(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to the DotM Skyhammer toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the DotM Skyhammer toy here.)

    Sandstorm here is-- as the theme of BotCon 2013 implies-- an homage to the Machine Wars Sandstorm toy, which was similar to G1 Sandstorm in having one of his modes be a helicopter but little else. The base colors of a rather dark (but flat) military green, black, and metallic bronze/brown are a very appropriate color scheme for a military helicopter, and it also looks DARN cool. Sandstorm is one of the toys that only could have been some kind of exclusive, given how MANY paint apps there are on this guy-- mostly in the form of an extremely well-done set of black tiger stripes across nearly the entire figure. All that black and green mixing together does quite well, and the metallic bronze on the front of the wings, the gun of the Mechtech weapon, and part of the side thrusters makes for a great contrast color. The brown plastic on areas like the face, feet, and little ridges on the side of the helicopter mode doesn't look quite as nice, but as far as a plastic color I think it's as close as you're going to get to bronze without using paint, and it still looks pretty good with the green. The cockpit is a nice transparent blue (along with the visor on his robot head), though there's also some light pale blue to give Sandstorm a main "light" color. This blue is most obviously seen on his rotors, but also on his side thrusters and a few other minor parts, such as on his Mechtech weapon. That said, I do think the light blue rotor is a bit much in terms of the amount of the color, but to be fair it was like this on the original MW Sandstorm toy. Sandstorm also has a couple other decals that hearken back to the original MW toy, like the "MP black-on-white" font above the cockpit, as well as the military white-star-against-a-blue-circle-and-a-white-line emblem on the wings.
    Sandstorm has no mold changes when compared to Skyhammer-- for the most part this is okay, but the headsculpt looks a bit too "movie-ish" to pass for something that's supposed to be a more traditionally-sculpted visored face-- there's too many details. Otherwise, the mold fits MW Sandstorm pretty well as-is.
    BotCon 2013 Sandstorm is a stellar mold in an excellent color scheme, with only a few very minor complaints (the completely blue rotors, the unchanged facesculpt) on what is a very well-done toy. The number of paint apps on Sandstorm is exceptional, and it fits the MW version of the character pretty well, for the most part. When it comes to the combination of the overall color scheme and mold (that is, not taking into account ingenuity or my like of the character), Sandstorm is my favorite use of this mold and my 2nd-favorite exclusive from BotCon 2013, with Mirage just barely beating him out for the top spot. Highly recommended, especially since he was in low demand to the point where it's not even hard to find him for below mass-market retail price!

Review by Beastbot

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