Well, this morning I finally got my hands on the Hot Toys Tonto. I photographed him in ye olde canyon, and I like to think some of the results are swell. Whatever the case I'll share 'em here once they're all on Flickr.
In the meantime, I now own the NECA Tonto, the NECA quarter-scale Tonto and the Hot Toys Tonto. I feel I'm equipped to address their respective qualities.
My least favorite is probably the quarter-scale. I understand that a sculpt will soften when you embiggen it, but the problem is the paint; his face paint is basically just plain white, with none of the browns and detail and weathering of the standard NECA-scale figure. It's strange, indeed inexplicable, and it robs the figure of almost all his charm.
With him out of contention, I'd basically need a T-chart to list the things each of the remaining two figures does best. Briefly:
Hot Toys Tonto's eyes are of a quality that no NECA figure will ever likely match. Unfortunately, for all their uncanny sparkling life their expression is leaden and zombie-like. Still, there's no competing with the lifelike nature of Hot Toys eyes. Creepy little buggers.
It never occurred to me to make a point of comparing the respective crows on his head. They're both fine.
While they make posing fun, the Hot Toys ankles look like absolute garbage. They interfere with one's suspension of disbelief in a massive way.
While I am generally a fan of soft goods, the pants on the NECA Tonto look better than the cloth pants on the Hot Toys Tonto.
While the bracelets and such on the Hot Toys figure are of course more ornate than those on the NECA version, their loose strands of string were too unwieldy; until I can get them settled down a bit he'll just go without, which is a bummer 'cause now his wrists are as startling and distracting as his ankles.
The sculpted hair on the NECA figure is vastly superior to the thin, unconvincing, frustratingly unwieldy rooted hair of the Hot Toys figure... and that's pretty damning, considering the hair is one of the weaker aspects of the NECA figure. (The strands are fine, but in their way they too are unwieldy).
The NECA body is much, much better. It looks exactly like Depp's body in the film.
The face likeness is also much better on the NECA figure; the Hot Toys face is more artfully rendered, but it has almost no accuracy, especially with that dead mannequin stare; like The Rock or Han Solo, it's a beautiful, inspired portrait... of some dude cosplaying the character.
I do like the Hot Toys figure marginally more than I thought I would, but while I captured a few successful portraits of him, he is nowhere near as intuitive to pose and play with as the NECA figure, he's not as accurate a representation of the character as the NECA figure, and oddly enough, in light of his suggested retail price tag, he looks much, much more like a toy than the NECA figure. More to the point, he looks like a doll.
