Inflame Toys

Inflame Toys began the way many Chinese studios of its generation did, working other people's legends: a Naked Snake for Metal Gear in the early 2010s, Gungrave's Grave, Naruto's Gaara and Kakashi. Good figures, borrowed heroes. The company found its own voice when it turned to material nobody could out-license it on, the classical canon of China itself, and started casting it in metal.

The result is the Tiger Generals line, the heart of the catalogue: Guan Yu in multiple tellings with his halberd-bearer Zhou Cang standing attendance, Zhang Fei, the young lion Zhao Yun, and the strategist Zhuge Liang, the whole Three Kingdoms officer corps cast in metal. The armor is die-cast, the drapery heavy, and the presence closer to shelf sculpture than action figure.

The other wing walks west. Inflame's Journey to the West line gives Sun Wukong several depictions, including one drawn from Stephen Chow's A Chinese Odyssey, and rounds out the pilgrimage with Zhu Bajie, the celestial opponent Erlang Shen, and the demons of the road, Black Horn and Young Bone among them. A Wong Fei-Hung tribute brings the martial-arts legend along for good measure.

Inflame's second act, trading rented licenses for its own mythology, turned out to be the whole show.