Here's my review for Sentinel in the event anyone's interested!
Ooh boy. This one's going to be a tough review! To preface it, I'm going to come clean and say that I'm absolutely in love with the DOTM Leader Class figure from way, way back. It's one of the last few great Transformers toys with a transformation scheme that rivals the now-legendary ROTF Leader Prime. The way the windshield just collapses into his chest? That's a slice of fried gold right there.
That's not to say that it didn't have its fair share of issues. As biased as I am, I'm not delusional. For one, it suffered from a rather severe backpack thanks to the batteries that were required for his electronic lights and sounds, there were a ton more panels hanging off his back than just his cape, and his non-faux chest is way too large.
All these years later, we finally have a new Sentinel figure in the SS line. Can the SS figure topple the Leader and take its place as the definitive Sentinel figure? Let's find out.
Since we're here, let's start off with robot mode. The SS figure does indeed address and fix a number of the problems with the Leader Class figure. Without a battery box, the backpack is drastically reduced. However, the other fixes do come with their own compromises. Firstly, the chest. Yes, it is far, far more accurate and proportional, but you lose the amazing bit of transformation engineering and all of that kibble gets relegated to his butt. Credit where credit is due, it's worthy to note that they at least placed the real windows behind the faux ones ala the Beast Wars MPs and their animal heads. Secondly, they were able to minimize the number of superfluous panels by turning a couple of them into his swords. Rather ingenious idea, but the swords end up really wonky looking from one side and they cannot be stored in robot mode.
All in all, however, bot mode is great. Proportion-wise, it's spot on. (Boxy chest from some angles aside) he looks far more accurate than any Sentinel Prime figure before him with the only real, obvious kibble being the butt windshield the ladders on the side of the legs. The amount of molded detail is also insane. While paint would have gone a long, long way in bringing out all of that detail, it's also rather unfortunate that he's mainly cast in a all black plastic. It's not as dark as what most pictures will have you believe, the black plastic does mask a ton of that detail. It's also really unfortunate that while the Studio Series line excels in terms of molded detail, it lacks in terms of transformation detail. In my opinion, there are way too few transformation steps that are purely for the sake of maintaining accuracy. One obvious example would be the two wheels on the insides of Sentinel's legs instead of just the one.
In terms of articulation, there are problems. His head articulation is horrendous with minimal ability to look even left and right. The ankles don't move side to side either. The waist joint can indeed rotate somewhat, but it can come undone way too easily. At least the transformation joint at the waist can be used as a means to achieve a crazy waist twist. The only other thing that gets in the way of the posing is the fact that his chest is angled downwards due to the transformation. What this means is that if you want him to stand straight with his chest held high, he'll be constantly looking upwards at an awkward angle.
Still, the figure is articulated enough to pretty much pull of almost any pose you want him in.
The last major complaint relating to his poses is that, yes, his shield is missing. One of the most iconic aspects of his character... gone. Urgh. Perhaps they wanted to reduce the cost or perhaps they weren't able to find a way for him to store it in vehicle mode, like how the Leader could. Regardless, this severely limits his posing potential.
Speaking of vehicle mode, the transformation process to it borrows heavily from the Leader but is streamlined to make it more simple but yet almost just as satisfying. The only really annoying part is the fact that the back of the vehicle mode takes a ton of effort to stay pegged together. I'm not sure if it's because the pegs lack friction or that the tolerances aren't as precise as they should have been, but it takes a ton of massaging on my copy to get those back panels to stay together.
As for the vehicle mode itself, it's a boxy firetruck. The only nitpick that I have is the fact that, compared to the Leader figure, it appears to be way too long and thin. I'm not 100% sure which figure is more accurate, but the Leader figure's vehicle mode does seem to be better proportioned.
IN CONCLUSION!
If you're a fan of Sentinel Prime and want a version of him to scale with your other SS figures and are okay with all the (admittedly relatively minor) issues I noted, there's really no reason not to pick this guy up. There're no deal-breaking QC or design flaws and they genuinely did a really decent job of representing the character in the SS line even with all the constraints that come with it. Of course, that might be due to his inherently shellformerish design, but he fairs far better than some of the Deluxes with their entire roofs hanging off their back.
Coming back to the question that I posed at the beginning of the review. Is he a replacement for the DOTM Leader figure?
...not by a long shot! (^o^)
No review (yet), but some images of Scrapper as well!
kind of wondering if devy can have mixmaster truck cab as a head for a midtransformation/ gobot look.