POTP Sinnertwin review

*to tide you over while I work on the translation of Super Megatron comics, read this *

After reviewing Snarl and the other Dinobots, I’m making my way through the Terrorcons.  Each review will have a little bit more gushing about them, as they truly captured my imagination as a kid. 
Despite only owning two.

Sinnertwin here was one I always wanted (along with all the rest).  I mean what's not to love about a two headed dog thing Transformer.  Not hiding in the bushes of love though.  I love his names.  Actually I think most of the Terrorcons got really good names overall.  Cutthroat sounds like a pirate.  Sinnertwin sounds bad and double trouble, Rippersnapper sharp and violent, Hun-grr erm, gluttonous and Blot… Um. well...

Sinnertwin, that’s a cool name hey?




I always thought of his beast mode as a cerberus but it actually turns out this is not the case.  Apparently the amount of heads count for something in Greek mythology, so Sinnertwin here is modelled on Orthrus.  So there ya go.

POTP Sinnertwin he comes with in robot mode, has a card thing, a gun and some “armour.” He also appears to be remodeled from Snarl,

BUT BACKWARDS!

I kind of love the way these have been done, it’s actually pretty inventive!
Anyway, that’s enough back story. Let’s look at this sexy beast.

Robot mode.

First thing that jumps out and stabs your eyes is how much yellow (Kind of like a turmeric colour) there is on this dude.  I mean, it’s a LOT.  And an interesting contrast using the dark cyan for his limbs and bits.  Interesting as I have been reading up on colour design lately and the colour combo isn’t similar, nor is it contrasting, it’s just there.  Making him strangely ugly in a G2 colour clash way.  Of course, the blatant colour clash of G2 also makes them beautiful for their absolute shamelessness.

He has splats of paint here and there to simulate the stickers he probably had  from G1 and I like what he has.  It’s not too much, but just enough to remind how good the days of G1 were.   Going back to colour study though, his knees have similar colours with the red splats on them and the chest has some purple highlights by the combination peg.

He also has a cute little Decepticon sticker on the combination peg that looks like a rub sticker of old. But sadly isn’t.  I do like that it looks very similar though.  I like that a LOT.  His face has nice silver and yellow goggles.

Speaking of which, we can now look at the

Sculpt.

I really like that they kept his block headedness.  The Transformers Club Breakdown had a really combiner blocky head to it and liked that as well.  So this is nice too.  It also is pretty well sculpted with good details on the face, which is painted silver and not with too much.  The helmet has enough detail to draw your eye.  I can’t compare it to see how similar it was with the original toy, but it looks close to how I would imagine.  Some delicious large goggle like optics top off the, er, top.

The chest is a chunky piece.  Sometimes I think it's too chunky, especially at the waist.  It feels like his chest is way too big.  I felt that a little bit with Snarl, but here it is much more pronounced.  Or is his waist too small?

The legs fill up and gaps rather nicely in robot mode.  In fact they fill up so nicely, that it can be a bit awkward arranging all the hinged pieces when transforming the legs.  But they certainly look chunky enough.



The arms are looong looking.  And kind of thin.   Especially at the shoulders, which can looks super stupid from certain angles.

From the back you can see animal bits.  The necks and heads just hang out the back, not really trying to hide anything.  Looking at the animal heads and the way they are connected to the beck, I have a strange feeling they were designed differently before production.  There is almost enough space to slip a slightly smaller head inside the neck and kind of seal up the backpack area.  However that would have left him with comically small heads for beast mode, so I could understand it that was a plan only for it to be dropped later on.

Articulation wise he has:

• Hinge necks, biceps, thighs, waist
• Hinged elbows, wrists(transformation), knees.
• Ball shoulders, hips.

Just like Snarl, the hips are hindered by the clashing of the leg piece with the groin piece.  The knees are also limited by the calf panels.

He comes with a cyan gun and the Prime Armour.  The gun would’ve been better being a different colour as when he is carrying it, along with the Prime armour, it just ends up making him too cyan and blends into his arm.  Taking off the armour lessens the cyan level a lot, but the gun still blends into his arm…

It is a nicely moulded gun.  The armour plugs on to the chest, or into the shoulder.  This time, I think the shoulder mounting looks ok.



Overall I think the robot mode  looks pretty good.  Sure he’s a chunky boy but it matches with his character.  His endurance and strength stats are pretty high, while his speed is low.  This manages to wrap up an appropriately measured match I think.

One side note though. I’m not quite sure on how to describe this, but he has a kind of “feeling” to his plastic.  It feels a little light, a little hollow, but isn’t.  Almost thin without being thin.  Like cheap feeling with a bit of flex to it.  Sometimes, I think it's almost a touch like a knock off…
Transforming is like Snarl.

But the monster head is where the dino tail was and the dino head is where the monster tail is.  On mine, the shoulder sing thing it a tad loose on one side, so it can easily come out of `lock.`  I also still struggle with the panels on the back of the legs when folding them over the thighs.

Once he’s done though he actually makes a nice looking monster mode.  The long front legs and short back ones are cyan and the majority of his body is the yellow. 

The colours in robot mode compliment the monster mode nicely and manage to break up the yellow a bit.  It’s good. 

There is some very nice ambient sculpting around.  I particularly like his back and this sculpted piston.  It reminds you that even though he is based on a mythological beast, it’s still a robot.  He has two HM points on his back.

Posing is good, the front legs have lots of joints in them as they are robot arms.  The back… not so much.  In Fact the back legs on mine have a tendency to want to pop off the peg a tad sometimes…  Probably being really wishful thinking here, but some ankle swivels on the front legs would’ve been ace.  However as it is, you can get some cool beastly poses from him. 

The real fun part to the beast mode though is the monster heads.  There is a hinge at the base of the neck and the heads are connected by an incredibly restricted ball joint for some reason.  Again, I think this may have been changed since the concept design, as there is space in between bits that smaller heads could fit in if needed.  The restricted ball joints would also fit in with a change from a hinge.

The hinge has quite a range of movement on it, and if you lift it all the way up, you can spy this mysterious piece.  Now, when the head is all the way down, it fills the gap in the neck. But when up, it juts out weirdly.

Just what is this bit for? 


If a smaller head was involved, it would effectively make the backpack of robot mode look like some kind of booster or something.  Otherwise it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose.  TFWiki mentions these as being a bottom jaw.  However there aren’t that many Transformers with two heads that would require two jaws.


As it is the ball joints connecting the heads allow for twisting and nodding movement only.  Very limited L-R movement as well.  I think this is a failing, as a bit more movement would have allowed so much more character.  Part of the reason I enjoy Hun-Grr so much is that his beast heads can do so much.  Sinnertwin’s aren't as much fun as they are so limited.
  Still a little bit fun though.
The jaws can open and close.

You can also mount his gun on his back, or put the armour on his back.

My personal preference is the put the armour on, then mount the gun in one of the thumb holes.
 

Using the armour, you can mount a couple of weapons on it, PLUS you can sit a TM/Prime guy in there.  In a complete break with my usual trend of hating this, I actually really like this option. 

What’s scarier than a two headed robot dog-monster-thing(in the bushes of love)?

A two headed robot dog-monster-thing(in the bushes of love) with a gun emplacement on it’s back!
It reminds me a bit of the Ravages from Horizon Zero Dawn,or just a cool robot animal with a gun on its back.  



Being a scramble city combiner dude he has a leg and arm mode.

The leg mode is very similar to the monster mode,  and looks sturdy enough.  The only era question is how to orientate the monster heads. Up. For monstrosity’s sake.  I find the monster limbs kind of get in the way for this mode.  The forelegs are a bit too long and the rear legs never have anywhere to go, so his leg mode ends up being fairly cluttered.

Arm mode looks nicely tough looking and fairly consistent in colour.  I like it.  Again though the monster limbs just kind of hang there and don’t seem to have a place to go to. 

Also the plug in which to put Abominus’ hand in has a hinge.  It can fold out of the way when transforming into monster mode and neatens up the bottom a little bit.  But when being used as the arm, it need to fold down, so when you go to plug the hand in the connector, it always gets push back leading to a weaker than you’d like  connection.  Easily remedied by getting a finger in there and supporting it from the back though.

The good news is that the arm mode holds together rather well.  The strange neck jutting pieces also manage to cover the gap in the monster necks nicely here too

Generally Sinnertwin here is a good little toy.  The colours are interesting and his robot mode despite the chunkiness at times is good to look at.  Monster mode is good fun even with the restricted head movement.  I think I’d be much more enamoured with him if his monster heads had more movement i them.  Both limb modes for Abominus are all right, but suffer from animal legs hanging off them.



Really the only real criticism I have is the strange feeling plastic.  Has anyone else with him felt this as well, or is it just something with me… I can’t quite seem to put my finger on it. Metaphorically speaking that is.  I can do it literally, but that leads me back to the metaphorical situation...