Death's Head
24-01-12, 09:10 AM
"I am death / A winged beast/ I am born on the velvet wings of night/ and I'm hungry for a feast./ I am the nemesis of the vole/ My heart is black as coal/ You could kill me with a trowel/ I am an owl."
This Transmetal 2 version of Prowl has come to have something of a muddled existence. As with all these things, it starts innocuously enough. Toy is deisgned. Toy gets name. Toy gets produced. This toy is called Prowl. Most likely because , y’know, he turns into an owl, so like Prowl. No? Hey, wait come back! A little nod and a wink to the original Transformers was thrown into the toy’s bio with him believing that he was once a great military strategist. Fine, a nice reference to the original Prowl let’s all move on. Oh, what’s that? Some years after Beast Wars ended, the Japanese have repurposed this character in their too clever for it’s own good Binaltech story as the original Prowl to explain away his reappearance in The Headmasters despite clearly being dead in both Transformers : The Movie and the Season 3/ 2010 episode ‘Dark Awakening’. Oh, okay. Wait. No, they’ve changed their minds. Turns out, this isn’t the original Prowl after all. Never mind. There’s what? The IDW comics and Sourcebook? Oh, those. So how have they missed the mark this time? They made the Magnaboss component Prowl the original Prowl? So who’s this guy then? He could be the original Prowl… but with amnesia. His toy bio suggests as much. Or a clone. The Transmetal 2 warriors are all Megatron’s creation. No, I don’t understand why so many of them turned out to be Maximals either…
And so it goes on. Whatever and whomever this version of Prowl is, whether he’s an upgraded form of the previously appearing Beast Wars Prowl or something else altogether, he is a pretty nifty toy. Both of them. Yes, there are two versions of Transmetal 2 Prowl. A white and blue version and the one I have here which is mostly black, blue and red – which makes him look like a very angry bruise. The change in colour is down to one of Hasbro’s running changes that they occasionally make to their figures to improve on a toy. As Prowl is possibly a barn owl which are largely white, I haven’t quite got my head around the need for Prowl to be turned black. Perhaps there was an oil spill. The white version of Prowl never made it to UK shores, leaving us with his bleaker looking incarnation. It’s actually a really nice looking thing, marred by only one thing: that stupid blood red panel that’s been slapped over one of his eyes. It looks rubbish. Whether it’s supposed to be a patch or just a panel nailed to his face to patch up some injury or other I don’t know but it really spoils the look of the toy. I understand that with the Transmetal 2 figures they were going for some kind of asymmetry and attempt at savagery, but this just looks bobbins. It’s a shame as Prowl has a really nicely detailed and sculpted body aside from that. Alongside those great feathery metallic wings with their engine turbines,is a nicely detailed chest with the metal bits poking out and the really nicely done tail feathers and those great clawed feet. The jet engines by his feet are a bit less successful, as is the rather poor effort that’s gone into hiding away the robot forearms which are basically just tucked up the bird’s backside in the most half arsed manner. The head – apart from that silly panel- is great and at the push of a button can spin around 360 degrees like the real thing. It’s a bit silly on this toy though as spins around really really fast like he’s having some kind of fit. There’s a fair degree of articulation for Prowl’s beast mode. The wings can move up and down and be spread for flight and the legs can move about too. It’s quite a fun thing to play with, all told.
The robot mode is a bit of a mess though, unfortunately. Not because there’s anything especially bad about it, but more that it doesn’t seem to feel very structurally sound and that nothing’s hold together quite as it should. The main crux of the problem is the way the owl body shifts and rotates like a drum to form the robot’s torso. It rolls around but doesn’t lock into place and is reliant on the clips on the jet engines to clip into place and hold it together. Those bloody wings are annoying too, as they are on an axle and swing around like the head. They rise up on a beam to clip onto the robot’s shoulder blades to fix in position, but they don’t like to stay in place. It’s the combination of a slightly weak plastic and insufficient clearance that are the chief offenders. The owl head forming the chest was also a bit of a mistake too. As previously established, the head spins freely on a push button gimmick. This means that it will list to one side in robot mode particularly as one side of his head seems to be heavier than the other. Spinning the top of his head around reveals his Maximal spark crystal, which on this black version just puts a massive target on his chest. The legs are also a bit awkward too and Prowl never seems to stand very comfortably on those bird feet. The arms are fine and the head is decent – carrying over the a very Owl-y look to his face. The asymmetry again spoils things, with one eye being wider than the other and the general expression making Prowl look like he’s just smelt a particularly virulent fart.
It’s the engineering problems that really let Prowl down. You can see that he had the potential to be a really great little toy, but he’s just been let down by some ill thought out moves. Still, he’s one of the few Transmetal 2 toys that isn’t prone to the chrome dropping off, so we should be thankful for small mercies.
13471348
This Transmetal 2 version of Prowl has come to have something of a muddled existence. As with all these things, it starts innocuously enough. Toy is deisgned. Toy gets name. Toy gets produced. This toy is called Prowl. Most likely because , y’know, he turns into an owl, so like Prowl. No? Hey, wait come back! A little nod and a wink to the original Transformers was thrown into the toy’s bio with him believing that he was once a great military strategist. Fine, a nice reference to the original Prowl let’s all move on. Oh, what’s that? Some years after Beast Wars ended, the Japanese have repurposed this character in their too clever for it’s own good Binaltech story as the original Prowl to explain away his reappearance in The Headmasters despite clearly being dead in both Transformers : The Movie and the Season 3/ 2010 episode ‘Dark Awakening’. Oh, okay. Wait. No, they’ve changed their minds. Turns out, this isn’t the original Prowl after all. Never mind. There’s what? The IDW comics and Sourcebook? Oh, those. So how have they missed the mark this time? They made the Magnaboss component Prowl the original Prowl? So who’s this guy then? He could be the original Prowl… but with amnesia. His toy bio suggests as much. Or a clone. The Transmetal 2 warriors are all Megatron’s creation. No, I don’t understand why so many of them turned out to be Maximals either…
And so it goes on. Whatever and whomever this version of Prowl is, whether he’s an upgraded form of the previously appearing Beast Wars Prowl or something else altogether, he is a pretty nifty toy. Both of them. Yes, there are two versions of Transmetal 2 Prowl. A white and blue version and the one I have here which is mostly black, blue and red – which makes him look like a very angry bruise. The change in colour is down to one of Hasbro’s running changes that they occasionally make to their figures to improve on a toy. As Prowl is possibly a barn owl which are largely white, I haven’t quite got my head around the need for Prowl to be turned black. Perhaps there was an oil spill. The white version of Prowl never made it to UK shores, leaving us with his bleaker looking incarnation. It’s actually a really nice looking thing, marred by only one thing: that stupid blood red panel that’s been slapped over one of his eyes. It looks rubbish. Whether it’s supposed to be a patch or just a panel nailed to his face to patch up some injury or other I don’t know but it really spoils the look of the toy. I understand that with the Transmetal 2 figures they were going for some kind of asymmetry and attempt at savagery, but this just looks bobbins. It’s a shame as Prowl has a really nicely detailed and sculpted body aside from that. Alongside those great feathery metallic wings with their engine turbines,is a nicely detailed chest with the metal bits poking out and the really nicely done tail feathers and those great clawed feet. The jet engines by his feet are a bit less successful, as is the rather poor effort that’s gone into hiding away the robot forearms which are basically just tucked up the bird’s backside in the most half arsed manner. The head – apart from that silly panel- is great and at the push of a button can spin around 360 degrees like the real thing. It’s a bit silly on this toy though as spins around really really fast like he’s having some kind of fit. There’s a fair degree of articulation for Prowl’s beast mode. The wings can move up and down and be spread for flight and the legs can move about too. It’s quite a fun thing to play with, all told.
The robot mode is a bit of a mess though, unfortunately. Not because there’s anything especially bad about it, but more that it doesn’t seem to feel very structurally sound and that nothing’s hold together quite as it should. The main crux of the problem is the way the owl body shifts and rotates like a drum to form the robot’s torso. It rolls around but doesn’t lock into place and is reliant on the clips on the jet engines to clip into place and hold it together. Those bloody wings are annoying too, as they are on an axle and swing around like the head. They rise up on a beam to clip onto the robot’s shoulder blades to fix in position, but they don’t like to stay in place. It’s the combination of a slightly weak plastic and insufficient clearance that are the chief offenders. The owl head forming the chest was also a bit of a mistake too. As previously established, the head spins freely on a push button gimmick. This means that it will list to one side in robot mode particularly as one side of his head seems to be heavier than the other. Spinning the top of his head around reveals his Maximal spark crystal, which on this black version just puts a massive target on his chest. The legs are also a bit awkward too and Prowl never seems to stand very comfortably on those bird feet. The arms are fine and the head is decent – carrying over the a very Owl-y look to his face. The asymmetry again spoils things, with one eye being wider than the other and the general expression making Prowl look like he’s just smelt a particularly virulent fart.
It’s the engineering problems that really let Prowl down. You can see that he had the potential to be a really great little toy, but he’s just been let down by some ill thought out moves. Still, he’s one of the few Transmetal 2 toys that isn’t prone to the chrome dropping off, so we should be thankful for small mercies.
13471348