i just got mine with the new (un-resealeable, stupid!) packaging, and i must say he looks better in person. the proportions arent as horrible as pics make him look. on to the complaints: -the toy came with some dings and scrapes but thankfully none on the prominent parts like the hood, windscreen or roof (whatsupwithdat?!) -the pearl white plastic that make up his head and upper arm make him look cheap to me. -i dont like the baby blue plastic. -cant seem to get the steering system to work - the arms block them. -also, on mine one of the taillights is slightly mis-positioned so the boot wont close properly. otherwise, hes a pretty decent addition to my alt collection despite being my least fave.
Quick rundown: Got mine in bubble packaging. New packaging sucks, but everyone already knows that. I can understand Hastak wanting to make an Alternator that kids could actually, y'know, TRANSFORM. I can totally see where Prowl can and should have fulfilled that function in theory. Unfortunately, in reality, you're better off partforming the bastard -- because he falls apart at the slightest movement. QC-wise, this is the cheapest looking Alt. I've ever seen. The white on the head is unpainted and looks crappy, the eyes aren't even FILLED IN all the way, and the arms and doors have a habit of falling off when you move them. The feet are loose as hell -- but even if they were tight, just transforming them would wear out the ball joints pretty quickly, due to the design. I also had to adjust one of the tail lights; it was blocking the trunk from closing due to being in too far. The baby blue IS blue. It's not gray, off-gray, blue-gray, or any other imaginary shade of gray -- it's weak-ass pastel blue that belongs in a baby catalog. For comparison, gray is what the thighs and hands are. The blue doesn't work at all (ESPECIALLY on the engine/gun) and makes me think the Universe color guy got shanghaied by the Alt. team. The nightstick is cool. It would look better with silver on the handle, but that'll take all of two seconds to fix. Transformation is, as I said before, a simple scheme made difficult by loose parts, tight tolerances, and flat-out weird design. Yes, I'm talking about the arms/doors/head/hood mess. As simple things go, it's pretty damn complex -- almost Grimlock bad. The rear bumper is a bit weird too; one of those deals where you can't simply go from point A to point B -- but instead have to pivot halfway, split, then pivot halfway again, etc. -- and it's only because there isn't enough room for those metal pins to clear (tolerances again). Another thing that should be brain dead simple, but isn't. I hear that BT Prowl's mirrors had issues if you try to open the doors with them. I didn't bother trying -- I just folded the bottom frame out of the way and opened the doors from the underside. I did do the leg swap. It was a no-brainer (two screws each). It does look better, but there's a problem with stability, since the feet aren't meant to take weight that way. I'm not sure there's a point to transforming the feet at all anymore. Posability is limited. The arms can't go straight up due to the design of the shoulders, and there's not much knee movement, even with the leg swap. Plus loose feet sabotage anything you can do. I was hoping to use this guy for a BT Alert head swap -- but now I'm thinking twice. I mean, it just looks CHEAP. At the very least, I'd need to fill in the eyes, and maybe paint in the unpainted plastic. Overall, it's the worst figure in the Alt. line, and a mediocre effort next to other TF's. A textbook example of simple gone horribly, horribly wrong. Final grade: C- -XCN-
I have prowl with the leg swap, and the knees bend a full 90 degrees... I have none of the problems that you speak of, actually pretty well articulated, and he sure doesn't fall apart... Ive yet to pop anything off at all, and I've TF'd him quite a few times as well as posed him for pictures sake. I think you must've gotten a lemon or something. Andy
There do appear to be lemons in the line. For example, when I got Swerve, the chest flap was too tight and had to be removed to transform him, the shoulder/chest area showed huge white stress marks after 1 transformation, the rocker panel was broken right out of the box and the Autobot symbol was scraped up out of the box. I just found a new one 4 days ago (only the 2nd Swerve I've ever seen) and he has none of these problems. He transforms just as smoothly as BT Tracks, Alt Tracks and Alt Ravage. Obviously, my first Swerve was a lemon. It looks like your Prowl was, too.
I checked again, and you're right about the knees, though again, the feet tend to cancel out that posability. There's some double-jointing involved, which complicates matters. I would argue that, if he is a lemon, he is a lemon BY DESIGN. The doors are held on by fork-shaped clips, and are pretty obviously meant to detach if excessive force is applied -- though mine will do so for a lot less. Same with the shoulders -- that "O" joint is very obviously meant to detach as a safety measure, much like the plastic shoulder pegs on the RX-8 molds. The feet are ball joints that MUST swivel and rotate a LOT for each transformation, which in itself is enough to wear them out quickly even if they're not loose. On the plus side, he's still better than Cybertron Jetfire. -XCN-
I just got Alt. Prowl an hour ago. I compared him to my Maisto 1:24 RSX and it's spot on to it's measurements. Great job to scale. Anyway, I'll do the leg swap in the morning, as well as a few other mods. Mainly, painting the interior a different color either black or grey, and painting the engine parts that are blue/grey to the same as the BT Prowl's engine. My only other complaint is that his head isn't totally hidden like the other Alts. Mine was packaged with the face down, blatantly obvious as soon as I took him out of package. The only Alt that I've seen like that. Turning face up eliminates the obvious part, but you can still tell it's a head. No QC issues with mine, heck I used the mirrors to open the doors the first time, took a considerable effort considering I was using the mirrors to do it. He's not my favorite, but I like him better than the Jeeps, Vettes, S2000's. I recommend him to anyone, just watch out for the quality issues.
After having Prowl for a while (got one red-box, and one fishbowl-box), it's become one of, if not THE favorite for me. (especially after leg-swap surgery) Looks great in both modes, Solid in both modes, and a transformation that doesn't require twelve minutes of fiddling to get the panels to line up. Sure, it ain't the Subaru mold, but that don't keep it from being good (to me anyway).
Strike that, I have one QC issue on mine, the spoiler doesn't line up exactly. The right side is glued down farther than the left, partly obscuring the 3rd brakelight on that side. Eh, at least the paint on mine is flawless.
Ah, Ha! I scavenged some decals from a Civic Si and Integra type R model kits from Revell I had lying around, there's a small Type-R decal that fits perfectly on the blank spot on the front grill. Had to frankenstien the i-VTEC for the engine though. Pics are up in the kitbash section.
I found two more in other towns, same spoiler problem as mine. Looks to be a widespread problem. Keep an eye out for it if you don't have one yet.
Finally opened him up last night. Gotta say I'm pretty pleased with him. Defiantly seems better in person than he did in pictures. He's definately become one of my favorites in my Alt collection. So far the only unfortunate thing, is that somehow between last night and this morning his mirrors broke off(both doors too). But I mean other than that, I really dig him a lot, especially that head scuplt.
Tip for the broken mirrors: Plasti-Zap by Pacer Technology does a great job of securing the broken mirrors back to their respective doors.
I finally picked him up yesterday. I personally think he's great. It's really weird how pictures seem to distort his proportions, because in actuality, he's proportioned pretty darned well. QC-wise, mine seems perfect. Spoiler lines up just fine, and all the joints are sufficiently tight (the ankles are far from loose). I've only got problems with his driver-side door popping off, and that's more due to my tendency of pushing that one too far for whatever reason. A few questionable design decisions though, mainly with his head crest and mirrors. They just feel really fragile. I'll have to be careful around those. Otherwise, along with Skids and Grimlock, he's right up there as one of my favourite Alts to date. Really nice looking.
I finally got around to opening mine yesterday and transforming him. - new packaging looks great, but as so many have noted, is difficult to re-use. I just took an xacto knife and slit along the sides and front, so the plastic folds up. Did the same on the interior bubbles as well. I should be able to re-use the box for storage this way, no problem. - the car looks great. Feels very light compared to the other Alts. There's a slight gap between license plate halves, but most parts fit snugly. The engine sits well inside the hood, and I was able to open the doors using the mirrors the first time, though after that I just pushed them from the inside. - I like the baby blue-grey. As much as I like the stark black/white/grey contrast on the box, the blue-grey is a nice color, and contrasts with the black and white without being tacky or over obvious. - transformation isn't too difficult, though as always parts popping off get to be a pain. The drivers door and passenger side bumper both came off at one point and had to be reattached. - The eyes look a little strange... looks like they ought to be filled in more. - The nightstick is a nice extra. - I appreciate that the designers keep trying to do different transformation schemes with different figures. I like the fact that the hood folds down rather than out, and I appreciate the attempt to do something different with the feet, though I wonder how durable that little prong that the feet are attached to will be over time. My figures don't get a lot of use, seeing that I only occasionally transform them, but for someone who uses the figure a lot I imagine it could wear out or break easily. Overall, I really like Prowl. He has a few issues, but for once it's nice for the name re-use to be appropriate, since this is the original character. I prefer the Alternator version to the Binaltech, who looks plain without the police badges and Autobot insignia on his chest. A-/B+
I like him a lot better than I thought I would. I think the prototype colors would have been better though. My initial reaction from the pictures I saw was that his proportions were just too bad, but in person it's really not a problem. It's not my favorite in the line, but definitely a nice representation of the character.
There was a time where I would choose alternators over anything else. They were so incredible, real cars, and cool chunky believable bot modes. Alternators are a great line for anyone to "go back" and pick up some older TFs that still rock. Alts Mirage is still in my all time best 10 TFs ever made..Oh..and Jag Ravage. I sold most of my alts, but my buddy gave me Jag Ravage and thats still one of my all time favs.
