Hulk

...meh. Hasbro had four choices of which Hulk to make for their Endgame line, and they picked the worst one. "Casual clothes" Hulk, to show how his merged personalities are getting along? No. Time-travel armor, so he matches the rest of the team? Not that either. His own super suit, with the big H on the chest? No, but at least Diamond Select is making that one later. Instead, we get "Avengers 1 Cosplay" Hulk, aka "the Hulk there's no shortage of figures for already." <sarcastic "yaaaaay" sound> In the Avengers 1 toyline, Hulk was simply sold by himself - as a Walmart exclusive, true, but by himself nonetheless. The same was true for Avengers' Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency. But Ragnarok changed things up, making its Hulk the BAF. Endgame follows suit, so if you buy six of the seven figures (War Machine is too big to share space with a piece), you can build a Hulk. This may be Hulk's least interesting look from the movie, but the toy is at least made very well. He's barechested, showing off those massive muscles, and the entire body is a new sculpt. His skin has a fine texture all over it, making it look like skin and not plastic - something that hasn't been true since the Avengers 1 toy. His pants get a detailed sculpt too, with a deeper texture (because denim [or whatever] is rougher than skin, even if you're a giant green rage-monster) and horizontal shreds around the lower edges. It's a terrific sculpt, no question about it. Naturally, the special effects in a 2019 movie are going to be better than one from seven years prior, so the modern Hulk looked more natural than the one before, thanks mainly to the emerging Anyma mocap technology, which is far more sensitive than the usual "dots on the face" style. Suitably, Hasbro's "Photo Real" paint process has delivered two perfectly Mark Ruffaloish likenesses for the figure: one resting, the other with a lopsided smile. It's weird to not get a Hulk that looks angry, but that wouldn't have really been true to this version of Hulk, would it? His skintone is a very yellowish green, and his pants are some undefined combo of blue and brown and purple and grey, all mixed together to create a color best described as "dark." The skin is perhaps a bit more vibrant than it was in the movie - the merged Hulk was still green, but the specific color was muted - but they did tampo on all his chest hair. The hair on his temples gets gray apps, to show he's aging, but the paint is thicker than it should be: it looks painted, rather than drybrushed. The figure stands nearly 8¾" tall, which is too big. In Avengers, Hulk was 8'6" (meaning an 8½" toy), and Smart Hulk was smaller than that. Yes, Marvel Legends are in an "inflated six-inch" scale, meaning the base height is not a true 6", but slightly larger than that. Even if they'd knocked half an inch off this one, it would have made a big difference. The articulation wouldn't even need to be changed: as it is, Hulk moves at the ankles, knees, thighs, hips, waist, ribs, wrists, elbows, biceps, shoulders, and head; dropping him down to 8¼" (still taller than the first movie's Marvel Legend) wouldn't have cost us any of that. The Avengers 1 Hulk figure was not easy to get, a Walmart exclusive at a time when the store was notoriously fickle about which stores would and wouldn't get any given merchandise. So by that regard, making a "new" one when Endgame offered the opportunity makes sense. But there's no question that there were other, more interesting versions of Hulk they could have made the Series 2 Build-A-Figure, ones that we'll now have to turn to other companies (working in other scales) to deliver. Rescue | Shuri | Rock Python | Union Jack | Beta Ray Bill | Loki -- 08/15/19

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