Allegiance: Decepticon
Size: Cyberverse Vehicle Set
Difficulty of Transformation to Robot: Very Easy
Difficulty of Transformation of Vehicle: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Red, black, transparent dark purple, and some dark dull glossy fuschia, light milky gray, silver, metallic gunmetal gray, transparent yellow, dark purple, and off-white
Figure Rating: 7.1
Vehicle-Base Rating: 7.6

    Knock Out's car mode, proportions-wise, is very on-model with the show, and there's no robot mode extras sticking out of his car mode whatsoever. His mold detailing is also quite accurate to the show and the Prime aesthetic, being fairly minimal (particularly since he's a sleek sportscar) with a few areas of more intense detailing, like his grill. Unfortunately, where Knock Out falls short here is with his paint apps. His color scheme of red and black with some gunmetal gray (such as on his front grill, and silver on his headlights) is accurate, along with a rather dirty, dull-looking shade of fuschia that makes up a cone from his front grill to halfway down his roof (and ends rather abruptly; I would have preferred a spray-fade). What is NOT accurate is the complete lack of yellow, which is what makes his color scheme pop on the show! I'm not sure why Hasbro is so keen on leaving out the most important accent in Knock Out's scheme, but it makes his car mode look far from the super-stylish paint job it's supposed to have. To add insult to injury, his rear windows aren't painted, and neither are his rear bumper or taillights-- weak. In terms of holes for Cyberverse-scaled weapons, in this mode he has one in the center of his roof, as well as one on the side of each car door.
    Knock Out's transformation is pretty straightforward even for a Legion class figure, and thus leaves him with a fairly standard robot mode, in terms of what parts go where. I like how accurate they managed to get his chest and shoulders (with the shoulders on a rotating hinge that brings them up besides the wheels), though his chest is a bit large proportionally in comparison to his head. His arms aren't ideal, being merely molded onto the insides of his car side door pieces, but it's about what you'd expect at this small of a size. Also, as is usual with Legion car figures, there's a bit of a backpack made up of his roof, but it stays flat against his back and largely out of the way of movement, so I don't mind it much. What I do find odd are his legs-- they're molded in an odd position where they go forward at the hips, but a bit too far backwards at the knees (the knees cannot move). Thanks to the pieces of car on the sides of his pointy feet, he's still stable, but it makes him look a bit more awkward in this mode than he should have been otherwise. The addition of a bit more gunmetal gray on his legs, black on his well-detailed waist, and white on his face sculpt (which is spot-on to the show, complete with a smirk) makes the color breakup in this mode better than in vehicle mode, though he still could REALLY use some yellow. For articulation, he can move at the shoulders, hips, and ankles-- not a whole lot, but the former two are on ball joints, so he has a bit wider range of motion than you'd think from that short description. Knock Out also is able to hold two additional Cyberverse-scaled weapons in his hands, in addition to having his aforementioned vehicle peg-holes accessible on the sides of his arms and his back.

    The Energon Driller has two modes: a "driller" and a "base", though they aren't very different at all. First, the driller mode, which is quite accurate to how they look in the show when various random Vehicon drones are riding them. The main feature of the vehicle is a long drill in the front, with the front couple of sections being made of rubbery plastic for safety purpose, and the larger parts being transparent plastic, with one section painted a pretty nice coat of silver. The back half of the vehicle is a very angular, treated vehicle in the typical Prime Decepticon design aesthetic, and almost entirely black-- which is a shame, as there's a lot of really intricate mold detailing to be picked out, particularly with all the tread detailing on the bottom (which really should've been painted silver). That said, the overall color scheme of black, purple, and silver is certainly Decepticon-y, and the basic colors do look nicely together. There's a driver's area behind the middle section for a Cyberverse-scaled figure to stand, with handles perfectly designed for their fist holes. There's also a few accessories designed specifically for Knock Out that he or any other Cyberverse-scaled figure can use; namely, transparent purple versions of both his buzzsaw and electric-poker weapons he's seen with in the show. When not in use, they can peg into any one of the many Cyberverse-scaled ports all over the driller. The main gimmick in this toy is that if you press down on the pinkish-purple Decepticon button on the top, a red LED light will come on in the small purple accessory attached by a translucent wire to it. If plugged into the base of the drill where its default position is, it's supposed to light up the drill; but as is usual with this gimmick, it doesn't work that well. At least it lights up the FIRST section of the drill, which is better than most implementations of it in the 2012 Prime line, at least. There's also Cyberverse-scaled pegs and holes on the light-up piece, so you can have Knock Out or another character use it to light up a weapon (or a Commander-class figure-- at least in theory, it doesn't really work in practice). The coolest gimmick about this mode is that if you roll it back and forth, the drill rotates in a pretty fast manner, and looks pretty nifty doing so.
    Pressing back on the large red tab near the front of the mode reveals the Driller's "base mode", which is really just the driller mode with two additional missile pod sections opening out on the sides, each with a large enough space to hold another Cyberverse figure and with handles on the missile blasters for the figures to hold. There's even more Cyberverse-scaled holes and ports that pop out in this mode, so you can really pump up the driller with all sorts of little weapons if you want to. Each missile launcher is spring-loaded, and can fire prettty far-- however, the triggers can be rather touchy to the point of being a slight annoyance. On the color side, a bit more red is revealed in this mode, along with transparent yellow projectiles, which bring a bit more color to the toy, though not where it really needs it (on the back end). Also, unfortnately, the rolling-drill gimmick doesn't work in this mode.

    The Knock Out driller set is middle-of-the-road for me when it comes to the 2012 Cyberverse vehicle sets. The Knock Out figure is a bit below-average for a Legion class toy; nothing on it particularly stands out as being innovative, either, and Knock Out's color scheme isn't complete, but he's only a portion of why you're buying this package. The driller itself has a pretty nice-looking vehicle mode (even if more paint on the back end really could've brought out its detailing), but the drill-spinning gimmick on it is mighty cool. There's also tons of ports and handles for interaction with other Cyberverse toys, two spring-loaded launchers, and it can be connected to other Cyberverse "base modes" to form a large playset. I wish its two modes were a little more different from each other, and that the light gimmick actually worked well, so it's not a perfect package by any means, but the more Cyberverse figures you have, the more fun this little set can be. Mildly recommended.

Review by Beastbot

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