OMEGA SENTINEL

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Harnessing the power of enhanced sensors, flight, and nanite regeneration, Omega Sentinel dispatches enemies with ease.”

In the ’90s, the giant, lumbering, mutant-hunting robots the Sentinels found themselves upgraded for the times, becoming the Prime Sentinels, a merging of humans with robotic components and programming.  Amongst this new breed of Sentinels was Karima Shapandar.  Karima was a reluctant foe of the X-Men, and would ultimately work by their side a handful of times over the years, taking on the name “Omega Sentinel”.  More recently, her Sentinel programming has taken over more and more, leading to her playing the role of antagonist during the “House of X” story line.  Hey, it got her a figure, at least, right?  Full disclosure: I have virtually no first hand knowledge of Omega Sentinel, and am entirely operating off of what I could find online for the purposes of this review.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Omega Sentinel is figure 2 in the Tri-Sentinel Series of Marvel Legends, and is the only non-team member included in the line-up.  She’s shown here in her more fully Sentinel-ized appearance, as seen in the mini-series, which is a fairly distinctive appearance, and certainly on-brand with the current set-up of figures.  The figure stands 6 inches tall and she has 27 points of articulation.  Omega Sentinel is sporting an all-new sculpt, just for her.  It’s a tiny bit surprising, especially given how a Xavier wound up on the Pizza Spidey body, but it means that all of her costume elements can be actual sculpted elements, as opposed to relying more heavily on paint.  It’s actually a pretty nice visual set-up, and generally gives her a little more pop than she might otherwise have.  By far, the most impressive piece of the figure’s sculpt is the arms, which have that proper mechanical design, and a lot of very nice smaller detail work.  Her standard head out of the box is based on her primary look from the mini-series, which had her bald, as she has been a few times prior.  It’s really the coolest look, I think, and it presents well here.  Omega Sentinel’s paint work is pretty standard Legends fare; base work that’s generally pretty well applied.  There’s a little bit of missed coverage on her upper legs, but otherwise my figure’s pretty solid, and it’s a pretty striking color palette.  Omega is packed with both an alternate head and lower arms.  The head is supposed to be Karima from earlier in her career, before the whole bad guy thing, and it’s not awful from a sculpting stand point, but the coloring is just plain wrong.  Karima’s supposed to be Indian in the comics, and has classically been depicted with close to black hair and a darker complexion.  This one goes for more of an auburn hair color and a much lighter skin tone, making her look rather caucasian, which is just inaccurate.  I’m not exactly sure why they went this direction with it.  I prefer the other head anyway, but it still would be nice if this one was accurate.  On the plus side, the alternate arms are far cooler, and haver her lower arms shaped into weapons of some sort.  I like them a lot, and they’re going to be my default set-up for the character.  In addition to the character-specific pieces, Omega Sentinel also includes the torso for the Tri-Sentinel Build-A-Figure.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As I noted in the intro, I had no prior knowledge of Omega Sentinel prior to this figure’s announcement, and actually had to look her up when she was shown off.  I was honestly not really much looking forward to this one, and expected her to kind of be the week point of the set for me.  However, I did some reading up on the character, and I can get behind the concept, and I can also get behind actually getting some new characters in figure form.  It helps that, in hand, I found myself quite liking this figure, and she’s far from the dead weight I thought she would be.  She’s honestly just a pretty nice figure, and I look forward to putting her with my Prime Sentinels once they arrive.

Thanks to my sponsors at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure for review.  If you’re looking for Marvel Legends, or other toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.