To my great surprise, I’ve gotten a couple of E-Mails from people this weekend asking me if I thought that Hot Toys was going to cancel (or had already cancelled) the Avengers Hot Toys Hulk sixth-scale figure. My answer to that question is a definitive and eyebrow-raised “absolutely not”…

For some reason, a small group of fans seems hellbent on the notion that Hot Toys is going to cancel their 1/6 scale Avengers Hulk figure. The only evidence in favor of this theory is that, despite the immense popular of the upcoming figure (it’s currently sold-out at Sideshow Collectibles, although you can still get on the Wait List and hopefully get the Hulk figure if you’re fast), we haven’t seen news or a displayed prototype of the figure recently.

Has Hot Toys ever cancelled a project? Truthfully–yes. Hot Toys has announced projects before and then not followed through to the production level. Some examples of this? A Hot Toys Loki figure from the first “Thor” movie was shown, and we were teased with a Hot Toys Green Lantern movie figure and a Watchmen Rorschach sixth-scale figure. None of those Hot Toys projects came to fruition (although we’re getting an arguably superior Avengers Hot Toys Loki instead). We were also originally shown a 1/6 “Bat” from “The Dark Knight Rises” movie, only to see it later revised into a different scale.

What do all of those abandoned or unfinished products have in common, though? Simple: they’re all items that were never solicited. Meaning that Hot Toys never took in a single dollar for those figures. The Hot Toys Avengers Hulk 1/6 scale figure is a whole different story. Hundreds (or thousands) of buyers have already paid out non-refundable deposits for their Hulk Hot Toys figures, and collectors using flex-pay have already paid out at least one payment for the Hulk figure.

So, “Is the Hot Toys Hulk Avengers figure going to be cancelled?” Calm down and cool your jets–I would say that the probability of the sixth-scale Hulk figure being cancelled is non-existent. Will it be delayed? At this point, most likely. But outright cancelled when Hot Toys has thousands upon thousands of guaranteed dollars lined up from enthusiastic customers? Forget it. Hot Toys has sunk money and resources into the Avengers 1/6 Hulk, and there’s no feasible chance of a project with locked-in sales being cancelled at this point.