's about it. Now for some, top notch representations of just those mains are all they're after and they'd be fine with this. However, for some, myself included, a balance of individual figure quality and line quality is more ideal, and I think Sideshow's handling that well, their figures, relative to the rest of the collecting world, are still more easily affordable than other manufacturer's and the quality is still quite nice, and we get a nice, full line of figures to pick from.
Because of Sideshow's willingness to break out beyond the mains, I have figures of characters I like that aren't mainstream like Admiral Piett or cool PT Jedi like Plo Koon and Kit Fisto.
The best option, I think, would be a line that was a marriage of both companies. Sideshow carrying on as they have, but HT lending help on the things that are within their abilities that are beyond Sideshow at present. That way the seemingly impossible characters (Chewie, Grievous) can get done as well, but we'd continue to have affordable representations of the easily doable characters and also get some background guys that just add to the collection.
Chewie and the droids are something else...
