01.27.04
Transformers - Energon Prowl
  
Vehicle Mode
  
    The idea of a formula style car as a police car seems really dumb really. And 
calling it Prowl seems just as bad. The colors scheme keeps making me want to call 
this toy Mirage. But it works pretty nicely. It's not a perfect vehicle mode, but I 
still like it. One problem is the spoiler; it could really be a bit wider and less 
thick. Heck, ripping it off makes it look even better except that the Powerlinx 
connectors become visible. Also the head is pretty visible hanging off the tail of 
the car, though the face folds up to look directly at the back surface with tailpipes 
hanging off either side. The toy also seems large, though I think that's more because 
it's wider and flatter overall compared to most deluxe cars, he's about an inch wider 
than Armada Hot Shot.. The color is mostly blue with some white and gray detailing. 
Each side reads "Police" and has some Japanese characters. The Japanese is identical 
to the stuff on RID Prowl, except the characters are in reverse order. Anyone know 
what they say anyway (On either toy)?
  
Transformation Notes
  
    Pretty much the same as the two Minicon Indy cars; the sides fold out to become 
the arms with wheels at the shoulders, the head is already on the rear, and the front 
of the car splits to become the legs. He just has more joints.
  
Robot Mode
  
    This mode suffers a LOT from it's need to become legs for another robot. Basically 
the robot legs have an extra inch or that go up into the body from where the hips are, 
This is to give the combined mode longer legs. The problem is they don't peg into 
anything, so when you try to move the smaller robot legs, you inevitably end up moving 
it all. It doesn't help that all his joints are stiff ratchet joints. Some balls would 
have done wonders for this toy. He seems to have universal knees and hips, but the mess 
of stiff joints all in a row make him hard to pose. Other problems I've come up with, 
the chest is too bulky and his head looks like it's set way too far back. The chest is 
made up of the spoiler piece, so they could have once again fixed this by making the 
spoiler less thick or at the very least had it connect completely to the Powerlinx 
connector. The elbows have nice ball joints and the shoulders have a couple of swivels 
to make for fairly universal poseability. I've had some trouble with the shoulder piece 
popping off the tire on mine. The head is restricted due to the transformation. The 
head is pretty cool though. He has pretty much a full face, which may turn some people 
off and a pair of huge "antenna" in the form of the tailpipes. It's not really a bad 
toy overall, it just has a lot of room for improvement.
  
Minicon Compatibility
  
    Prowl doesn't have any actual hard points on his body but his gun has receptors 
(holes) on either side of it. There are also holes on Mirage meant to hold the gun in 
vehicle mode that could take a peg if you wanted to stick something (a larger toy or 
Grindor) there. Also a quick note, his Energon weapon is a blue missile launcher. I 
guess this blue color breaks the trend a bit of Autobots having red Energon weapons.
  
Combined modes
  
    Maybe I've just got a couple of duds, but this whole combining thing certainly 
doesn't seem like it's worth the trouble and problems it seems to create for the 
individual modes. Mirage makes a halfway decent pair of legs, but the cod piece/
spoiler/robot chest seems kind of obtrusive overall. There are enough joints in the 
legs to give him some good poseability. Also the robot arms just sort of hang off 
the back. Its pretty much the same story for the arms mode. Good articulation for 
the arms, the normal robot mode arms just hang there, and actually the chest almost 
seems properly scaled now. The fists could be thicker, but they have to double as 
heel spurs for the smaller robot, so that wouldn't work too well. Prowl's large head 
makes him more suited to be the arms than the legs. Especially when paired with Rodimus.
  
Overall
  
    Decent vehicle mode, ok robot mode, ok legs mode, ok arms mode. I suppose I'd 
recommended him, especially if you like Armada and Energon. He' s not as awesome as 
the car brothers or Beast Wars but he's not as crappy as most of the Armada toys I 
have. Robot mode suffers a bit from the need for a combined mode.