TF Views

DOTM Voyager Sentinel Prime

Robot Mode: I'll start here, because it be what he comes packaged in! Sentinel Prime is a very nice looking robot. I'm not entirely sure how accurate he is to the movie, as I've not seen it in months, but he's very nice looking. Articulation is good, with full shoulder and hip. Rotation at elbow and knee, both of which bend to 90 degrees. No wrist articulation, despite looking like there is, sadly. Neck turns, ankles hinge forward on a transformation joint. Headsculpt is good. I do wish some paint had gone onto his beard to differentiate it from his face, but that's a pretty tiny application. He comes across as rather old and noble, just like Optimus Prime expected!

Immensely noticeable in this mode is his kibble: Effectively all of it folds flat into what looks to my eye to be a cape. I'll comment more on this later. He's painted pretty well, I think. I love the silver on his chest. I'm not sure I like the pure transparent plastic for his lightpiping. It gives him dead eyes even when they're glowing. Could be an intentional choice, given his role in the movie! I'm generally pleased with this mode. He wields his weapon nicely in either of its forms. Speaking of...

Mechtech Gimmick: Sentinel Prime, like all Voyagers in the DOTM line except Ironhide, has a Mechtech weapon that locks into one of two modes. The base form is used as a water cannon is his alt mode. For robot mode, I personally consider it a machine gun or similar. It looks pretty good to my eye, a nice solid big gun. Pushing down and turning a black wheel on the back moves a chunk of the gun forward on struts, creating a large barrel. This is official a fusion cannon, and I see no reason to disagree. It certainly looks like a powerful gun! I see Sentinel as flipping the gun into this mode for a more powerful shot, video game style.

Transformation: I don't intend to walk you through the transformation. Instead I will actually review it. I'll be honest. He's an utter shellformer. That cape I mentioned before? That's 90% of his alt mode, the rest being on his lower thighs and feet. Normally, I'd be really annoyed by this... But Sentinel's not a BW Neo or RID style shellformer. By that I mean he's not at all frustrating to transform. His limbs fold up readily and his shell actually fits around perfectly. One complaint--putting his front wheels into place for either mode always makes me feel like I'm going to break them. An a word of warning: Make sure his head's facing forward before you transforming the chest panel, or you may damage his crest!

Vehicle Mode: I'm biased. I've wanted a full size airport firetruck TF since I was a kid. And Sentinel Prime delivers. Thanks to his shell transformation, the alt mode is mostly unmarred by the needs of transformation. It's very nicely detailed--I love the rubbing-off Autobot logos on the back. Really makes him look old and also fits into his role in the movie. Holds together quite well in my experience. I suppose I should mention that he has no painted hubcaps, but honestly? I don't care about those!

Water cannon's oversized, but I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice a bit of aesthetics for play features. I, for one, love using the mechtech gimmick in this mode. It turns him into an alt mode seen previously on Cybertron Prime: Firepower Truck.


Overall: I suck at number ratings, so I'm not even going to try. Should you buy this toy? I say yes! He looks great in both modes, and his transformation is shell-based but mostly painless (excepting the front wheels), unlike his Leader counterpart. He lacks the sword and shield of his other versions, but he has an awesome BFG. I'm very pleased with him!

I picked up DOTM Human Alliance basic Thunderhead on clearance at Target this weekend, $5.24. The figure doesn't merit a full review, but it's also not as bad as I thought it'd be.

Bot mode is ok, a lot of backpack perhaps, but overall the bot mode looks alright (definitely more bad guy than the Autobot he is though), and the feet fold past flat to more of a toes look which helps with his proportions. The articulation is a little frustrating with a lot of limitations at the knees and ankles, but most frustrating is a lack of swivel at the anywhere along the arm, so the hands end up SIDEWAYS to the elbow articulation - he can only hold stuff like he's doing bicep curls! Also, there are 3mm clip weapons on his backpack which can't really be deployed here, and no useable clip-rails in bot mode (there are clip-rails at the elbows but they are slightly too small so the weapons just dangle face down making them useless).

Transformation to alt mode is overly simple, basically it's just rotating the backpack around, folding up a few greebles, and repositioning the limbs.

The official alt mode is an unarmored, 1-man spider-tank with hexagon-plated treads at the end of every limb. The treads cannot truly lay flat due to their "motor" ends being fatter than the treads themselves, but there are a lot of position ideas that can be worked out, especially since the treads have hexagon-plates which could suggest multi-direction movement akin to a mecanum wheel. The instructions say the robot arms just rotate around, yet they're on a set of hinges which let them pivot all the way around to cover the neck-hole despite no mode using that range of motion, so I assume that the designers meant them to move there to cover that hole and stick out the front diagonally, that also makes the front tread-legs equidistant to the rear now. It's still pretty half-assed though.

Transformation to weapon mode has a little more going on with the lower torso folding down to create a mech suit for the driver with a gun over his head, there's even a fold-down panel with outer grips and gauges and buttons on the inner section. The arms don't end up reaching past this cockpit in this mode, making it a bit dubious a design, and the hands fold past straight to 90 degrees up, suggesting something else was intended for them, but it's not a terrible mech suit. I'd argue that this is actually the vehicle mode, and the walking tank is the weapon mode since it's more of a traditional cannon shape, but neither mode has a 5-mm peg that can be gripped by another bot the way the rest of the HA weapon modes have.

The human figure is a basic military guy, really not much going on, he's light colored and has a tiny autobot logo on his chest. Like the other humans in this basic line, he's shorter than the original HA figures and thus his ability to reach the controls of the tank are quite compromised, the head has to be slid all the way back just to get there.

All in all, at $10 this is pretty mediocre, but it's not as bad as packaging, official images, and crummy instructions would suggest. At $5.24 it's an easy buy for another robot with 3 standard-system weapons.