Sludge feels like he is kind of there when it comes to being in the Dinobots. Apart from continuity reboot mainstay Grimlock, you have Slag who has the Tricerahood, Snarl with his dino tail halves, and Swoop who is both an aerial bot (but not an Aerialbot) and the leanest of the team. Sludge is only described as being the dumb one, the Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus, and a potato. There isn't much else to say of his other incarnations given how he either doesn't exist (RID2001, Energon, Animated), is dead (Aligned until he somehow returned in Rescue Bots Academy), or was only as a toy (AOE); granted, he came back in Cyberverse, but he's still the dumb one while everyone else at least had tweaked personalities to fit in better with Grimlock. So will the Studio Series 86 interpretation of him make him more recognizable among the fans?
Here we have Sludge in his dinosaur mode, which is a very accurate take on the design most commonly recognized in the G1 cartoon. As is the case with all the other Dinobots, its proportions, color layout, and sculpted details are nothing too out of the ordinary. It's great to see him have the same level of dedication considering how thin the synergy between SS86 and the rest of the WFC Trilogy can be in terms of aesthetics. There isn't much else to say when it comes to his dinosaur mode apart from maybe his neck looking a little stumpier than it should be. The blaster has storage much like the other Dinobots do, though while Grimlock had him shoot sideways and Slag's was integrated with the tail, Sludge has it underneath the beast mode.
The articulation is fairly standard for a quadrupedal dinosaur in this line, with a head that can look up and down, jaw movement, a neck swivel at the gold part of the neck and a hinge that moves up and down, and the legs move front and back, in and out for the back, and slight knee movement for the legs themselves. Sludge has his own dino mode flamethrower peg for any effect pieces.
For a dinosaur size comparison, you can see that Sludge is surprisingly around the same size as Slag in dinosaur mode. As far as I remember, Grimlock was a pretty big guy in this mode, and Sludge wasn't severely huge, but this makes him look more like an adolescent Apatosaurus rather than the full-on adult scale he'd normally have in the show. Perhaps this was done to make a more consistent scale for these three in robot mode.
Transformation is a lot more involved than one would expect, especially given how he's more than just the trait of flipping the legs down and having the dino shell be the wings. For starters, the hing legs become the robot arms in contrast to Slag where his forelegs became the robot arms. In addition to that, he not only utilizes a waist swivel, but the robot chest is actually beneath the back of the dino mode instead of being part of the stomach. The forelegs are stowed away in the back and the tail halves are now made to flow with the rest of the design. The resulting robot mode now has the red break up the gray, black, and silver of the dino mode. You can tell this design certainly feels much simpler than the other characters, though amusingly, the dino head is permanently shoving itself up his robo ass.
Head sculpt is very much Sludge, with a helmet design that reminds me of when Joey's World Tour wore Mickey Mouse ears. It's definitely like a teddy bear head in comparison to the iconic aggression of Grimlock's head and Slag's Hellboy red head. His articulation is about the same as the others: head is on a swivel instead of a ball joint, shoulders move front and back, in and out, biceps swivel, elbows are somewhat double-jointed, wrists swivel, waist swivels, hips move front and back as well as in and out, yet they along with the knees are disgustingly loose. Turns out that using cheaper replacements for proper Ratchet joints isn't going to make the figures stable. There are also thigh swivels and ankle pivots. Oh and he has his gun which is thankfully painted with gold accents on the barrel and part of the scope.
For a robot mode size comparison, here he is with Grimlock and Slag, and he's pretty much about the same height as Slag if you discount the Tricerahood, and both of them are slightly shorter than Grimlock. I think Sludge is alright for a Leader Class figure, and while I don't really care that he doesn't have a pre-posed partner, I kind of wish he felt a little more refined in the joints to be tighter than they currently are. That and giving the other Dinobots their swords in addition to his unless Swoop's going to be a Voyager with Benefits in 2023's Studio Series 86 offerings. I think Sludge is the weakest of the three, and that may be solidified if he shelfwarms as much as Slag did because only Grimlock got hard to obtain in spite of the way the Dinobots are seen as popular among G1 fans.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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