303 Toys

Most of the hobby chases film licenses. 303 Toys went the other way and claimed a source older and deeper than any studio catalogue: China's own epics. The company's shelf is built from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, the Investiture of the Gods, and the dynasties themselves, and its material argument is just as distinct. Where other makers grade their editions by accessories, 303 grades by metal: Standard Copper, Exclusive Copper, Masterpiece. The armor on the top tiers is die-cast copper with real weight to it, and picking one up for the first time recalibrates what "deluxe" means.

The flagship is the Three Kingdoms saga, the deepest wing of the catalogue and still growing: the oath brothers Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, the young general Zhao Yun, Zhuge Liang with his feather fan, and the other side of the board too, Cao Cao, Dong Zhuo, the peerless Lu Bu, and Diao Chan between them. Guan Yu alone appears in multiple tellings up to a full God of War presentation. True to the source material, the famous mounts ride alongside: 303 releases the heroes' legendary warhorses, Red Hare among them, as standalone companion pieces so the general does not have to walk.

The mythology wing tells its stories in chapters. Sun Wukong is depicted arc by arc across the Monkey King's legend rather than as a single definitive release, with Lady White Bone waiting for the pilgrims further down the road. From the Investiture of the Gods come Ji Fa, Nezha (a collaboration with OuzhiXiang), and Daji the fox spirit, issued in both of her faces. The Twelve Zodiac Dragon King line rounds out the wing, and collaborations with JSTOYS, DH Toys and Qian Long Toy widen the catalogue at the edges.

Then there are the emperors. The ES series puts the unifiers and dynasts themselves on the shelf: Qin Shi Huang, Li Shimin of the Tang, Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming, the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing, and Genghis Khan, with the Tang general Yuchi Gong, later immortalized as a Door God, standing guard. The result is a maker whose entire output reads like a national museum that decided to cast its collection at one-sixth scale, in copper, with the good armor on.