Walgreens has been getting a lot of fan-demanded Marvel Legends exclusives lately, including Quasar, Nova and Baron Zemo. But their most recent release was a bit of a surprise when announced, as it was a character there didn’t seem to be much hype to see redone right away. Even so, the new Walgreens Exclusive Sentry Marvel Legends figure is now in-stock for ordering online! Time for me to do a review with the power of a million exploding suns…

If you don’t know The Sentry, you’re forgiven. After all, his whole deal is that Doctor Strange made everyone forget he ever existed (long before Strange ever made peeps forget about Spider-Man’s true identity). Debuting in 2000, Marvel used that gimmick to interweave The Sentry into the history of the 616 Marvel Comics universe to great effect.

But despite being a relatively new(-ish) character, Robert Reynolds is now on his 4th Marvel Legends 6” figure (Toybiz did bearded and unbearded variants and Hasbro did one in the Allfather Thor BAF Series). With the previous 6” Sentry action figure just a couple years back, does this new Walgreens exclusive bring much to the table to up the ante…?

Unfortunately, not really. You would think that if Hasbro were going to revisit the Golden Guardian of Good so soon, it would be to upgrade him with pin-less knees and elbows and maybe even add butterfly swivel shoulders. But nope—none of those are present.

The articulation scheme is actually eerily similar to the Allfather wave Sentry, including:
–Ball-Hinge Head & Shoulders
–Ab Crunch
–Swivel Waist, Biceps and Thighs
–Pinned Double-Jointed Knees and Elbows
–Swivel-Hinge Wrists
–Hinged Feet with Ankle Rockers

What is new about this figure is that he finally gets two pairs of hands so that he has both two grasping hands and two fists (previous versions all only had one of each), as well as a permanently attached cape (a big improvement over pegged capes that can just fall off randomly).

In addition, there’s a wild and crazy flaming skull The Void alternate head, which is neat but impractical. I don’t foresee many collectors utilizing this Void head on a mismatched Sentry body or having just the right spare body sitting around to place the Dark God’s head upon. I like seeing Bob’s malevolent other self represented here, but it’s just not a very worthwhile accessory for this particular toy.

The Sentry’s belt looks better on this version than any Sentry before, and I totally dig the “glowing” paint deco on the logo. Really fun visual.

What’s not a good visual, however, is how Hasbro’s mismatched the windswept hair on Sentry’s head with a static, non-blowing cape. It simply makes zero sense for the wind to only be blowing on part of the figure.

Also, I have to mention that this six inch figure does come in one of the collector-despised plastic-free boxes with the figure and accessories wrapped in paper bags inside. I am not at all convinced that Hasbro understood just how detrimental this packaging was going to be to sales and their brands as a whole.

Overall: honestly, The Sentry feels like a character that didn’t need another new version right now at all—especially featuring old tooling and pinned joints. The Void head is a fun little add-on that looks deeply out of place and will be used by few collectors in their displays, and the contradictory static relaxed cape and dynamic windswept hair on the head just look plain awkward together. I love the “illuminated” deco on the belt, but otherwise this figure is pretty lackluster and not much of an “upgrade”. If you need a Sentry figure, this one is fine, but I really wish Hasbro had waited a bit longer and used more modern tooling to revisit this character.

GRADE: C-