After going back and forth on this piece for several weeks (Jaws, I feel your pain), I finally broke down and ordered him and received #087 / 500 last week. The box is huge...and heavy! It had to be close to 60 lbs!!! By now, most of you know all about the XM box and packaging. It is the same style as Captain America's, only larger. Everything arrived in good condition. I absolutely love this piece. For me, it is the best representation of a modern age Hulk out there today. (Sideshow's Hulk PF still holds to top spot for me for classic (Kirby) Hulk.) Here is why I love this piece so much.
Packaging
As I said, the packing is top shelf all the way. The box itself is heavy and can be used as a stand for Hulk if you prefer. No messy styrofoam balls and the strapping makes it easy to open and close. No more messy tape to peel/cut away.
Sculpt
The sculpt on Hulk is phenomenal. The details in the musculature look awesome in person. Everything looks proportionate and I like how wide his back (lats) and shoulders are and how he has a nice V shape going from shoulders to waist. There are two head sculpts; an open mouth yell and a closed mouth grimace. I prefer the open mouth portrait as it displays nice from many different viewing angles. The closed mouth portrait only look good from an above angle looking down IMO. One of the biggest "negatives" for me was the sculpted on shirt. From the initial pics, I thought it looked plastered on looked kind of cheesy. However, in person, the shirt looks much better. It actually has texturing to it and some shading to give it some depth. It will never look like an actual shirt, but between the sculpt details and the paint apps, XM pulls it off surprisingly well.
Paint Apps
XM really delivers on the paint apps. They are very detailed with almost no mistakes and certainly nothing major. I really like the shade of green that was used. In pics, it changes shade depending on if light is directly hitting it or not. The faces on both heads sculpts are superb. His fingernails and toenails are very detailed with clean paint apps. For his body and shirt, XM used an orange overspray of sorts to give depth and texture. It looks really good, but there were a couple places on Hulk's arms (mainly in the crevices between muscles) that had some visible orange spots. I was told that this process to apply the orange/rust paint is unique to every Hulk statue. Which brings me to my next category...
Customer Service
XM's customer service is the absolute best. I was put in direct contact with the owner of XM over the orange spot question who explained to me how it was done and what I could do to correct it if I desired. After looking at it for a couple days, I realized that I didn't mind the two spots where the orange had blobbed together because they were located deep between muscle bundles and could only be seen if you were looking at him from overhead and really up close. Check out my pictures to see if you notice it. However, as I was getting ready to take pics of Hulk, I discovered another issue with Hulk. There were two spots on his right pants legs that had broken off and been glued back together (I'm guessing this happened at the factory). Still working out all the details, but XM is going to replace him for me! I will have to destroy this one (it is going to be tough to break this work of art) but maybe I can video the process to share with you Freaks. A+ for customer service!
Here are some pics of mine before he goes off to the polystone statue heaven in the sky.
First, a little music...