Hasbro Made-to-Order Figures

I did myself so fuckin' dirty on this, too. I bought this giant chunk of plastic, and went on to pre-order a SnowCAT, an Arctic HISS, -and- a giant fuckin' Apocalypse. Because I'm an insane person.
First.......yes you are (an insane person) in a good way.

Second.......I'm right there with you. Pulse has me by the nads for a bunch of stuff and it isn't even 2026 yet:

Arctic HISS
Sentinel 2-pack
Apocalypse
Mephisto (x2)
GB 84 Proton Pack
84 Plasma Series 4-pack (to go with the Haslab Ectomobile).

Also it looks like there is a new contender in the Sentinel game. If you have $6,000US (+ depending on options):

 
Also it looks like there is a new contender in the Sentinel game. If you have $6,000US (+ depending on options):
Funny thing is... something like this holds NO interest for me. I wouldn't even take it if someone gave it to me for free. I don't give a fuck about statues of things that I want as action figures. I can't even fathom a world where I would want a 6 foot tall Sentinel statue. What would I do with it? Not in the sense of 'where would I put it?' but literally what would I DO with it? I don't like Sentinels -conceptually- so much that I just want a giant random Sentinel in my house just to stare at it. It's too big to 'play' with even if it were an action figure. I'd rather have a functional suit of armor if I'm going to be taking up that much space on a display piece. But that's just me.


I wish battle damage didn’t have to be so limited. Just the head and chest piece. Meanwhile the rest of the body is mint and intact.

I feel this way about battle damage in general. We haven't had really good battle damaged figures since like '90s ToyBiz Wolverine. Maybe the new Spider-Man from the Magic card series, actually. Definitely few and far between, in any case. I've got that three-pack Wolverine that came with the battle damaged head but the rest of him still looks fresh off the Blackbird, so... it looks weird 99% of the time. The only time it ever looked good, for me, was when I posed him fighting Sabretooth as if Sabes had just ripped part of his mask away.

I guess with sentinels it's easy to explain that they took very specific damage. Cracked in the face with a Rogue punch would explain why the rest of the body is still fine? That is to say, you can definitely work with the stuff you're given, but it becomes very specific how to use it if you want it to make sense.
 
Battle damage on the MtG Spidey is great. All of it is sculpted, and most of it is painted. You can see some sculpted wounds in his legs that only got flesh colored paint. But THAT's the way to do battle damage. On a Sentinel, modular parts can definitely be enacted, but I'm sure that would have upped the cost even more. But with just the head and chest piece for BD, I'll be displaying mine without BD at all.
 
A little too permanent for my tastes

Well then there is nothing that can really be done. I know people love modular parts but outside of a hand that looks like it’s been cut off and there are wires sticking out, it’s kind of hard to make this figure both modular and still look as seamless as it does. I think with hindsight on our side, the Haslab sentinel should have been given the battle damaged parts and kept the alternate heads, while the X-Men 97 should have kept the blast effect parts and been given the LED lights in their eyes, the electronic voice box and the coils that come out of their hands


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Nothing can be done? Maybe for the price they charged. But for extra cost, PLENTY can be done. Treat the figure like a skeleton. Have removable plates on the legs, arms, torso, the same way they've got plates for the head/face. I would probably have upped the base price of the Sentinel $50 at least. But it's not an unimaginable solution.
 
Nothing can be done? Maybe for the price they charged. But for extra cost, PLENTY can be done. Treat the figure like a skeleton. Have removable plates on the legs, arms, torso, the same way they've got plates for the head/face. I would probably have upped the base price of the Sentinel $50 at least. But it's not an unimaginable solution.

Right but then the sentinel would look more like a 3D puzzle that you have to construct (or even an overly sophisticated Gundam model) more than a Sentinel that is as clean as this design is. There would be seam lines and hatches everywhere. That wouldn’t look as enticing as an accurate representation of the classic sentinel designs from the early comics and the cartoons. And I wouldn’t have spent $1 let alone nearly $1000 on a set of sentinels that looked off model for the sake of an abundance of effect parts. At a certain point you just have to let sleeping dogs lie.


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Right but then the sentinel would look more like a 3D puzzle that you have to construct (or even an overly sophisticated Gundam model) more than a Sentinel that is as clean as this design is. There would be seam lines and hatches everywhere. That wouldn’t look as enticing as an accurate representation of the classic sentinel designs from the early comics and the cartoons. And I wouldn’t have spent $1 let alone nearly $1000 on a set of sentinels that looked off model for the sake of an abundance of effect parts. At a certain point you just have to let sleeping dogs lie.


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You really have a limited imagination.
 
Nothing can be done? Maybe for the price they charged. But for extra cost, PLENTY can be done. Treat the figure like a skeleton. Have removable plates on the legs, arms, torso, the same way they've got plates for the head/face. I would probably have upped the base price of the Sentinel $50 at least. But it's not an unimaginable solution.
There's examples of this sort of thing. This is basically all Gundam modeling is at the mid to high end. You take a figure and make it into an articulated model kit with an internal skeleton that attaches armor pieces and such over the top. I've got a HG Gundam Alex that basically has internal skeleton, external armor, and then extra armor on top of that because in the anime that mech had all it's top level armor blown off at one point. It's certainly doable mechanically.

That said, I think +$50 is lowballing it a lot. That sort of modularity is a ground-up engineering decision, and the reason Gundam kits get away with it at their price is because they offload separation and assembly costs to the consumer. Using those model kits as a comparison, at Sentinel scale, you'd be adding a lot to the price even if it came in pieces. Some folks would be fine with that, but I think Hasbro knows a significant part of its base wouldn't.
 
There are a few seams on the body where they could have integrated battle damage in the same manner as we got with the head for little added cost, but I get why they didn't. A second, battle-damaged, hand would have added cost, but also would have been pretty awesome to get. I'm thinking essentially a stump piece so the existing hands could separate where the glove meets the forearm, that way the stump is usable on either side. For $175 though, I'm okay with that not being a feature, though it would have put the figure over-the-top along with something similar to replace a foot. It would be interesting to know how much extra sales Hasbro would get out of such a release since options for battle damage really encourage folks to buy multiples, especially if it can be applied with some variety so that every battle damaged robot doesn't look the same. A silly thing I would have really loved is if we could get a Cyclops blast effect designed to slot under the chin of the sentinel that fans out and around the head. That seemed to happen a lot in the cartoon and comic where his blast basically decapitates a robot. It would be a really neat looking effect.
 
What do y'all think about Hasbro doing a felled Sentinel playset/display stage? In a similar vein to my oft repeated idea to do an F4 Giganto play-stage, it could have minor articulation (head, one arm, & hand), strategically placed foot pegs all over it, fire and smoke effects, major battle damage (missing leg, metal scrap, and exposed wires), and price it under $100. You can place it on your display shelf and adorn it with all your favorite mutants.
I still love those old-ass Toybiz dismantled Sentinel display bases despite the individual parts not being the same-or-even-proper scale, and would absolutely love something like I've described.
 
What do y'all think about Hasbro doing a felled Sentinel playset/display stage? In a similar vein to my oft repeated idea to do an F4 Giganto play-stage, it could have minor articulation (head, one arm, & hand), strategically placed foot pegs all over it, fire and smoke effects, major battle damage (missing leg, metal scrap, and exposed wires), and price it under $100. You can place it on your display shelf and adorn it with all your favorite mutants.
I still love those old-ass Toybiz dismantled Sentinel display bases despite the individual parts not being the same-or-even-proper scale, and would absolutely love something like I've described.
I'd love this. I still use those bases for my classic Claremont/Byrne era X-Men display.
 
As far as diorama stuff goes, I get this is the Marvel forum so this is kind of off base but I really think they should consider doing a Millennium Falcon cockpit MTO. Yeah, full 1:12 vehicles are just too damn big but I reckon they could make a nice killing on a cockpit piece if done well and they go all in with the lighting and stuff.
 
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