Hot Toys Announces New Ant-Man Miniature, We Squint Hard to See the Appeal

The hustle and bustle of con season may be well under way here in the States, but the Asian convention circuit is only just beginning. Ani-Com and Games Hong Kong 2015 kicks off this week, and Hot Toys will be there in full force showing off new items that were just not quite ready enough for San Diego Comic-Con. Though the company's been busy this week already with major announcements of new figures, there are plenty more on the way, including those that might fly under the radar.

Case in point, the just-announced Ant-Man and Flying Ant miniature collectible that will be on display for the first time at ACCHK. As part of what I'm presuming was a stipulation in all of Marvel's licensing contracts that any Ant-Man merchandise deals must include at least five mini-figures (seriously, enough already), Hot Toys has prepped a figure not unlike those you've seen from Hasbro and Funko already. The main difference being that this 4" collectible bears the Hot Toys brand name, and will come at a premium as a result.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Hot Toys is a company that caters to a particular kind of customer, and so far the company has had a lot of success doing its thing. As a relatively small Hot Toys collector, I can say that I really do enjoy the work the team there does. The sixth-scale figures are tremendous, and though my sampling may be small, it's still rather costly. To me, owning such a great Captain America or Black Widow is worth it. I thought the same would be true of the 1/4 scale Little Baby Groot when that arrived, but even though I don't regret buying it, I can't believe I paid $50 for it.

Hot Toys hasn't announced a price for this Ant-Man piece as of yet, but it's likely to fall in the same range as Groot as it's about the same size. The issue that arises is that there's just not a lot of room for detail at this scale. The entire ant is 4" antenna to gastor, meaning that itty-bitty Paul Rudd is only about an inch tall. You can see in the images that it lacks the definition one would expect from a collectible that costs as much as this is likely to retail for. Also, through no fault of Hot Toys, we're in miniature Ant-Man overload right now, and I'm not sure the market needs yet another shrunken down version of the movie hero.

Once more details on pricing and release dates are available from Sideshow Collectibles, we'll be sure to update this piece.

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