So as some people might recall, the Energon version of Prowl had a different head in his instructions. This noggin also showed up in a Japanese magazine promotion for Superlink, although by this point I have no idea what magazine it was. It turns out, though, that there's some more imagery for it!

At a previous BotCon, I bought some Superlink production materials from a dealer, and in this model pack was a step-by-step copy of the Prowl toy's transformation sequence. Instead of the finalized head design, however, the transformation sequence features the unused Prowl head! I have made some plus-size scans of it, which are the images on the blue-grey background (one of which includes a sketch of E-Prowl's final head design next to it).

On top of this, the early head design also shows up in the Japanese patent for Prowl (the black-background images), so I'm throwing those up here as well.

Does anyone care about Energon Prowl? Maybe... maybe not. Probably not? When I posted this stuff on Twitter, though, Vangelus retweeted it, so, hey, let's go all out with a news post on this lost bit of the Unicron Trilogy.

 

It's cool seeing this head pop up again. I really like the way this one looks. The final head always looked really bad, it's like they rushed it after something fell through with this one.

 

Reminds me more than a little of the Beast Machines Vehicon Mirage with that head on.

 

Cool! I remember I got Prowl when I was younger and was always baffled when I saw that head in the instructions, I spent months trying to figure out if there was some sort of battle mask feature I was missing. Man, this takes me back.

 

Gels so much better with the rest of the body. Also robocop visor.

 

That sculpt actually got pretty far. A friend of mine has one cast in plastic, so it got to the testshot phase of it albeit pretty early in the testing.

 

The head actually reminds me of the mech suits from Bubblegum Crisis.

 

I saw this last night. This is a really cool head design. It's a shame it didn't get used.

 

I wasn't collecting toys during Energon so this is news to me.
Pretty neat to know; for some reason I love info like this.

 

It's a bit insect-ish, but it's much better than what actually got used.

 

We all know 'Checkpoint' is the true Prowl of Energon!

 

Would have been pretty cool, but what we got fits the name a bit better. Like a lot of the Energon Autobots, it hasn't aged very well but I actually dug the toy initially.

 

Dodged a bullet there then that Head is feldicarb.

But yes I care about Energon toys in fact I only just got a 2nd Prowl Energon toy in the last week or so. I was looking at him and thinking Slapdash repaint.

Right at the top of my wants list remains Checkpoint still.

 

The sketch of the final head looks better than the actual final head.

 

Has a very G1 Kickback vibe to it.

 

Kickback was my first thought too.. And the overall bot reminded me why I never collected this line lol

 

gives me a PatLabor vibe also a police robot perhaps that was the point.

 

I think Energon Prowl was originally going to be an upgrade for Armada Blurr.

 

I got Energon Prowl and i like this head better than the one that made it to production.

 

Upgraded Armada Blurr anyone?