Two figures have been announced for December 2026, including one that feels more fitting than Funko may even have realized. Because while The Iron Giant has become a classic, it was not thanks to movie theaters. It was thanks to a rectangular plastic object that one of these two releases reproduces almost exactly.
A box-office failure, a classic on VHS
The story is one of the best-known in American animation, and it explains everything about this release.
Released in August 1999, The Iron Giant was Brad Bird's first feature film; he would later direct The Incredibles and Ratatouille. The movie cost nearly fifty million dollars and grossed only a little over thirty million worldwide. Warner Bros. had barely supported it: one poster, no partnership campaign, and a promotional budget redirected toward another summer release, with the studio still wary after its previous attempt at animation.
Then came November 1999 and the home-video release. This time, Warner spent more to launch the VHS than it had spent promoting the movie in theaters. Repeated airings on Cartoon Network did the rest. The film found its audience in people's homes through VHS rather than on the big screen, eventually earning a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, an A CinemaScore and nine Annie Awards.
In other words: the VHS saved The Iron Giant. And that is exactly the format Funko is bringing it back in.
The box is the point – POP #25
This release is a Pop! VHS Covers, the line that recreates an old-school video rental case, complete with printed cover art and a vertical format measuring nearly twenty-seven centimeters.
In this line, the figure is fixed to its backdrop and the whole thing stays inside a transparent display case: you are not buying a POP in a box, you are buying the box. The concept produces purely decorative pieces, often attractive, sometimes arbitrary — when a license has no particular connection to home video, the format is little more than a stylistic flourish.
Not here. The VHS case is the vehicle through which this movie found its audience. Funko is recreating the exact object that turned a commercial failure into a generational classic, and this is one of the rare times when the line actually tells a story instead of simply dressing one up.
The official description, meanwhile, goes in another direction: “A mysterious visitor from outer space has crash landed in the woods!” It is the opening of the movie, the stormy night when Hogarth follows the tracks into the forest.
The Giant does not work without Hogarth – POP #2077
The second release is a Pop! Super, a mid-size sixteen-centimeter format, and its full official name says almost everything: The Iron Giant with Hogarth Hughes.
So both characters are in the same box. That is not a packaging detail; it is the correct reading of the movie. The Iron Giant is not about a robot, it is about a nine-year-old boy who finds a weapon and decides to teach it not to be one. The Giant on his own is just a silhouette; with Hogarth at his feet, the entire relationship is on display.
For once, the Super format is justified by the subject rather than by sheer size: the Giant stands fifteen meters tall in the movie, Hogarth barely reaches his ankle, and that difference in scale is the most iconic image from the entire film.
“Choose to be a hero,” the line Funko picked up
Both official descriptions end with the same phrase: choose to be a hero. This is not some generic marketing tagline.
It is the central idea of the movie. Hogarth explains to the Giant that a weapon does not have to remain one, and that the choice is his. At the moment of the final sacrifice, when the missile is falling and the Giant flies up to meet it, he repeats those words to himself before impact. It is the line everyone remembers, the one that can make an entire theater cry, and the reason the film is often described as the best superhero movie ever made without a superhero.
The fact that Funko uses it in both product descriptions, across two different lines, suggests that someone involved had actually seen the movie.
My take on this release
Between the two, I would pick the Pop! Super with Hogarth without hesitation, and not because of the format.
An Iron Giant on his own is just a decorative robot. There is already one, in fact: a release featuring him with a car from a few years ago, which illustrates the problem perfectly — it shows the Giant eating scrap metal, in other words a visual gag, not the movie. The point of The Iron Giant is a child and a machine teaching each other. Releasing one without the other is like releasing half the film.
The VHS Cover is still the better-looking object of the two, and in my view the most thoughtfully conceived piece in the entire line, because it makes the medium and the story line up perfectly. But you need to know what you are buying: a case, with a small figure fixed inside it, meant to be looked at rather than handled. If you collect VHS Covers, this one is an obvious choice. If you are coming to it because of the movie, it may leave you wanting a little more.
There is one disappointment, though: Dean is still nowhere to be found. The beatnik scrap dealer who hides the Giant in his junkyard is the third pillar of the story, and the Hogarth-Dean-Giant trio is what holds the entire second act together. The same goes for Kent Mansley, the government agent, who is one of the most sharply written antagonists in American animation: he is not evil, he is afraid, and that is worse.
But unlike what Funko is often criticized for, you cannot accuse this release of diluting the license. Two products, two approaches, and the decision to put the two main characters in the same box instead of selling them separately. For once, it feels like a fan made the call. Pre-orders are open, with release scheduled for December 2026.
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