Hot Toys MMS588 Lando Calrissian

Any day that Hot Toys releases an original trilogy Star Wars figure is a good day for me! It's great that with this release, Hot Toys has tackled a character that hasn't been done for years in this scale, and is a massive improvement of course from the old Sideshow Lando figure.

Click the link below to watch my video review over on the Kool Kollectibles YouTube channel. Hope you can subscribe too and stay tuned for upcoming reviews!

The set doesn't come with too much, but I guess there really isn't all that much to include from The Empire Strikes Back for Lando Calrissian. What has been included is all nicely done to do a great job for essentially a pretty simple figure.

The cardboard Cloud City backdrop is a little tacky though, and the way the flaps fold and connect is not very secure. But at least the weapons, communicator devices, and swap out hands are all well done. The cape is a nice felt material with some good stitching, although it is a pain to attach to the figure and look natural (more on that later).

The figure itself has a fantastic head sculpt. The slight smile is OK, but I actually would've preferred some sort of cheeky smirk. Either way, it has the typical Hot Toys realistic skin tone and fine texturing in the hair. The figure's outfit is beautifully tailored, and my favourite part of the figure. The shirt is a similar material to the cape, and is tucked in nicely and moves/folds in very realistic ways.

The pants are also well tailored, fitting well over the padded body. The belt looks a little plasticky, but from normal viewing distances is OK. The boots are the typical pleather material used for previous Star Wars figures, and still look nice with the outfit.

As mentioned earlier, the cape is a pain to put on the figure. It has movie-accurate straps that go over the shoulders and under the armpits. Just be careful in pulling on the elastic straps to make sure the collar can fit snugly around the neck. There is a small wire in the collar to bend it around the neck once you have the cape oriented the right way.

Eventually you can get it to sit quite naturally. It does tend to balloon out at the rear, but that's mostly hidden on display so just try to make the folds look natural from the front. The gold inner lining is a nice contrast to the baby blue material of the outer cape and shirt. I actually used a light iron to get out some wrinkles out of the box. Using a bit of water spray and the iron helped to tame it a bit.

Once set up, the figure does have a lot of shelf presence, and looks fantastic for such a simple figure. Together with the rest of the Empire Strikes Back rebels, the glaring omission of a Han Solo from the movie is readily apparent. All figures that Hot Toys have released from Episode 5 have been fantastic figures.

I really do hope that Hot Toys announce more Han Solo figures soon, as I would love to have a variant from Empire Strikes Back as well as his Endor outfit from Return of the Jedi. Here's hoping 2022 brings some good news for Star Wars collectors!