Back when Toy Biz was producing action figures of Marvel comic book heroes, they were also doing other licensed Marvel products, including kits that allowed kids to cast statues of their favorite characters. This Hulk figure was intended for that casting line, but it never went into production. It was sculpted by Bill Merklein, a very talented artist who created figures for many toy lines, including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and G.I. Joe. Bill made resin copies of the aborted Hulk figure and graciously gave one to me.

I had a lot of cleaning up to do to get the figure ready for paint. Toy Biz cancelled the project before Bill had finalized the figure. There were still a lot of tool marks on the sculpt when Bill made his copies and that necessitated quite a bit of careful sanding. Smoothing the surface then exposed dozens and dozens (hundreds?) of tiny air bubbles trapped in the resin. These had to be filled and the surface resanded which, of course, opened more bubbles. The refilling and sanding seemed never ending, but the end result, a truly unique figure, was well worth it!

Completed in 1996.