Beast Wars Transmetal 2 Prowl

I decided to grab this toy after reading a few reviews, all positive, and after seeing some pictures and thinking they were cool. The neat part about buying toys of characters that weren't in the show is that they come cheap and no one tries to outbid you. I bid on Prowl at a max of $10 (bidding started at $9.99) three or four days before the auction end and I won it. Sweet. I also got him delivered right to my door on my birthday (Dec 24th, yes, Christmas Eve), which was pretty durn cool. Yeehaw.

Also you should know that two versions of Prowl were released. The first one was a white owl, the second was a black one. I got the black one. As far as I can tell from pictures the parts on the black one are white and the parts dark blue on the black one are gray on the white one. All the other colors remain the same.

Alright, so Prowl is an owl (how fun). As an owl he's pretty neat actually. He's everything Airazor wishes she could have been. His legs are the right size, and his wings can even fold up at his sides (as opposed to on his back) to make him look like a perched owl at rest. The wings are probably the coolest part of the beast mode. They are jointed in two places and can flap up and down unlike many other winged Transformers who can only flap one way.

Prowl's gimmick is a bit weird, but it's definitely interesting. On his beast back is a button which causes his head to spin via the same mechanism used in Dinobot's tail and Inferno's butt. It gives off the owl vibe when they do that funky head turning thing (though they can't spin it like Prowl, unless they're possessed), but it's no use otherwise really. However, if you rotate the wings up and lock them into his head then they will spin along with his head. It's supposed to be some sort of attack mode, but it really succeeds in making me think Prowl's gonna puke.

Transformation isn't tough, but I couldn't do it without looking at the drawing on the card a few times and checking the directions. Once you know how to do it though, it's pretty easy. Just rotate his torso (kinda like how you switch Blast Punch Primal's head) and unfold his legs and arms. Not bad at all, and pretty fun.

The end result actually looks a lot like Silverbolt. To tell you the truth I'd have liked it if they used this mold as the Beast Machines version of Silverbolt rather than the bleh one they really used. Ah well.

The differences from Silverbolt of course is the huge chest (formed by the owl head) and the wings aren't overly secure. They don't have much to clip into, so they kinda sit there without much to do. You can still use his attack mode spinning thing in this mode, but it gets in the way of everything (you need to move his legs and arms out of the way) and he can't do it while standing since the wings scrape the floor (or desktop as it were).

Aside from his spinning wings and head of death, Prowl has no other weapons to speak of, which seems odd, but it's less for him to hold or for me to lose. From his tech specs I guess you can conclude that he's the resident scientist, not a warrior, so I guess that's why he doesn't have any weapons. He does have some nifty rocket thrusters on his back which would make cool guns, except he can only shoot stuff behind him, so I guess they're rocket boosters.

And so, all in all, Prowl is quite cool. Despite a weird gimmick and lack of wing support in robot mode, he comes through. Well worth the $10 I paid, and he should be pretty easy to find on eBay (and easy to win), so there's nothing more to say I guess.