BOB SHARE

A pioneer in India’s news television, NDTV marked its 25 years of credible, dedicated and path breaking news broadcasting on December 14 by acknowledging 25 Greatest Global Indian Living Legends for their outstanding contribution in association with Tata Consultancy Services, one of the world’s top technology firms. For the first time ever, the Nation witnessed the coming together of twenty five Indian Living Legends on the centre stage. The legends were acknowledged and felicitated by the Honourable President of India, Pranab Mukherjee at an awards ceremony held by NDTV at the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

NDTV’s 25 Greatest Global Living Indian Legends

Amitabh Bachchan	Ela Bhatt	Leander Paes	Ratan Tata	Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Anish Kapur	Fali Nariman	MS Swaminathan	Sachin Tendulkar	Vikram Seth
Amartya Sen	Indira Nooyi	Mukesh Ambani	Dr SS Badrinath	Waheeda Rehman
A R Rahman	Hari Prasad Chaursia	N R Narayanmurthy	S H Raza	Y K Hamied
CNR Rao	Kapi Dev	Rajinikanth	Shahrukh Khan	Zubin Mehta

 Presenting the awards,  President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, said, “It’s indeed a pleasure for me to be amidst you this evening and to be associated with recognizing these 25 great Indians. While going through their introduction and some of their comments I found out that one striking commonality in all of them that each and every one of them believes in hard work, honesty, commitment to the job, idea to which they furnish.

Source: NDTV

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This has got to be one of the first Marvel Legends figures I got way back when I only wanted to get one Hulk, the perfect Hulk, and the Rangerlord pointed me to this 2-Pack Hulk that came with the Leader.

A few years and quite a few Hulks later, I pull out this guy and realize that hes a pretty damn good Hulk.  In fact, hes probably the best damn Hulk out there sculpt-wise, articulation-wise, and maybe even paint-wise.

So put aside your Marvel Universe Hulks, your other Marvel Legends Hulks, and of course your Megos Hulk, kick back and take a gander at this review!


 Like: His proportions.  His arms are just long enough, his hands are just the right size, his legs arent overly bent nor does he have too wide a stance.   His torso and chest are not to large, too small or too restrictive to his articulation, and his head is also the right size and width.


These may feel like they are givens if you like a particular figure but on a Hulk hes vital.  There are too many of them out there that have great torsos but poor heads (MU 1st release Hulk/Grey Hulk), great arms that end up to long (Target Movie Exclusive 6" Hulk), and great size and scale to other figs but weird faces or chests that are too big (movie 3.75" Hulks).  So this guy is the best out there in terms of a proportionally pleasing Hulk.


Like: His head and face.  Its just wide enough, with a flat enough nose and  eyes that are just perfect: not too wide, and not too small or large.  The wide cheekbones stand out nicely without making him look like a baboon.

Hulks scowl is also angry enough but not so crazy it throws off the eyebrows, which are excellently painted.

What I like best though, is the upper lip to nose distance.  Its larger than a normal person as it should be, but not so large that he starts looking like a chimpanzee.  See these things are important because HULK WANT LOOK HANDSOME AND NOT LIKE APE.

Like: The snarl.  Its just right in terms of how it fits the proportions of his face.  The teeth are painted white but given a dirty brown wash.  Its so dirty it looks great. :)

Theres a roar variant to this figure, and Id pick it up if I saw it for cheap, but I think the snarl fits the figure better because it goes better with more of the poses that this Hulk can pull off.
Like: His articulation, all 27 points of em.  I love the Legends heads where they have a swivel and hinge in the neck.  Not only does it give the Hulk a great downward and side to side movement, it does it well. Hulk cant look up very much if at all though, and thats due to how his neck sticks out from huge shoulder and neck muscles.

The other points I love are in his feet.  Each foot has a point/pivot ankle hinge, a rocker hinge, and hinged toes!  Its awesome how he has these and still can maintain his balance without the joints moving under his weight.

Dislike: No Ab Crunch. But this is minor because his hips work well enough to compensate for this.  Also an ab crunch would probably break the torso sculpt enough to make a great looking Hulk body look like crap.
Dislike: No fists, and his hands, while superbly articulated, dont close into proper fists.  He ends up doing a lot of slapping.

Like: The detail and tooling of the sculpt.  Pants has texture.  Skin is leathery and wrinkly where it needs to be and his veins are not overly done. They are still there, but it adds to the powerful body sculpt instead of drawing attention away from it.

Like: His hair, which is just long enough and unkempt enough to frame his face without taking attention away from it.  Its also painted black and given just the right amount of green highlights to look believable or real.

RATINGS
Aesthetics: 8.5/10 - A great shade of green and a good magenta/purple pair of pants to match kicks off the great look.  Add the wonderful face and the proportionately pleasing sculpt and you have yourself a winner!  If theres anything to fault here its perhaps that his skin looks a little shiny and thats because most of him is cast is green plastic.  But its a very, very minor issue considering how well they sculpted him and the great dull/grey green color of the plastic (minus the shine, of course).

Overall: 9.25/10 - Its hard for a Hulk fan like me not to like every Hulk I buy.  After all, I mustve first liked how they looked in package before deciding to buy em.  But by the same token,being a fan of Hulk means I probably have higher standards than the "average" fan who might or might not be partial to the Jolly Green Giant.  That this guy impresses me, especially after having got him first and going through lots more Hulks, shows that hes gotta be one of the best, if not the best 6 inch scale Hulk out there.

If you have the chance to own him for a reasonable price, dont hesitate!  You definitely wont regret it. :)

Youd think a Legend class would be HUGE, bigger than a Voyager and a Deluxe for sure, and beating out the Supreme Class for size.  But in actual fact, a Legends class figure is smaller! How much smaller?  Try the whole way!

Yes, that was one of the things that really appealed to me when I spotted this single Optimus Prime in a sea of Legend Class Megatrons.  Hes so tiny, he just had to be full of surprises!  The other thing was that Id never seen this class of Prime (nor knew that they produced this G1 version) and Im an Optimus addict--I just gotta catch em all! (That phrase is eerily familiar...;P)

But from the get go, this figure turned out to be full of surprises, the biggest one of which wasnt at all good.  Hit it to find out more!
Dislike: That my lil Prime broke apart when I first swiveled his waist to tray and transform him.  The first rotation loosened the ribbed metal "screw," and the second created a separation between the chest and the lower torso. Try as I might, I couldnt press it back in.  So I thought instead of forcing it and breaking itty bitty Optimus, Id slowly remove the top half from the bottom half and re-screw it in.  Alas, this wasnt to be because:


1) The metal screw that I thought was a screw was actually a ribbed metal "nail" that had been hammered into the plastic of the lower torso.

2) The "screw" hadnt been hammered in straight.  That meant that while I could fit it back in the hole, the upper body wouldnt swivel correctly, instead rotating at an angle that would cause the top half of the figure to spill over itself.

What I dislike about this the most is that its gonna take a helluva lot of work to fix this! How, you ask me?  Well, Im clueless too! :(

Like: That its a really tiny Prime that can transform and has some itty bitty articulation.  The upper body is actually pretty decent, with Shoulder hinges, a ball joint, and elbow balls. These facilitate the transformation, but they also really give this tiny guy some serious motion.

The gap you see is due to the screw.  Argh!

Like: That his vehicle mode is pretty tight!  Yeah, his legs clip together well, his arms and forearms tuck into and under his chest well.  Its good enough that you wouldnt be able to tell it could transform (If you didnt know about Transformers and couldnt identify with Primes iconic red and blue coloring.)

Dislike: That he doesnt have leg articulation below the hip/leg joints.  while I know it had to be cheaper to mold the whole leg with no joint, couldnt they have included just a basic knee hinge? It doesnt have to be a fantastically flexible joint, but as long as it bend, Ill take it.  As a result, his straight-leg syndrome severely restricts his stances and takes away from the potential of his great arm PoAs.

Also, his leg joints are limited.  This quite a waste because theyre actually balls but have been severely blocked by the leg sculpt.  You get about 45 degrees out to the side, which isnt too bad.  You get about 30 degrees backwards, but only about half of that out front.  Yup, this means no sitting or front kicking.  Even stepping forward is tough because Prime just looks like hes strolling in the park when you put one leg forward and another back.  Better to leave him in a heroic wide stance. Heh.

Like: The sculpt is very well detailed for a figure only 3 inches high.  Hes got great detail on his face, legs and abs, although the paint is pretty basic.  I guess its ideal if youre up for some paint customizing!

I also love the Reveal the Shield sticker on his left forearm.  Its tinnier than any Ive seen before and works just as well--you dont even have to rub/press it--just breathe on it. ;)

RATINGS

Aesthetics: 7/10 - Great sculpt for its size and aside from his "missing back" and the forearm kibble, he could rival some of the newer Optimus Primes out there.  Hes surely better looking than the G1 release of Prime from way back.

His painted parts are: the red head panel, the blue helmet and silver eyes and mouth.  The smokestacks are also painted silver, while the lower front half of the truck mode below the window is cast in silver and painted red.  His thighs and fuel tanks are silver over a dark blue cast plastic and his chest windows are stickers.  All in all its a decent amount of paint on the smallest class of Hasbro TF, so good effort.
Poseability: 5/10 - Its just tough to get lil Prime here in any decent action poses because of his
straight leg problem.  Besides wide-legged and normal stances, the only other thing he can do is a walking stance.  Hm.  Mores the pity that hes got good upper body articulation that cant be fully exploited because of the stiff legs.
Fun: 8/10 (5/10 if it breaks like mine) - Hey its Prime! (Hey he broke right out of the package!)

But in all seriousness, theres something fun about these pocket-sized Transformers.  Its just more than cool that they are so small and yet can transform better than those G1 figures we used to play with in the 80s.  Or at least this lil Prime is better than his 80s counterpart.  This is a toy thats simple enough that I would transform him again and again.

But in order for that to work the toy has got to be sturdier than what it was.  And Im not even a rough little rug rat who tore apart his Prime because he was too eager to read the instructions (though I feel like it.) Some quality control is in order here, especially for a figure as rare as this.  How rare?  Well, hes the only one Ive ever seen in the wild, the wild which is flooded with Megatrons and Starscreams.

 Value: 6/10 - I paid S$11.90 ($US 9.15) and breakages aside, it has no accessories.  Primes clearly got two hands to hold stuff with so wheres his iconic laser cannon?  What is Optimus without that sweet armament that always seems so full of Decepticon decimation potential but never seems to injure them that much?  Kinda naked, thats what.  Oh well, at least hes got some paint on him and a good sculpt.  Add to that a tight vehicle mode and Prime is more or less satisfactory.

Overall: 6.5/10 - I really never thought this fella would turn out to the be-all-and-end-all of Optimus Primes.  I did indeed expect him to fall far short of Deluxe and Voyager figures.  He did surprise me in many good ways but there was one major nasty surprise that just really ruined the enjoyment for me.  Hed probably get bumped to a full 7/10 if he didnt break and if I took that fully into account, hed be less than a 5.

But I have to stay objective--Prime is as good as any Legends you can find.  The fact that hes our old fave G1 Autobot leader just makes him worth having.  I cant say that youll have to be careful when selecting your Primes, because in this instance, its impossible--you cant just bust open the package to check all his joints.  I guess its just my luck.  Heres hoping that you have better if you find him! :)