GREY HULK & RHINO

MARVEL MINIMATES

Last week, I took my first glance into the hopeless abyss Series 7 of Marvel Minimates, an assortment that’s not generally looked at as one of the line’s best, largely due to its overall lack of actual new stuff for the line.  This issue is really at its worst with today’s offering, which in notable for offering absolutely nothing new, a first for a specialty assortment offering for the line.  So, without further ado, let’s try not get too bored as we look at Grey Hulk and Rhino.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Grey Hulk and Rhino were released together for Series 7 of Marvel Minimates.  Previously, both figures had been the “hidden” figures in TRU’s Hulk/DD and Spider-Man 5-packs respectively in 2003.  Grey Hulk was also packed with Ultimate Spider-Man for an SDCC-exclusive pack, also in 2003.  Rhino, for his part, was also paired off with Captain America for the Target/Walmart packs.  What I’m getting at is that these guys were hard *not* to get.

GREY HULK

Grey Hulk (or “Franken Goblin” as Super Awesome Wife has decided he’s called in our house) is a fairly standard Hulk variant, and a pretty simple one at that.  He’s pretty much the same set up as the regular Hulk, being the standard long-footed body with a hair piece.  His hair piece is notably a different one than the standard.  This one attempts to go for Hulk’s earlier hair style, where it was all just on the top of his head and he had the more prominent brow.  It doesn’t quite work out as well as they’d hoped, and ultimately just ends up bulking up his head, making his body look even more puny by comparison, just further pushing the main issue that plagued the first release.  The paint work on this guy is again pretty similar to the original, with a but of a color swap, of course.  He also gets a slightly different facial expression, and one that I kind of like a little bit more than the standard’s.  It’s a shame it didn’t get ported over to green.

RHINO

Rhino is an interesting character to pair off with Hulk.  It’s not that the two have never fought, because they have, but it’s infrequent, since Rhino’s typically a Spidey villain and all.  It’s also perhaps not the most exciting color pairing either, since both of these guys are mostly grey.  That certainly can’t help with the overall meh feeling on the set.  Rhino was another pretty basic ‘mate.  He’s the standard body with an extra piece for his helmet.  The helmet’s actually pretty nice, and does a solid job of capturing Rhino’s look.  Like Hulk, Rhino looks a little scrawny without the add-ons to bulk him up, but it was the style early in the line.  Rhino’s paint work was pretty detailed, with musculature on his torso, and even some slight detailing of his “hide” on the legs.  That’s a cool touch.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Remember how I said you had to try *not* to get these guys?  Yeah, well, I somehow managed to not actually get them for 16 years after they were release.  I know, I’m a bit shocked too.  Like I was mentioning in my Chameleon/Spidey review, I think I just got a little put off by most of this assortment at the time, and just never had the drive to track them down after the fact.  Ultimately, I snagged them from All Time last fall.  They aren’t that bad, but they also aren’t that exciting, and getting them as many times as we did didn’t help things.