Sculpting - ****
If you've read my previous reviews on the Ashley Wood robots, Bertie and Bramble, you may want to skip some of this. For those who are new to the world of 3A products, I'd like to cover a lot of those same bases. ThreeA robots are made from a mixture of injection molded plastic and high quality vinyl. With the Bertie and Bramble figures, the body, upper arms, and engine are molded in vinyl while the lower arms, hands, legs, hips, chest and face armor, and feet are injection molded plastic. Large Martin maintains this structure with the exception of his arms, which are entirely molded in vinyl.  The gun seems to be a mixture of both. The vinyl portions, due to the nature of vinyl, don't have a lot of crisp lines and sharp cuts. In some cases this is one of the negative aspects to the medium but, in the case of a war worn robot that's meant to be made from metal, it actually makes for a much more realistic appearance. The injection molded pieces have a bit sharper detail but the heavy paintwork softens a lot of those sharp edges, bringing them in line with the vinyl pieces.

Paint - ****
Pictures may or may not do this figure justice. I hope mine do at least a little. The paintwork is unparalleled by any other factory "pre paint" product out there. Few custom painters do work this nice. As a base, this particular Large Martin (Mr. J. Frosty) is white with icy blue-grey accents on the shoulders and legs. Over this color scheme, there are very realistic rust patterns in all the logical places built up with what appears to be many layers of paint. In addition, there is (paint mimicking) oil oozing from all the joints on the bot, staining the white paint yellow, and airbrushed black soot stains running up the back of the engine from the “exhaust.” There's even faux pealing paint on the front of the bot that shows the underlying rust. I'd be willing to bet you could show even extreme close-ups of the bot to most people and they would swear it was made from actual old rusty metal. In closing... the paint is really good.

Articulation  - ***
There are some very good points here and a little bad (Hey, I gotta’ be critical somewhere). Beginning with the good, Martin has a lot of ball and socket joints, eight joints to be exact. He has double ball-jointed shoulders, and ball-jointed hips and feet. He has no hands, so there are no joints there like Bramble or Bertie, but he does have a pretty nifty cut joint at the wrist so you can swivel his stumps around. Additionally, there's a cut at what can only be called his "waist" as well as the region one might refer to as his "neck." His whole body is basically just one big tube so such differentiations are largely subjective, especially since the "waist" falls above the shoulders. There are also single hinge joints at the elbows and the knees.

As for the little bit of that promised bad… From the waist, down, the articulation is great. The joints are extremely solid (amazing considering the size and weight of what they support) and have a great range of movement. I'm not as happy with the arms, though. Not a deal breaker by any stretch, but I could have done with a touch more range of movement in the elbows and the shoulders.

Accessories - **
This is one area (the only area) where I have to admit that the original Bertie outshines the more recent bots. Bertie came with a complicated set of pouches, grenades, a rocket launcher, two rockets, a pistol, and a rope. Large Martin comes with just two pouches that attach to his front. They're pretty nifty pouches but if you don't count the large gun that attaches to him, that's it. Martin can't hold anything so that does make sense but, all the same, he just simply does not come with a lot of accessories. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there it is. I do like to count at least five of those twenty inches he stands as an "accessory" though.

Fun Factor -  ***
For a high end $300 collectable, Martin is a lot of fun. It's clearly meant to be a toy, not a statue, and is built solidly and is hard to hurt. A child would probably have a lot of fun with one, given the kid was big enough to not be smothered if the bot happened to fall over on him/her. The only thing that I'd worry about a bit is the hips, as they're injection molded plastic (for tensile strength), and not as forgiving to a beating as the soft vinyl joints found elsewhere on the figure (such as the shoulders).

Value - ****
This is a hard goose to cook. $300 for a "toy" is a lot of money no matter how you slice it (I’m trying to keep up the cooking metaphor). That is unless, perhaps, you put it with the apples instead of the oranges or, rather, put it in the same category as fine art prints or statues as opposed to toys. If you look at it as a somewhat limited piece of artwork from an artist you like that you're using as decoration, it seems a bit less crazy. Knowing a bit of the process behind the scenes and that these are about as cheap as possible to make them and still keep the company afloat also helps. So, for me at least, looking at what I know/suspect/have gleaned of the costs and labor involved in making something like this versus the cost to the consumer, it seems like a very good value. I hope that confused and befuddled you, at least that was the plan. That's the best I can do for why I gave ya four stars here.