This is the latest in a series (of indefinite length and regularity) of pieces pointing out odd action figures of unlikely actors. People known more as character actors than action stars, and thus unlikely candidates for plastic representation.
And yet our honoree this time is Tom Cruise.
It's not that Tom Cruise isn't in action movies, it's that the action movies he's in tend not to get toys. Jack Reacher is not a toyetic film, and not even McFarlane's rebooted Movie Maniacs line would want anything to do with The Mummy. You can find some ostensible Last Samurai 12" figures, but those are unlicensed knockoffs.
However, before he got so big he could refuse any merchandising, he starred in 1996's Mission Impossible, and that movie had a seven-figure assortment (three molds based on the movie, and a bunch of repaint variations) from Tradewinds Toys, a company that apparently never made any other action figures at all. All seven figures in the line were Ethan Hunt, and the gimmick leaned into the movie's use of masks and disguises to turn him into different kinds of characters.
The Tom Cruise likeness is non-existent, but this isn't a case like Terminator Salvation, where the face was hidden because Playmates didn't want to pay Christian Bale: that's just what toys looked like in 1996. That Ethan Hunt figure looks as much like Tom Cruise as any given Batman looked like whoever was playing Batman at the time. And so as of now, these are the only official action figures of the reincarnated L. Ron Hubbard the cousin of that guy who played Ethan on Lost.
