Dave's Alternators Rant 16: Prowl This is the last Alternator to come out in the Energon-evoking red box, but it will also be released in the Cybertron-ish bubble in 2006. I will not be re-buying it in the new packaging. Prowl is the first totally new mold since Windcharger, with five remolds seen since then (Battle Ravage, Shockblast, Wheeljack, Decepticharge and Swerve). CAPSULE Several relatively minor flaws keep me from gushing about this, but both modes are pretty good and the transformation is complex without being frustrating. Recommended. $19.99 at TRU. RANT Packaging: As mentioned above, this is in the red box (second version, with number in the upper right). The toy will be re-released in the white-based bubble later, with new character art. The co-sell on the bottom is Swerve. On the back of the box, the vehicle mode is described as "Cool first responder style!" As opposed to saying what it is: Japanese federal highway police style. The weapons are described as a nightstick and a laser pistol. The picture on the box has significant deco differences when compared to the actual toy. There's a medium gray plastic in the pictured version that has been replaced with a light blue-gray. Also, some of the black plastic has been replaced by this blue-gray plastic. The instructions are in a bag inside the box, all alone (no weapons or other bits in the bag, they apparently decided that the nightstick would stay in its position under the rear bumper on its own). There is the usual plastic band around the car. Note: the picture on the back of the box shows the engine/gun inserted backwards! It is not possible to get it to stay in this way, at least not without making it impossible to close the hood. The instructions aren't terribly clear on the matter either (not showing whether there's anything special needed to get it to stay in place), but they do show the correct orientation. VEHICLE MODE This is an Acura RSX with police lights and a paint job based on the Japanese Federal Highway Police (i.e. G1 Prowl). It's a two-door car, suitable for highway pursuit, but not regular patrol (i.e. no place to safely hold a perp). It is 7" (18cm) long, 2.75" (7.2cm) wide, 2.5" (6.5cm) tall at the lights, and has a wheelbase 4.1" (10.5cm) long. The tires are thin radials (by which I mean the inner and outer radii aren't too different) 1" (2.5cm) in diameter with a tread 8mm wide. The doors open about 80-85 degrees and are 2.25" (5.6cm) long. The hatchback lifts up 35 degrees and is just over 2" (5.2cm) long. The front wheels turn in unison via a connecting rod behind the bumper that attaches with magnets. But the wheels barely turn ten degrees either way, which I think is the least traverse of any Alternator. The shape and positioning of the connecting bar simply prevents more motion. The hood opens from the front, to a maximum of around 35 degrees, making it a bit snug. There are a few little bumps and divots that let the hood snap shut. Despite the body shell being mostly white, there is no white plastic in any of it, it's all paint. The bits with windows are made of clear colorless plastic (sometimes sandwiched with black plastic), the rest is black plastic with a few pieces of chromed plastic or clear red plastic. The interior is largely made of a light grayish blue plastic with a few black bits (the steering wheel is black rubberized plastic). The very front is black plastic with no paint on the airdam. The air grille is likewise unpainted black, but at its center is a chromed Acura logo. Flanking this are rounded wedge headlights with clear plastic over chromed lamps (the inner lights are painted chrome red-orange). The hood is black plastic mostly painted white on top, leaving a bit of black in the front that has two arcs swoop up to meet at a nearly right angle point. Right above this point is a painted red 8mm Autobot symbol. Above that, still on the centerline, is a blue shield (the badge style of shield) with a yellow border and a yellow five pointed star. The whole badge (as I will refer to this design for the rest of the review) is 12mm tall and 9mm wide. The windshield is clear and has wipers molded onto it and painted black. There is also a thin black border around the windshield. The top of the roof has a set of police flashers, but this isn't the classic straight line bar. Rather, there's a central silver-painted "keystone" shape with clear red pieces atop chromed lights swept back about 35 degrees. The whole light bar is 1.75" (4.5cm) wide, with the clear red pieces 12mm front to back, 18mm long side to side, and 5mm tall. They do not seem to be glued down to their chrome base, but instead are locked down only at the center by the silver keystone. The roof itself is clear plastic painted white. The hatchback is more clear plastic, painted white on the body with black borders around the windows. A single long windshield wiper is molded onto the passenger side panel and painted black. The sides are some black plastic (front fender, rear fender) and some clear (doors) painted white on the top half and either left or painted black on the bottom half. There are no front side turn signals, although the red lights in the front headlights may well be turn signals, and they're positioned to be viewed from the side. The gas tank cover is on the driver's side above and behind the rear wheel. Each door has "HIGHWAY PATROL" in black at the bottom of the white part, then "POLICE" in white at the top of the black part. The two phrases are equally wide as the letters in "POLICE" are larger. Ahead of "POLICE" on each door is the blue and yellow shield, slightly smaller than the hood version. The rear view mirrors are fixed in position, painted white on the front and chromed silver on the mirror part. The rear has clear red taillight assemblies, with three circles raised on each. The innermost circle of each assembly is painted silver. Between them, on the hatchback lid, is the Acura logo again. As is the case with other Alternators, it does not split in half, rather it is completely connected to the passenger side half of the hatch. The license plate is silver, with a red Autobot symbol on the driver's side half, and "PROWL" on the passenger side. A chromed muffler pipe is at the bottom of the rear bumper, below the taillight on the passenger side. It's only the facade of a muffler, however. The wheels have "CYBERTRON" and "RADIAL" on the tires. The hubs are five spokes looking vaguely like a starfish, and made of an unpainted light silvery gray plastic. The brakepads are made of this same plastic, also unpainted. Most of the underside is light blue-gray plastic and molded to look like a real auto underbody, albeit with some red paint details. The front third, however, shows the robot upper arms and head quite clearly. The nightstick weapon is visible just behind the rear bumper, and the laser pistole masquerades as the engine block (silver painted part pointing forward, black painted part backwards). The gun barrel is visible forward of the robot head when looking at the underside. As mentioned earlier, the interior is mostly light blue-gray plastic. The steering wheel, wiper control stick and emergency brake handle are rubberized black plastic. The wheel turns and the steering column folds down for transformation. The gearshift looks to be a separate piece of black plastic with a silver-painted tip. The bucket seats are unpainted. The passenger seat can fold down all the way, but the base of the folded steering column blocks the driver's side seat. The dials section of the dashboard is painted black with silver dials, and there's silver paint elsewhere on the dash. Some of the silver paint isn't obvious, because the plastic color isn't the originally planned medium gray. TRANSFORMATION Once you get the order of operations down, this isn't too frustrating. However, the rear bumper halves are very hard to transform without popping them off entirely, and you really have to do the arm transformation in exactly the right order (and the shoulder joints are the same kind of pop-off-able things holding the rear bumper halves on). For the record, after a half dozen transformations, I'm still popping bits off. I expect that it's like dislocating shoulders, though...once you snap a bit out once, it never stays in as strongly ever again. The same two pieces keep popping off. As with many Alternators, it's harder to get it back into vehicle mode, especially if you're not extra-careful to observe where *everything* starts. The arms are notably difficult in this regard. There's one significant way in which this transformation is different from all previous Alternators. The hood folds down to become the chest vertically, not horizontally. All other Alternators so far either have the hood be horizontal as the chest (i.e. the headlights point forward) or have the hood split to become the legs. ROBOT MODE The exact height depends on how you position the ankles. I prefer the shorter version, which is more stable and doesn't have spindly ankles visible. This configuration is 6.75" (17cm) tall at the head, with the rear view mirrors forming "Gundam backpack beam saber handle"-like protrusions to boost the total height a tiny bit. Yes, he has both the beam "saber" (well, energy nightstick) and the hilt silhouette. Gundam Prowl! His front wheels and car doors are all horizontal, forming shoulderpads with a span of about 6.3" (16.3cm). The metal bits for the front steering point forward just below the wheels, vaguely evoking the idea of searchlights. The hood of the car is vertical as the chest, as mentioned under Transformation. The rear bumper halves form kneepads, with the rest of the rear half of the car being split as the backs of the lower legs. The windshield and roof form the figure's back, with the emergency flashers forming a sort of floaty butt-cover. As for the parts not part of the car mode, here's a quick rundown on colors. The head and upper arms are made of a pearly white plastic. the face is painted silver, the "horns" are orange-red, the eyes are painted blue and there's some blue paint on the tablet between his horns. There is a small blue and yellow badge printed on each shoulder. The forearms, neck, heelspurs and hip armor flaps (another Gundamy touch) are black plastic, with a thin red stripe across the top of each forearm. The collarbone, waist, pelvis and feet are that light blue-gray plastic, as are the boot fronts (formerly undercarriage stuff). There's a red trapezoid (wider at top than bottom) painted on the pelvis, and red vents near the bottoms of the boot- fronts. Part of each foot is painted silver. The shoulder joints, hands, thighs and knees are light gray, no paint. The pistol is black plastic with a light blue-gray engine facade hanging off it. The actual pistol part is only 3cm long, and the engine facade is 3cm long, 3.3cm wide, and about 3mm thick. There's black and silver paint on the facade. The nightstick is clear red plastic with no paint, 2.25" (5.8cm) long. It has two pegs on the handle, one for fitting into the palm of Prowl's hand, the other for fitting into the bumper for storage. This second peg gets in the way of holding the nightstick reversed (pointed down). The gun can be loosely fit into the chest for storage in robot, with emphasis on loosely. The nightstick can't really be stored without looking stupid in robot mode. If you don't mind stupid, the storage peg fits into the exhaust pipe on the left kneepad. It can also be hidden away more or less securetly in the chest, but not at the same time as the gun. Both weapons have pegs that fit into slots on the palm, but neither fits snugly enough to hold on their own. The hands must be closed around them. Poseability is good, but several joints are limited by the stuff around them. The head is on a very limited ball joint, the waist is a reasonably stiff swivel. The shoulders are ball joints, but due to the wheels being fixed in place the upper arms cannot be raised above horizontal. The elbows are double joints, a ball joint at the upper arm connection and a hinge at the part that connects to the lower arm. This allows full 180 degree bending. The wrists are ball joints, limited to rotation or bending up towards the top of the forearm (for transformation). The index finger is hinged on its own, the other three hinged together. Hips are ball joints, with hinged flaps on either side that need to be moved aside before spreading the legs, or they just ram into the boot tops. There is a swivel just above the official knee joint, which is a hinge. But that joint is stiffer than the transformation joint below it, so the leg mainly bends there instead. Either way, the upper leg is a LOT shorter than the lower leg, and the immovable taillight pieces keep the legs from bending very much anyway. The true knee can bend about 40 degrees if you're persistent and open up the hatchback, the false knee only about 20 degrees. But seriously...the thigh is 1.5cm long, the lower leg is FIVE TIMES that. Makes Road Rocket look well-proportioned. Finally, the ankles are on a limited ball joint on a light gray spar that can be folded down a bit, but the swivel for the spar is a bit weak, making poses unstable. Letting the foot rest against the shinguard stablizes things. Silly aside: there's a disturbing amount of similarity to (Go-Bots) Prowl-Bot's robot mode here. Later addition: http://www.tfmaster.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2896 shows how to swap out the legs so that you get vastly improved knee bending and a more G1-ish look. Some have reported that it doesn't quite transform properly to car mode after you do this, though, but most seem happy with it. I tried it, and find there's a very slight gap between the panels due to the knee bumps in car mode. Barely noticeable. OVERALL Despite the flaws I pointed out above, I generally like this toy. The fact that it's a qualitatively different transformation style for Alternators helps, of course. I think I would have liked it better with the prototype's medium gray instead of the blue-gray we got, but it's not like it's an ugly or clashing color scheme as it stands. Worth picking up, but if you can't find it in the red box, don't pay scalper prices, just wait for the second release. Dave Van Domelen, likes this better than the pic he saw today of Binaltech Asterisk Prowl as a remold of Smokescreen. [Later note: this turns out to have been a picture of Alert, not Prowl, just misattributed.]