However, just to make life interesting, I've yet to see a single one 'in the wild', despite having seen Dropkick appear both online and in one bricks-and-mortar shop (though that was Forbidden Planet in London, so shouldn't really count). Again, I resorted to eBay and, again, thankfully didn't have to pay too much over the odds to get him - in fact, were it not for the shipping fee, he would have been slightly cheaper than at UK retail.
But was it worth the hassle?
Vehicle Mode:
And so, in a case of amazing good fortune, the Studio Series line brought us a second Pagani Huayra, only this time in blue and with an altered - one might say simplified - paint job. However, while it's a very welcome addition to my collection, it's hopelessly inaccurate to the CGI from the movie. For one thing, the Sentries all seemed to be red rather than blue... But, of course, that would have meant they looked too much like Stinger. Then, the vehicle used was, I believe, the Chevy Trax - almost an SUV rather than a sports car... Still, I still think this has to be better than Takara Tomy's Movie Advanced Stinger which, in any other circumstance, would probably have been a Cliffjumper.
KSI Sentry definitely has less paint overall - the bonnet is largely unpainted (contrary to the image on the back of the box), with only the strip in front of the windscreen and the small cut-out of the bonnet painted a dark gunmetal, and the front grille painted black. The headlights appear to be painted the same lighter gunmetal as Stinger, while the rear end has one small change to the dark gunmetal coverage - the two outer sections of the numberplate alcove are painted, where they were bare plastic on Stinger - and the rear indicator lights are still painted over in the super-dark metallic colour, just like their frame. The angled stripes down the sides are black only and, of course, the hubcaps are unpainted. As with Stinger, the windows are all transparent colourless plastic, and so much of the roof is painted, leading into the black plastic exhaust pipe section in the middle of the back.
On interesting omission on the paint job is the faction symbol. Stinger had a Decepticon insignia despite technically being the property of a private company, co-opted by 'Galvatron' during an assault on the Autobots. KSI Sentry, meanwhile, is marketed as a Decepticon, but entirely devoid of any faction symbols. It makes perfect sense, but then makes the inclusion of an insignia on Stinger all the more strange.
As indicated by the concept art, KSI Sentry comes package with a Predator-style claw weapon which can be attached via a small slot on the black central section behind the cabin... Naturally, it looks ridiculous and serves no conceivable purpose in vehicle mode... but I guess it counts as weapon storage. While the mold retains all the 5mm pegs from Stinger, dotted about on the underside of the vehicle, KSI Sentry has no other weapons to attach to them. On the upside, it means he doesn't have saw blades protruding out below the doors but, on the downside, it means he's lumbered with having no accessories other than the most aggressive-looking roof rack ever conceived.
Robot Mode:
When you compare the concept art for Stinger and the KSI Sentries, it becomes quite obvious that the Pagani mold was really not intended for the latter. To be honest, I'd have thought that maybe the Dark of the Moon Que mold - with a few modifications - would have been a far better fit. Still, I'm not about to complain about another use of this mold... and part of me still kind of hopes - and I can't believe I'm actually admitting this - that they figure out a way to reshell it as Bumblebee just because the actual AoE Bumblebee mold was poorly executed, even compared to other figures in the generally disappointing AoE toyline.
Blue suits this mold very well and the paint job is surprisingly different from Stinger's, while ending up - much like vehicle mode - looking somewhat reduced overall. It's also just as inaccurate in the way it's applied, tending to appear in large blocks of paint rather than the smaller applications the sculpted detail really deserves. On the upside, much of the paintwork that's there is either silver or gunmetal where, on Stinger, bare metal was largely represented with black paint, so he's rather more eyecatching overall, despite his rather dark and comparatively subdued blue plastic.
What I really like about the paint job here is that he has almost consistent coverage of silver on the sculpted mechanical details from below his robo-pecs, up around the sides of his torso to his shoulder, then across to the arms and down the bicep, which really helps give the impression that this is a robot with bits of his vehicle disguise repurposed as armour around his body. There are even applications of gunmetal paint on the tendon-like details on his thighs, but the paintwork on his extremities is sadly limited to blue paint on his shins, where it's broadly more extensive than Stinger's red was, but focused on the shin, with the knee spike unpainted. The disappointing thing is that none of the tech detail on his ankles or feet is painted, nor is the bridge of the foot painted blue. I can understand a lack of paint on the forearms, as there's actually not much worthwhile detail there and, honestly, having the lion's share of the paint centred on his upper body works well on this figure. I do rather wish the collar had been molded in blue plastic rather than black as the lack of continuity between his chest and the collar makes his head look as if it's raised up too high. This impression is not helped by the silver/gunmetal paint covers the central section of the chest - unpainted red plastic on Stinger - and, while it's nice to see the sculpted internal detail emphasised by metallic paint, it's that much lighter than the collar piece resting atop KSI Sentry's front wheels inside his chest. The collar piece on Stinger was molded in a different shade of red, but it was at least still red.
According to the concept art, the KSI Sentries do indeed have Predator-style wrist blades, they're depicted as being far smaller than they are on this toy... Furthermore, the weird roof 'weapon' on the Stinger mold is oversized already, and the claw is oversized compared to that, so it's almost as if the accessory was intended for, say, a Voyager or Leader class version of the character. While the blades mount easily on the back of KSI Sentry's vehicle mode, attaching it to his robot mode is very fiddly - it has to be wedged in between the two larger chunks of roof via slots and tabs that run perpendicular to the blades themselves, and which have to be aligned just so, all the while navigating the blades themselves through a gradually enclosing space. Funnily enough, the claw goes some way toward fixing one of the complaints I had about Stinger's arm-mounted weapon, in that it restricts the movement of the smaller, central section of roof... though it doesn't actually stop its movement entirely. The attachment itself is molded in a soft, very matte black plastic with a decent amount of sculpted detail (mostly just panel lines), but no paintwork, and mine arrived with one blade bent slightly inward, and it's been reluctant to straighten. Being based on the Stinger mold, he also features the four arms sticking out of his back on a hinged block. Without any of the sawblade/ninja star accessories, they serve no purpose here, and the forearm-mounted claw can't be attached
The head sculpt strangely reminds me a little of Dropkick from the Bumblebee movie, albeit with a visor over his eyes and gunmetal 'ears' sticking out the sides of his head. It's a weird mixture of the typical insectoid Decepticon face and something like a movieverse interpretation of the Vehicons from TransFormers Prime, with slightly mandible-like jaw parts either side of a disturbingly circular mouth-hole... The shape of the helmet almost seems like a further extention of Age of Extinction's bizarre 'Knights' concept, but there's also a strange BW Waspinator vibe to the protrusions on the top. Add to all that a strangely organic-looking orifice protruding from his forehead and you end up with something entirely unique within the movie toylines. It's a huge shame that no colour tint was applied to the transparent plastic that forms his visor and the entire back of his head, as it's the most bland centrepiece to an otherwise very interesting head sculpt, and a touch of colour would have livened it up considerably... Granted, these things were supposed to be drones, of a sort, controlled remotely by humans, so perhaps it's all intentional... but the concept art gave them green visors. The gunmetal paint on the 'eyebrows' and the sculpted detail around the jawline for some reason conspire to remind me of Galaxy Force Noisemaze, giving the impression the visor could be repurposed as a similar glowing, light-piped 'mouth' on an apparently smaller head atop a bulky neck made up of tiny piston details.
While this figure obviously has exactly the same transformation as Stinger, there are a couple of - probably plastic tolerance-related - differences between my copies of these figures. First and foremost, the legs don't like to peg into their vehicle mode positions via the sockets on the insides of the knees. Once everything's in place for vehicle mode, it all holds together perfectly, but the legs do seem to drift off the pegs of their own accord. I also find that the redundant protrusion from his back doesn't fit so well into the recesses of the vehicle's underside, and I almost wonder why they didn't simply remove the entire 4-armed section from the back, since it really sticks out too far for it to be worthwhile when the 5mm pegs on the end of each arm aren't used in either mode. The front wings of the vehicle are a much tighter fit here than they were on Stinger, and can be difficult to plug in or separate, but at least there's nothing loose here...
It has become irritatingly common with some of my more niche purchases recently that, the moment I have a hard-to-find or limited availability figure in my possession, it becomes more widely - and more cheaply - available. It has been very frustrating to see KSI Sentry's wave-mate widely available (online, at least) for months, while this figure has been unavailable to order. It was actually while looking for something else, on the Smyths Toys website, that I found they are expecting both Dropkick and KSI Sentry to arrive on their shelves - for the standard price of £19.99 - sometime in July. Sadly, it seems that Hasbro's assurance, at the MCM London Film & Comic Con last October, that they would "look into" the UK/European distribution problems, has yet to bear any significant fruit. Of course, this speaks as much to my impatience as it does to Hasbro's distribution, but I keep reading online that Hasbro UK just aren't able to provide the stock that online retailers need, so they're forced to look elsewhere, frequently importing. I ended up buying from the States, via eBay, and the shipping was about as expensive as the toy.
Nevertheless, I'm happy to have KSI Sentry in my collection. I like the mold, the transformation is unique and fun, even if it is a little fiddly and, while he does end up with a largely pointless backpack, at least it's not the entire window/roof section of the car, as it so often tends to be with car-bots. As mentioned, I think this iteration could have done without the articulated arms on his back, and perhaps had some sort of handgun accessory instead, to complement his mêlée weapon and further differentiate him from Stinger. I'm not sure if the intention with this figure was for him to be a troop-builder, but he's unlikely to actually fulfill that purpose if he's that hard to find... I honestly wouldn't be averse to picking up another iteration of this mold if it was different enough... but I'd also quite like to see the DotM Que mold repurposed as a more screen-accurate version of the KSI Sentry - shades of red plastic, new arms, new feet and the same head, and I'd certainly pick one up.
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