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Dave's TF Studio Series Rant: Voyager Sentinel Prime
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Dave Van Domelen
Sep 22, 2020, 11:39:03 PM9/22/20
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Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant: Voyager Wave 8
#61 Sentinel Prime (Rosenbauer Panther 6x6 Firetruck)
Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/VSentinel
Sentinel Prime has a weird set of histories. Originally just a name in
a list of previous Primes, about whom almost nothing was known, he's
developed three distinct versions. Transformers Animated gave us a pompous
jerk who straddled the line between comic relief and "I hope this guy never
gets real power oh crap he just did." The comics, and by extension the
Titans Return toy, just reveled in the "Tyrant who made the trains and other
vehicle form Transformers run on time" characterization, although it's lately
been drifting into more of an echo of a certain other orange leader. And
then there's Dark of the Moon. From the design and cited relationship with
Optimus Prime, this Sentinel Prime seems to have been intended as an Alpha
Trion figure, but they backed off from actually calling him that for whatever
reason (perhaps not wanting to lose the ability to use the Alpha Trion name
for a less betrayal-based mentor figure).
CAPSULE
$30 price point.
Sentinel Prime: Despite its shardformer design, I was prepared to
generally like this...until it broke. There's a connection point on the roof
in vehicle mode that will snap off if you don't undo it correctly, and I'd
let a few days pass between transformations so I didn't recall how I'd done
it. If I were inclined to buy a second one (I'm not), I'd shorten that tab
significantly to reduce the chances it'd break off entirely. Mildly
recommended.
RANT
Packaging: Standard Voyager box, but with a twist. While there's a
Decepticon symbol next to his name on the front and back of the box, the
cut-out bit on the side shows an Autobot symbol. Apt given his heel turn.
He continues to be a fully licensed Rosenbauer Panther, and the company
logo is displayed prominently on the back of the box.
AUTOBOT/DECEPTICON: SENTINEL PRIME
Assortment: #61
Altmode: Rosenbauer Panther fire truck
Transformation Difficulty: 32 steps
Previous Name Use: DotM, TFA, Gen:TR
Previous Mold Use: None
Movie: Dark of the Moon
Scene: Battle of Chicago
SENTINEL PRIME battles his protege to ensure the survival of CYBERTRON.
(Interesting how they don't actually say he's battling Optimus...
trying to avoid spoilers for a nearly decade-old movie?)
Packaging: Seven ties on the robot, two on his melee weapon (connected
machetes), one on the vehicle mode water cannon that I guess couldn't be left
attached because it made the figure just a bit too thick to fit in a standard
Voyager box.
The backdrop is a bit of wartorn Chicago downtown.
Robot Mode: Your basic Bayformer of shards and "I guess that's a vehicle
part" molding. The feet are molded so that he has to stand with his legs
angled backwards a bit...not quite a Pelvic Thrust, but aiming in that
general direction. If his legs are fully straight, he ends up leaning
forwards weirdly. He has the whole beard-and-shoulderpads deal going on that
makes me wonder if he was inspired visually by Vector Prime (especially since
the early colror scheme was gold and silver, working name of Ultra Magnus
notwithstanding). The top of the vehicle mode acts as a sort of cape or
cloak out the back, and while it doesn't connect to the shoulderpads per se,
it really heightens the Vector Prime similarity.
7" (18cm) tall in almost entirely dark warm gray and deep red, with a
few accents of silver and black. There's no red plastic, it's all paint, and
most of the toy is made of a dark warm gray or dark taupe depending on where
you draw the line. The collar area is a slightly lighter and more shiny
version of the dark gray, but not quite metallic, and this is also used on
the core of each shoulder joint. The chest is clear smoky plastic, and black
plastic is used for the wheels (two on the inner face of each boot, one on
each side of the abdomen), the fists, various joints (elbows, hips, knees)
and on some vehicle bits stuffed into the backpack. (There's also more clear
plastic inside the backpack under the cloak, more of a buttcape section.)
The overwhelming majority of the paint is red, meant to make the parts
it's on look like folded up parts of the vehicle shell, even though the only
vehicle shell parts really visible in this mode are on the cloak and the
heels. Everything else is folded up or tucked inside the torso. Red on the
shoulderpads, chest, forearms, outer edges of the cloak, top half of the
pelvis, thigh fronts, shin fronts, and toes (which are basically dipped in
it). The helmet is also mostly painted red, with a silver face and light
blue eyes. Several details on the chest are picked out in silver, such as
faux engine bits, a cable coil, and a ring attachment for a winch or
something (Sentinel Prime has a nipple ring). There's some white on the
weapon blades, but that's part of a vehicle shell detail. No faction
symbols.
The neck is a ball joint, the waist is a swivel that is mostly blocked
by kibble but can move a bit to each side. It an also come disconnected
pretty easily and make it look like Sentinel met the wrong end of a plot
device sword. The shoulders are pinned universal joints, and the
shoulderpads are hinged to points on top of the shoulders. There's a swivel
right above the hinge elbow, and the wrists are swivels. Pinned universal
joint hips, swivels right above the hinge knees. While thers's some
transformation hinges in the feet, they're not really useful joints for
posing the figure, leading to the earlier mentioned pelvic thrust stance.
The cloak has hinges that let it be spread out or collapsed in, but they are
soft-ratcheting at smaller angles so are hard to do fine adjustment for.
They can, however, lift all the way up to the sides and act as wings.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, and there's a 3mm socket in the back of the
pelvis, that's about it. There's some short 5mm pegs inside the cloak that
connect to the fists in vehicle mode, and some details on the upper arms that
happen to be shallow 3mm sockets, but neither is too useful. The railings
along the cloak (the top of the fire truck) are smaller than 3mm in
diameter.
The weapon is a pair of almost cleaver-like blades that peg together
into a sort of blade staff, or they can be separated and held as twin
machetes. They're not quite mirror images of each other, one has three
"sawtooth"-like details near the base of the blade, and the other has only
one The hilts are attached with hinges so that they can fold in for vehicle
mode attachment, or you can bend them to make a sort of claw weapon when
combined, or arm shields/tonfas singly. The combined weapon is 5.5" (14cm)
long, and each half is about half that. The one with the peg (and the three
sawtooth bits) is a few millimeters longer. The connector peg itself is a
little over 3mm thick, but it fits nicely into most Transformers 3mm sockets.
The other grip has a 3mm socket, but it's flexible enough a Lego 1/8" rod can
be inserted (the 3mm peg is too loose to stay in a Lego connector, though).
The actual grips are 5mm diameter on the outside. I prefer the two-blade
look to the weird staff.
Note: you can store the one with the peg by sticking the peg into
Sentinel's 3mm butt socket, giving his cloak a little more body. The other
one will fit snugly on the hose hanging down the middle of the cloak, but it
looks really weird there.
Transformation: Mostly it's "upper body becomes cab, legs become bottom
of the rest, cape becomes the roof of the non-cab part," but the devil is
very much in the details. The shins fold forwards so that the bulk of each
boot can rotate and move the wheels from the inside to the outside. The fake
vehicle kibble chest splits to reveal the real vehicle doors folded together
underneath. As expected, the arms just sort of sandwich between the cape and
the legs. The cab shell is mostly folded up on the butt, and the waist
rotates to bring it around to the front and wrap around, while the head and
chest core fold down.
Pretty solid once you're done, but there's a lot of panel fiddling to be
done before you can say you're done, though, and getting the swords into
place over the robot thighs is a bit tricky since the handles need to be bent
slightly tighter in than 90 degrees.
In fact, getting it back apart once it is together is challenging, in
part because the tabbed connections hold so well that there's the constant
worry you are trying to pull apart a pinned seam instead. Start by removing
the swords, then pull the back half apart slightly to get a better grip, and
lift the roof/cape off the chassis/legs. From there, it's easier to see what
you're supposed to disconnect, although getting the cab end apart is still
tricky and the roof is held on with a tab that's so secure that mine snapped
off rather than come out of the slot. IMPORTANT: if you try to transform the
cab back and flex it at all before lifting the tab out, it bends and becomes
much harder to get out without simply breaking. You might need a knife to
get it out, though, because the way the seams are arranged leaves very little
purchase for fingers trying to grip the roof. And now that mine is broken, I
can't really test out other methods. In short, this is a design that
punishes you for not reading the instructions, a bad plan given my
understanding of the demographic. (Well, the portion of the demographic that
actually opens toys.)
Vehicle Mode: A pretty accurate Rosenbauer Panther in red and very dark
taupe (gray-brown) with some white and silver. This is specifically the six
wheel drive version, there exist 4x4 and 8x8 Panthers as well. It has a main
hose on a folded arm on the roof, and a smaller hose on the front end that's
pointed to the right for drive-by fire suppression I guess. The side mirrors
are on struts that get folded up during transformation, something I missed
when transforming without the instructions. There's two different kinds of
ladder molded onto the back end, presumably both meant to be removable and
not just for getting up on top of the truck. The sides are basically just
panels, some of which are either vents or roll-up doors. Other than when
looking from below, there's very little robot kibble visible. Just the top
of the head seen through the windshield, and a little bit of the legs barely
visible when looking from the side. The ground clearance is negligible,
though, thanks to some bits that hang down between the wheels.
8" (20cm) including the nose hose, making it about 1:60 scale. Other
than the smoky clear windows and the black tires and side mirrors, all the
plastic is some variety of very dark grayish brown. The front end bottom is
a slightly more gunmetal shade dark taupe with some metalswirl to it. The
window piece has a slightly less dark taupe paint on the borders. The sides
are mostly painted dark red on their upper half, with a white vertical stripe
about even with where the "elbow" of the hose arm sits. Silver Rosenbauer
logos are on this white stripe and on the red paint part near the back, and a
white "316" is printed in the red part above the rear wheels.
The articulation is limited to the side mirrors on their swivels, and
the main hose arm which has a hinge at its base and a hinge at the midpoint.
the main nozzle can only point backwards unless the whole thing flips upside
down, but there's a secondary nozzle pointed to the passenger side. To be
fair, I'm not entirely sure which side is supposed to be up, but based on
pictures of other Panthers it does seem to be on backwards/upside down. The
hinge is supposed to be at the back, rather than the front...but there's
multiple options for the arm, so the designer of the toy might have mixed
some of them together? The molding around the joint prevents popping it and
flipping it around, though, and there's a 5mm socket on the roof that the peg
on the arm to secure to. As alluded to in the bit about the weapons, the
hose tip has a 3mm diameter ring near the end, so some Fire Blasts can be
attached, but only ones with deep sockets. The actual tip is a few
millimeters long and much narrower.
Important note, do not try to rotate the hose arm. Not only is there
not a rotation joint, but it's really easy to pop the joint apart trying to
rotate it. And getting it back on is nearly impossible in this mode, because
the section it connects to can just push down inside the vehicle shell. I
had to pop it open a bit in back and then get a knife blade up under the
relevant part to stabilize it enough to snap the arm back on.
Overall: I'm a bit peeved that it had a "read the instructions or break
the toy" design flaw to it, but it's otherwise a decent toy for a movie
design.
Dave Van Domelen, working on Studio Series reviews during breaks at the
office, and Generations at home after work.
#61 Sentinel Prime (Rosenbauer Panther 6x6 Firetruck)
Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/VSentinel
Sentinel Prime has a weird set of histories. Originally just a name in
a list of previous Primes, about whom almost nothing was known, he's
developed three distinct versions. Transformers Animated gave us a pompous
jerk who straddled the line between comic relief and "I hope this guy never
gets real power oh crap he just did." The comics, and by extension the
Titans Return toy, just reveled in the "Tyrant who made the trains and other
vehicle form Transformers run on time" characterization, although it's lately
been drifting into more of an echo of a certain other orange leader. And
then there's Dark of the Moon. From the design and cited relationship with
Optimus Prime, this Sentinel Prime seems to have been intended as an Alpha
Trion figure, but they backed off from actually calling him that for whatever
reason (perhaps not wanting to lose the ability to use the Alpha Trion name
for a less betrayal-based mentor figure).
CAPSULE
$30 price point.
Sentinel Prime: Despite its shardformer design, I was prepared to
generally like this...until it broke. There's a connection point on the roof
in vehicle mode that will snap off if you don't undo it correctly, and I'd
let a few days pass between transformations so I didn't recall how I'd done
it. If I were inclined to buy a second one (I'm not), I'd shorten that tab
significantly to reduce the chances it'd break off entirely. Mildly
recommended.
RANT
Packaging: Standard Voyager box, but with a twist. While there's a
Decepticon symbol next to his name on the front and back of the box, the
cut-out bit on the side shows an Autobot symbol. Apt given his heel turn.
He continues to be a fully licensed Rosenbauer Panther, and the company
logo is displayed prominently on the back of the box.
AUTOBOT/DECEPTICON: SENTINEL PRIME
Assortment: #61
Altmode: Rosenbauer Panther fire truck
Transformation Difficulty: 32 steps
Previous Name Use: DotM, TFA, Gen:TR
Previous Mold Use: None
Movie: Dark of the Moon
Scene: Battle of Chicago
SENTINEL PRIME battles his protege to ensure the survival of CYBERTRON.
(Interesting how they don't actually say he's battling Optimus...
trying to avoid spoilers for a nearly decade-old movie?)
Packaging: Seven ties on the robot, two on his melee weapon (connected
machetes), one on the vehicle mode water cannon that I guess couldn't be left
attached because it made the figure just a bit too thick to fit in a standard
Voyager box.
The backdrop is a bit of wartorn Chicago downtown.
Robot Mode: Your basic Bayformer of shards and "I guess that's a vehicle
part" molding. The feet are molded so that he has to stand with his legs
angled backwards a bit...not quite a Pelvic Thrust, but aiming in that
general direction. If his legs are fully straight, he ends up leaning
forwards weirdly. He has the whole beard-and-shoulderpads deal going on that
makes me wonder if he was inspired visually by Vector Prime (especially since
the early colror scheme was gold and silver, working name of Ultra Magnus
notwithstanding). The top of the vehicle mode acts as a sort of cape or
cloak out the back, and while it doesn't connect to the shoulderpads per se,
it really heightens the Vector Prime similarity.
7" (18cm) tall in almost entirely dark warm gray and deep red, with a
few accents of silver and black. There's no red plastic, it's all paint, and
most of the toy is made of a dark warm gray or dark taupe depending on where
you draw the line. The collar area is a slightly lighter and more shiny
version of the dark gray, but not quite metallic, and this is also used on
the core of each shoulder joint. The chest is clear smoky plastic, and black
plastic is used for the wheels (two on the inner face of each boot, one on
each side of the abdomen), the fists, various joints (elbows, hips, knees)
and on some vehicle bits stuffed into the backpack. (There's also more clear
plastic inside the backpack under the cloak, more of a buttcape section.)
The overwhelming majority of the paint is red, meant to make the parts
it's on look like folded up parts of the vehicle shell, even though the only
vehicle shell parts really visible in this mode are on the cloak and the
heels. Everything else is folded up or tucked inside the torso. Red on the
shoulderpads, chest, forearms, outer edges of the cloak, top half of the
pelvis, thigh fronts, shin fronts, and toes (which are basically dipped in
it). The helmet is also mostly painted red, with a silver face and light
blue eyes. Several details on the chest are picked out in silver, such as
faux engine bits, a cable coil, and a ring attachment for a winch or
something (Sentinel Prime has a nipple ring). There's some white on the
weapon blades, but that's part of a vehicle shell detail. No faction
symbols.
The neck is a ball joint, the waist is a swivel that is mostly blocked
by kibble but can move a bit to each side. It an also come disconnected
pretty easily and make it look like Sentinel met the wrong end of a plot
device sword. The shoulders are pinned universal joints, and the
shoulderpads are hinged to points on top of the shoulders. There's a swivel
right above the hinge elbow, and the wrists are swivels. Pinned universal
joint hips, swivels right above the hinge knees. While thers's some
transformation hinges in the feet, they're not really useful joints for
posing the figure, leading to the earlier mentioned pelvic thrust stance.
The cloak has hinges that let it be spread out or collapsed in, but they are
soft-ratcheting at smaller angles so are hard to do fine adjustment for.
They can, however, lift all the way up to the sides and act as wings.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, and there's a 3mm socket in the back of the
pelvis, that's about it. There's some short 5mm pegs inside the cloak that
connect to the fists in vehicle mode, and some details on the upper arms that
happen to be shallow 3mm sockets, but neither is too useful. The railings
along the cloak (the top of the fire truck) are smaller than 3mm in
diameter.
The weapon is a pair of almost cleaver-like blades that peg together
into a sort of blade staff, or they can be separated and held as twin
machetes. They're not quite mirror images of each other, one has three
"sawtooth"-like details near the base of the blade, and the other has only
one The hilts are attached with hinges so that they can fold in for vehicle
mode attachment, or you can bend them to make a sort of claw weapon when
combined, or arm shields/tonfas singly. The combined weapon is 5.5" (14cm)
long, and each half is about half that. The one with the peg (and the three
sawtooth bits) is a few millimeters longer. The connector peg itself is a
little over 3mm thick, but it fits nicely into most Transformers 3mm sockets.
The other grip has a 3mm socket, but it's flexible enough a Lego 1/8" rod can
be inserted (the 3mm peg is too loose to stay in a Lego connector, though).
The actual grips are 5mm diameter on the outside. I prefer the two-blade
look to the weird staff.
Note: you can store the one with the peg by sticking the peg into
Sentinel's 3mm butt socket, giving his cloak a little more body. The other
one will fit snugly on the hose hanging down the middle of the cloak, but it
looks really weird there.
Transformation: Mostly it's "upper body becomes cab, legs become bottom
of the rest, cape becomes the roof of the non-cab part," but the devil is
very much in the details. The shins fold forwards so that the bulk of each
boot can rotate and move the wheels from the inside to the outside. The fake
vehicle kibble chest splits to reveal the real vehicle doors folded together
underneath. As expected, the arms just sort of sandwich between the cape and
the legs. The cab shell is mostly folded up on the butt, and the waist
rotates to bring it around to the front and wrap around, while the head and
chest core fold down.
Pretty solid once you're done, but there's a lot of panel fiddling to be
done before you can say you're done, though, and getting the swords into
place over the robot thighs is a bit tricky since the handles need to be bent
slightly tighter in than 90 degrees.
In fact, getting it back apart once it is together is challenging, in
part because the tabbed connections hold so well that there's the constant
worry you are trying to pull apart a pinned seam instead. Start by removing
the swords, then pull the back half apart slightly to get a better grip, and
lift the roof/cape off the chassis/legs. From there, it's easier to see what
you're supposed to disconnect, although getting the cab end apart is still
tricky and the roof is held on with a tab that's so secure that mine snapped
off rather than come out of the slot. IMPORTANT: if you try to transform the
cab back and flex it at all before lifting the tab out, it bends and becomes
much harder to get out without simply breaking. You might need a knife to
get it out, though, because the way the seams are arranged leaves very little
purchase for fingers trying to grip the roof. And now that mine is broken, I
can't really test out other methods. In short, this is a design that
punishes you for not reading the instructions, a bad plan given my
understanding of the demographic. (Well, the portion of the demographic that
actually opens toys.)
Vehicle Mode: A pretty accurate Rosenbauer Panther in red and very dark
taupe (gray-brown) with some white and silver. This is specifically the six
wheel drive version, there exist 4x4 and 8x8 Panthers as well. It has a main
hose on a folded arm on the roof, and a smaller hose on the front end that's
pointed to the right for drive-by fire suppression I guess. The side mirrors
are on struts that get folded up during transformation, something I missed
when transforming without the instructions. There's two different kinds of
ladder molded onto the back end, presumably both meant to be removable and
not just for getting up on top of the truck. The sides are basically just
panels, some of which are either vents or roll-up doors. Other than when
looking from below, there's very little robot kibble visible. Just the top
of the head seen through the windshield, and a little bit of the legs barely
visible when looking from the side. The ground clearance is negligible,
though, thanks to some bits that hang down between the wheels.
8" (20cm) including the nose hose, making it about 1:60 scale. Other
than the smoky clear windows and the black tires and side mirrors, all the
plastic is some variety of very dark grayish brown. The front end bottom is
a slightly more gunmetal shade dark taupe with some metalswirl to it. The
window piece has a slightly less dark taupe paint on the borders. The sides
are mostly painted dark red on their upper half, with a white vertical stripe
about even with where the "elbow" of the hose arm sits. Silver Rosenbauer
logos are on this white stripe and on the red paint part near the back, and a
white "316" is printed in the red part above the rear wheels.
The articulation is limited to the side mirrors on their swivels, and
the main hose arm which has a hinge at its base and a hinge at the midpoint.
the main nozzle can only point backwards unless the whole thing flips upside
down, but there's a secondary nozzle pointed to the passenger side. To be
fair, I'm not entirely sure which side is supposed to be up, but based on
pictures of other Panthers it does seem to be on backwards/upside down. The
hinge is supposed to be at the back, rather than the front...but there's
multiple options for the arm, so the designer of the toy might have mixed
some of them together? The molding around the joint prevents popping it and
flipping it around, though, and there's a 5mm socket on the roof that the peg
on the arm to secure to. As alluded to in the bit about the weapons, the
hose tip has a 3mm diameter ring near the end, so some Fire Blasts can be
attached, but only ones with deep sockets. The actual tip is a few
millimeters long and much narrower.
Important note, do not try to rotate the hose arm. Not only is there
not a rotation joint, but it's really easy to pop the joint apart trying to
rotate it. And getting it back on is nearly impossible in this mode, because
the section it connects to can just push down inside the vehicle shell. I
had to pop it open a bit in back and then get a knife blade up under the
relevant part to stabilize it enough to snap the arm back on.
Overall: I'm a bit peeved that it had a "read the instructions or break
the toy" design flaw to it, but it's otherwise a decent toy for a movie
design.
Dave Van Domelen, working on Studio Series reviews during breaks at the
office, and Generations at home after work.
Irrellius Spamticon
Sep 23, 2020, 4:30:55 PM9/23/20
to
I just don't have motivationto buy him, especially since he has no shield.
Codigo Postal
Mar 23, 2021, 2:19:27 AM3/23/21
to
Did the once unthinkable and picked up an upgrade kit that was slightly more expensive than what I paid for the actual figure. Go figure.
This is the upgrade kit by 115 Utopia, also known as 115 Workshop. I don’t know what that stands for, but I don’t know what Nonnef means either.
The most exciting parts of this set are, naturally, the gap fillers. It’s why 3rd party upgrade kits exist - to quell the wave of trypophobia that’s afflicted the fandom since the Great Cheapening hollowed out our beloved robots.
The fillers in question fill out the inner thighs for visual cohesion, and add heels to make him more stable in robot mode.
But of course, we’re really here for the weapons, and this kit doesn’t disappoint. We’ve got the Primax Blade, impeccably rendered in two parts and looking like it slashed its way out of the movie. Puts the dinky little panel swords Sentinel comes with to shame. Those old swords can’t be tossed in the bin, since they’re needed for transformation - fortunately, they can be pegged into the back of the shield for storage, and what a shield it is. Perfectly sized and sculpted.
Finally, the cosmic rust gun is included as well, to recreate the moment when Sentinel reveals his true colors and blasts Ironhide.
All the colors match the base figure, and everything fits snugly the way it should. All the weapons and accessories store nicely in vehicle mode as well.
Studio Series Sentinel Prime was a great figure that felt annoyingly incomplete to me in a way that few others have so far. This set solves that problem nicely. The price is what it is, but for my money, I’d say it’s worth it.
Zobovor
Mar 23, 2021, 11:25:21 AM3/23/21
to
On Tuesday, March 23, 2021 at 12:19:27 AM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:
> I don’t know what that stands for, but I don’t know what Nonnef means either.
I've always interpreted it to mean that Hasbro effed up somehow by leaving out important accessories, so Nonnef gives you a chance to own a "non-effed" version of the toy.
> I don’t know what that stands for, but I don’t know what Nonnef means either.
Zob (waffling on whether to get non-effed upgrade parts of Studio Series Grimlock)
Codigo Postal
Mar 23, 2021, 1:01:54 PM3/23/21
to
Gustavo Wombat
Mar 25, 2021, 5:18:52 AM3/25/21
to
friend?
Zobovor
Mar 25, 2021, 7:30:37 AM3/25/21
to
On Thursday, March 25, 2021 at 3:18:52 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> I want knees for Wheelie. Do any of the third party kits fix our rhyming
> friend?
Nonnef says they're working on a fix.
> I want knees for Wheelie. Do any of the third party kits fix our rhyming
> friend?
Hopefully it will be ready quick!
Zob (not a poet)
Irrellius Spamticon
Mar 25, 2021, 9:29:11 AM3/25/21
to
But on a positive note Actionmaster Wheelie....
Studio Series was billed at high quality revisitations of movie character toys, so it's quite a disappointment to see so much for Nonnef and other 3rd parties to do. The previous Sentinel had the sword and shield. Heck even the little commander class toy did. At least someone is offering a fix.
Codigo Postal
Mar 25, 2021, 1:07:34 PM3/25/21
to
I wonder if the 3P scene has inadvertently fueled this recent combination of cost cuts and price hikes by demonstrating to Hasbro that despite the grumbles and complaints, we're willing to open our wallets to feed our addiction, regardless of pricepoint.
"These fools worship Transformers!"
Zobovor
Mar 25, 2021, 9:16:18 PM3/25/21
to
On Thursday, March 25, 2021 at 11:07:34 AM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:
> I can understand the need for gap fillers or esoteric accessories, but when figures are missing iconic or essential components, as with SS
> Sentinel Prime's gun/sword/shield, or Earthrise Optimus Prime's budget trailer, it smacks not only of cost management, but exploitation.
Well, Grimlock doesn't use his sword in the cartoon. (No, "Madman's Paradise" doesn't count. Shut up.) He doesn't use his galaxial rocket launcher, either. Sometimes I think people want the third party upgrades because they want neo-G1 versions of the G1 accessories, but in the case of Studio Series Grimlock, his accessories are authentic and accurate.
> I can understand the need for gap fillers or esoteric accessories, but when figures are missing iconic or essential components, as with SS
> Sentinel Prime's gun/sword/shield, or Earthrise Optimus Prime's budget trailer, it smacks not only of cost management, but exploitation.
> I wonder if the 3P scene has inadvertently fueled this recent combination of cost cuts and price hikes by demonstrating to Hasbro that
> despite the grumbles and complaints, we're willing to open our wallets to feed our addiction, regardless of pricepoint.
I like that the third party option exists, at least. I don't really see the point of all the gap-filler kits, personally, but I really like getting the signature weapons and accessories for characters that I feel desperately need them. I love my Earthrise Sunstreaker spoiler parts. The spoiler has made me love that toy twice as much as I did before. I love that my Ironworks has a windmill fan. He desperately needed one.
Also, remember that Hasbro cheaps out deliberately on the brands they own, so the brands that they need to license (and are thus more expensive) don't feel left out:
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.toys.transformers/c/V6kvIstVs8Q/
So it's possible that Hasbro really *could* afford to give us all these extra parts and paint applications, but they know from experience what consumers are willing to spend $20 or $30 or $50 on, and they manufacture accordingly.
Zob (too tired, can't see straight)
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