When X-Men premiered on Halloween 1992 the big bad guy of the day wasn’t Magneto, it wasn’t Apocalypse, it was the Sentinels. The mutant-hunting robots were chosen because they represented the threat from humanity as it pertained to the protagonists of the show. Any show or comic book can put some scary dude in a cape and call him the bad guy, but X-Men wanted you to know that the biggest threat out there for the heroes was humanity itself which had allowed its fear and bigotry to manifest itself in the form of giant, killer, robots. It sounds kind of crazy, even silly, but it worked as those cold, detached, humanoid robots stalked a young girl and even killed one of the X-Men. And when it came time to bring the X-Men back for X-Men ’97 it was decided pretty early on that the Sentinels needed to be a focal point of that return season.
The Sentinels, being 30′ robots have never made for easy toys or action figures. Back in the old days, there was a Sentinel toy that was probably 14″ tall or so and was more of a play thing than something that looked cool or intimidating. The legs didn’t move, it had blast off hands and toes, and there was a retractable claw on one hand. It seemed almost lame even to me, but I still bought it when I had 20 bucks burning a hole in my pocket. In the Marvel Legends era, the Sentinel was the second build-a-figure and was the first I completed. It was more of a modern look, but still cool and I hung onto it for a long time until eventually selling it when I thought I was done with Marvel toy collecting (hah!). More recently, we’ve had a HasLab Sentinel, smaller arcade game Sentinels, and now this new made-to-order one. The HasLab model has been basically Hasbro’s crowd funding way to make more riskier products. It has always struck me as ridiculous that a company the size of Hasbro needs to resort to crowd-funding for anything, but the model has worked mostly well save for a failure here and there. The newer made-to-order model is simpler and something that strikes me as a better way to do things. They put a product up for a price and if you want it you order it, and if you don’t you don’t. It took about 14 months for fulfillment, but the Sentinel is here and hopefully it’s spectacular.
The Sentinel retailed for $175 direct from Hasbro with free shipping. It arrived in a brown box with a brown shipper box inside it. Within that is the actual product box. It contains a graphic on the front illustrating what’s inside with a larger picture on the right spine of a Sentinel in action. The other side has a group shot of the cast of X-Men ’97 and the rear has a cross-sell along with a shot of the figure in action with other X-Men ’97 action figures. There’s no window so if you got this as an in-box collector it might not do the trick for you, but if you just want a box that looks nice and fits in with the other X-Men ’97 boxes then this is fine. Inside it is another brown box and tray with the figure inside. It comes bagged and all of the accessories are bagged as well to protect it as much as possible and it seems good enough. In spite of that, my figure does have some dings on it. There’s light scuffing on the chest and on the side of the neck. I don’t think it has anything to do with how the product is shipped, I think this is just from assembly at the factory, but it’s a little disappointing.
Apart from those blemishes, the Sentinel cuts a nice figure and presents well. Those scuffs are only visible up close, and while they shouldn’t be there, they don’t really impact my enjoyment of the product. This dude is pretty damn big and even though I saw lots of images online including Hasbro’s display at San Diego Comic Con, it still didn’t prepare me for how big it is. I have the Sentinel at about 22″ in height which is also the advertised height. It has some heft, especially in the lower legs. Now, the plastic is pretty hard and I likened the feel to a Super Soaker when someone asked me my thoughts, but it presents reasonably well. It is a Legends release so there’s not a lot of paint. The darker purple near the collar is painted on as are the black lines. The face has painted details and there’s a little linework on the top of the head and some on the belt. It’s mostly clean, though there is a blemish on the black linework on the rear of my figure that I’ll probably touch up, but the figure isn’t overly shiny. And mostly it just looks like a cartoon Sentinel. It’s based on the updated look in X-Men ’97 which really isn’t all that different from the ’92 look so if you’re interested in it as a fan of the original series it should work. It also works as a classic, comic, Sentinel if that’s your preference compared with the more modern HasLab and should fit into a comic or animated display without issue. And at 22″ I think it has enough size. Are they usually presented as bigger in the show? Yeah, probably, and my guess is they’re more like 30′ tall, but they’re also pretty inconsistent (compare the first episode with the season finale and, in particular, Wolverine fighting them in the tunnels) in the show.
And the sucker is so big that I don’t think I could manage to squeeze it into a display at any other height. Nor do I think I could have found room for more than one, but Hasbro would probably like for people to double, or triple, dip on this release and the accessories aid with that. The Sentinel comes with an optional dome and face plate to display some battle damage. The dome is basically just missing a section so it exposes the “metal” underneath while the face plate is all cracked and broken. The sculpt and paint of the optional face plate looks terrific and I suspect it will give folks pause over how to display this thing. To further aid in the battle damage is an optional vent for the chest. This one has two wires poking out of it and it’s sculpted and painted well. Apart from that, there’s a pair of blast effects. They come in three pieces: a wide burst, a smaller burst to sit inside it, and the plume for the center. One centerpiece is longer than the other for a little variety and the parts are made of translucent, red, plastic with yellow painted on for a little pop. The smaller, inner, burst is actually translucent yellow so there’s a nice mix of color. They look good, but I do wish we got more of a beam effect too since that’s how their blasts were represented in the show. They can plug into the hands or the feet so if you have a means of suspending one of these in midair you could do a flying pose. The port on the hand can also accept the tentacle parts that came with the HasLab which is nice for those who have it, but why not toss one in with this set too? It’s already tooled so what could that possibly cost?
Even though this guy is much larger than your standard Legends release, it still moves like one. I don’t have that HasLab Sentinel, but I know one of the biggest issues people had with it were loose legs. To apparently address that issue, Hasbro put ratchets everywhere on this guy so nothing is loose. If you wiggle it a bit it will jiggle and the arms could move on you, but just don’t do that! The head and neck are separately articulated so there’s good range there. Again, I have some scuffing on the neck of mine, but it wasn’t caused by the articulation though I would still advise being a bit cautious. Shoulders, biceps, elbows, and wrists are all typical Legends articulation. What’s not are the fingers and thumb where each joint is a peg and hinge so you can individually pose each digit which is cool. Toy Biz loved articulating the fingers on the 1/12 figures back in the day and it was awful, but at this size it works fine. There’s a ball-joint at the waist and the crotch piece is a soft material so it can pivot in all directions without worry. Beyond that, we have the hips, thigh swivel, double-jointed knees, boot swivel, and ankle hinge and rocker. Range is pretty fair everywhere. No, he can’t do splits, but he can do walking poses and kick forward, should you want him to. The double joints at the elbows and knees aren’t going to produce much better than a 90 degree bend, but they don’t really need to. They are pin-less, but there’s also exposed screws that are holding things together. There’s no toe hinge, but I’m okay with that as this is more stable. And even with the tight joints, standing him can be a little precarious. I like the proportions, but I kind of wish they made the feet a little oversized to help with that stability, but I also haven’t had this guy topple over either.
Is this Sentinel worth $175? Yeah, I think it is. It’s not going to blow you away with how it looks. The lack of paint means it’s not like that giant dragon Four Horsemen solicited last year. It also doesn’t cost the nearly $1,000 that thing did. It’s an oversized Marvel Legends figure with Marvel Legends quality and I think the price is fair. It gets a little dicey post release as Hasbro does have extra product. Since they don’t charge upfront for these made-to-order pieces, consumers are free to cancel and either through that or via extra stock for replacements and such there are some available on the Pulse website at the time of this writing. I don’t know if that will be true when this goes live. They are no longer $175 though and are up to $220. Either production ended up being more than anticipated or those wonderful tariffs jacked the cost up, but it’s now not the same deal it was last year. It could also be part of Hasbro’s plan to reward those who preorder and keep that order with a cheaper rate and upcharge the Johnny-come-latelies. I don’t know, but I do know that $220 feels like a lot more and I’d have serious reservations about that price. I’m glad I don’t have to think about it and locked my order in a year ago, but if you missed it and feel FOMO kicking in then I guess you have a decision to make. Hopefully you got some cash for Christmas or something to make it an easier call. I think the Sentinels are some of the biggest (obviously) and most important villains for the X-Men and I’m so happy to finally get this version of the character in plastic. The HasLab wasn’t for me, but this is. Now where the hell can I put this thing?
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