For more pictures, click on the image above

Robot Mode: Prowl's robot mode leaves only very little doubt as to what his alternate mode is. It's basically the owl on extended legs with arms. The owl head now sits on the chest and a smaller robot head emerges from the top. Prowl's wings now sit on his shoulders. The figure is rather top-heavy, but its large claw-feet still provide a solid base to stand on, so no problems with toppling over.

Prowl adheres to the high Beast Wars standard in terms of posability. He has knees, elbows, the full movement range. His arms are a bit hampered by the wings, but apart from that he's not limited. Detailing is pretty good, though some of it gets lost among the uniform white of his legs and sadly the wings are wrong-side-up, most of their details are on the bottom side here. Still, overall a nice robot mode, but with some limitations as it is clearly subservient to the beast mode.

Alternate Mode: The beast mode is where Prowl really shines. He transforms into a cybernetic white owl. Most of the bird is robotic in nature, only the legs and parts of the head look organic. The detail work here is pretty amazing, sculpted into the chromed wings and torso. Prowl can extend his wings quite a bit and turn his head, though that is pretty much the extent of his posability in this mode. Prowl also has something looking like rocket boosters beside his tail feathers and his owl head features a cybernetic eye.

There isn't really a lot you can do here in beast mode, but the look is just pure awesomeness. I'm not generally a fan of the meched-out, sometimes strangely proportioned Transmetal 2 beast modes, but in Prowl's case it looks really, really great.

Remarks: After being hit by the Aveda Kedavra curse in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows", many believed Hedwig to have perished. He survived, though, and after an operation costing six million dollars he became stronger, faster, and better than any other owl... or not. Sorry, couldn't resist. Transmetal 2 Prowl is, of course, not Bionic Hedwig. But he kinda looks like it, doesn't he?

Anyway, Prowl here is among the many, many Beast Wars figures that never appeared in the TV series, only in the IDW Beast Wars comic books. His profile is a very close match to that of G1 Prowl (who was probably meant to be the "great military strategist" he was in a former life), but the recent Beast Wars Sourcebook series from IDW explained his origins a bit differently. He's an artificial intelligence patterned after Prowl, created during the Binaltech series.

Whatever origin you want, Transmetal 2 Prowl combines an excellent beast mode with a good, though somewhat limited robot mode, into an overall nice package. Certainly not a must-have, but one of the more unusual Beast Wars figures. There haven't been that many owls in Transformers history and Prowl pulls it off quite well. Recommended to Beast Wars fans.

Rating: B

 

I have the black version. The only thing I dislike is the Wings are floppy on top. They don't peg in the shoulders. Otherwise, another awesome BW fig.