Sentinel Prime, initial thoughts.

I like the concept of Sentinel Prime and so I was looking forward to this figure.  He has cool weapons and is a pretty awesome vehicle mode.  Much in the same vein as Animated Ultra Magnus.  That is, a big ass truck of some description.  Sorry, but there is a lack of robot mode pics, again, using just my camera in my phone, and I didn’t think of doing this until after I had transformed him to vehicle mode.

 

Sentinel is a large looking chap.  After getting him out of the box, I had a bit of a play.  The main complaint that I have heard about him is that he is back heavy.  Yes, it is a justified complaint, as he is back heavy.  The batteries for his electronics are heavy, stored in the his chest and stick out the back affecting his balance in a bad way.  This isn’t helped by his long legs.  The sounds are interesting though.  He says ‘I am Sentinel Prime’ and if you push the button for his Mech-tech weapon, he says “I’m Glad you’re Still alive Optimus.”  Blah blah blah.  The voice is just some random dude and isn’t terribly interesting.

 

The weapons he wields are pretty cool, a double bladed er, thing and a shield that looks a lot like the Maximal insignia from Beast Wars.  The shield has a spring loaded open feature, which lessens it's purpose of a shield.  Sadly they are both an annoying Hasbro grey, instead of a darker grey that could have passed for a gun metal sort of colour.  Shame really, as they need a touch more paint (which the box picture has I might add) to liven them up.

 

     

 

So I transformed him.  The instructions were particularly woeful.  I ended up ignoring them and going with what seemed natural.  And it worked better that way.  I found the windshield assembly a bit frustrating, but had him in his fire truck mode in about 7 or so minutes.   Transformation was  quite clever though, with the arms connecting with the shins in an interesting way.  Impressive engineering.

 

I then spent the next 50 minutes arranging the panels of the fire truck so they would sit flush with each other.  Man that made me swear so much!    Just when I was at the point of having it all together, one panel wouldn’t be right, so off I would go to shove it in and the wind shield would pop out of pace.  AAAARRRRGH!  I haven’t raged at a Transformer like this since, since, I can’t remember!  Eventually I had it worked out.  Turns out the legs were a fraction of an angle in the wrong position, pushing the arms up about half a millimetre.  Even after all that though, the top of the back of the truck doesn’t clip in nice and firmly.  That really put me off the figure at that point.

 

I quite like the truck.  His shield can be stored underneath and the blade can be stored under the grey bit on the top.  Without the shield underneath, you see a lot of robot.

     

 

The Dark of The Moon line seem to have a vehicle mode that has the options of carrying a bit of a weapons load out.  the Leader sized Bumblebee does this quite well, and it looks like a Stealth Force vehicle that can transform.  Sentinel can do this too, but with the addition of his melee kit, it looks a little underwhelming.  The back of the fire truck folds down and some weapons (sculpted onto the body) are revealed.  There are a couple of mech tech ports as well, as soon as I have some, I will give them a try.  The shield and blade are slapped on the top of the truck over the cab.   The fire hose rests on top of the weapons.  He now looks like he has a large pair of scissors on his head.

 

           

 

I do like the sculpted designs on his hands, it looks like Cybertronian writing. 

There is a button on the roof of the cab that does some sounds, with a weapon equipped in the mech-tech port it makes a blaster noise.  Without, it makes the sirens light up and a siren noise.  It is annoyingly easy to crack that baby during transformation.  I will be taking the batteries out soon, let me tell you.

 

Lights and sirens

 

Weapon noises

So, the robot mode is pretty cool despite the balance issues and the truck mode is pretty powerful looking and appropriate for Sentinel Prime.  His Mech-tech weapons as they are now are pretty lame.  Perhaps with other toys weapons plugged in, it might be cool, but for now, I would just either leave him as a normal fire truck, or just open the back panels and leave the shield and blade hidden away.  Animated Ultra Magnus is much cooler than Sentinel Prime in regards to vehicle weapon load-outs.

 

It’s and OK figure.  Glad I didn’t pay full price and I look forward to messing around with it a bit more than I have had the chance to tonight.