Have you seen the recent HT Platoon figures? They cost about the same as Joes MSRP, and are heads and shoulders above them in terms of overall quality and paint apps. I still choose Joes over those because of the license, but Sideshow simply can't compare with HT in terms of 1/6th scale excellence. Only exceptions I've seen so far are some of the armored Star Wars guys. Sideshow is pretty good, and they are making slow, incremental improvements, etc. But they still seem about 3-4 years behind HT IMO. I'm not familiar with DiD and other military figures so I can't say one way or the other, but the paint apps from some other companies seems to be getting better and better while Sideshow is hit-and-miss (often miss unless you are dealing with a masked head), and they don't seem interested in really competing with other companies in the paint apps game.
As for the Pro body, I'm not a fan. Floppy joints, now ratchet knees, can't compete with the True Type on its best day IMO. But this is one of those areas where SS is making slow improvements, so maybe they'll be able to compete one of these days.
I do think this Hawk is everything he needs to be. I just hope the production jacket ends up looking as good as the prototype.
