Can you tell I’m a fan of A Man Called Hero? While I know there’s a lot of new and interesting toys on the market, this regular column will also be dedicated to the various Hong Kong cinema-related action figures I own, and — for good or for ill — a large portion of those toys include characters featured in A Man Called Hero and Storm Riders.

From what I can gather, Dragon Models, Ltd. created this now decommissioned figure of Hero Hua Ying-Hung sometime around 1999, which you can find listed under the name of “A Man Called Hero,” “Chinese Hero,” and even “Oriental Hero.” I own the figure pictured on the right, which is based on Ma Wing-Shing’s popular comic book, but apparently there were at least three more versions of the figure created. One looks exactly like mine, except with a different hair color and costume (pictured below). The other two share a dramatically different head sculpt.

In conjunction with the 1999 movie A Man Called Hero, Dragon Models released two editions of the figure that bore the likeness of the film’s star, Ekin Cheng — an “old version” dressed in the same black wardrobe as the one I own and a “young” Ekin dressed in a brown-colored costume. From what I’ve seen, the box for both the comic and movie versions of Hero Hua appear practically identical. Too bad a scale version of the Statue of Liberty playset was unavailable for purchase.

If anyone has any better photos of these figures they’d like to share (or figures of other Hong Kong cinema-related figures they’d like to see in a future article, please e-mail me here. The only picture of the figure I own was embedded at the top right of the page, and since it’s currently on a shelf at my parents’ house, the only additional pictures I can provide are the thumbnails scavenged below, as well as this link to a no longer active e-bay auction in Singapore by a seller looking to unload two of his Ekin Cheng figures. As some of you might know, Hero Hua is but one of two figures in this collection; the other will be featured in tomorrow’s post.

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Images (1-5) courtesy of  Rudi Terual via Bobagirl.com

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 11:29 am and is filed under Ma Wing-Shing, A Man Called Hero, Toys, Ekin Cheng. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.