Quatre Winner's Sandrock Gundam, TV version - The impromptu "squad leader" of the five 'Gundam Wing' pilots with an improved sensor and communicaitons array to lead troops into battle.
This is the first of the HG remake kits of the Gundam Wing gundams.
Aesthetics:
The color accuracy is for the most part spot on and the plastics are nice, though the 'mustard yellow' plastics are maybe a bit too desaturated in real life.
Overall there are good details, especially since there wasn't an overflow of details on the mobile suit in the show to begin with, but you have plenty of panel lines on the legs and shoulders to fill, to make it pop.
It comes with a sheet of mixed stickers, foil for the eyes, chest 'gem' and head camera, and regular color correction stickers for the shoulder triangles/skirt vents and a pair of eye decals for the snake shield.
Mechanics:
Very standard articulation, double bend elbow/knees. All skirts, including the back one, have nice movement to them and don't get in the way. While it doesn't do anything special, the design allows for a large range of movement and poses.
Each leg-peg in the waist is on a disc that can turn and make each leg lift further, and there is an additional part in the midsection that lifts along with the back skirt, to give the model a great ab crunch.
That's it. That's all it does.
Equipment:
6 Hands - 2 holding hands (not used for anything, but you can use them for weapons from other kits), 2 tilted sword holding hands with an extended thumb and 2 spread open hands.
2 Shotel hilts with 2 grey Shotel Blades and 2 clear red Shotel Blades to mimic the swords getting hot.
1 fanged shield that pops onto either arm or the backpack.
Each shotel can be stored onto the backpack. Additionally, the backpack comes off and can be placed with the shield on top and the shotels equipped on it, to make a "scissor" weapon. This is a reference to the Endless Waltz version and redesign, but was never part of the TV show. It's a neat little gimmick to give a sparse kit a little extra.
Conclusion:
It's a kit that belies its true strength, which is that it's a cheap kit that looks great. It's not meant to do a whole lot.
Somewhere along the line, Sunrise or Bandai realized that they were designing overly complicated Gundams that they couldn't reliably make for plastic kits, such as the transforming Zeta Gundam which even to this day is an annoyingly complicated transformer in all its versions, so with Gundam Wing they made five individual mobile suits that had simpler premises and acted like dedicated guerilla fighters.
So this is what it is, a faithful recreation of a simple Gundam with the extras that they felt they could give it.
The color correction stickers are a little silly and unneeded. The skirt ones could've been color separated, since there are already several red parts on the runners.
The true strength of the Gundam in the show was its army of +40 Maganac mobile suits that followed it around. I recommend getting one or two to stand behind this one as its buddies. I also highly recommend the Heavyarms and Deathscythe that came after this, along with the RG Wing Gundam for a group collection. As of yet there aren't any HG Shenlong or Altron kits to finish the collection, but with a little luck it'll be out soon.
