Universe Prowl

Robot Mode: Universe Prowl is a very close match to G1 Prowl, closely matching how Prowl was shown in the cartoon and the comics. The main difference being that, at least in the cartoon, Prowl never had shoulder rockets, but if you want one hundred percent accuracy you can just flip those things back and out of sight.

Prowl has absolutely no problems in terms of posability and overall look. He can move with the best of them and he pulls off the look of his G1 counterpart near-perfectly. That said, though, something about Prowl just makes me dislike him a bit. He looks... unfinished, sort of. His parts look as if they should have been given another coat of paint or something. It's always a problem if they simply leave the plastic in its original colour, white in this case. A coat of white paint would have made him look much better, I think.

Apart from the aforementioned shoulder rockets Prowl carries a rifle. Not much I can say about that. It folds together for storage in vehicle mode, so you have to watch out that it stays straight when used in robot mode (I messed that up for one picture, need to replace it). Not the most original weapons ever, but pretty much what Prowl used in the G1 cartoon days, so no complaint.

All in all the mold used for Prowl's robot mode is pretty good, but the paint and detailing leaves a lot of room for improvement.

Alternate Mode: Not a big stretch, Prowl once again becomes a police car. In general the car looks pretty good. It's not Alternator level, but for a Deluxe-class vehicle mode it's doing a good job. The only thing that kind of bothers me is the grey plastic used for the car windows. It's semi-transparent, it scratches very easily, and I can't really find a reason why they chose it. In my opinion it should have been fully-transparent windows or black non-transparent plastic, everything else is just halfway.

There isn't really a whole lot you can write about this mode. It's a police car, except for the grey windows it looks fine, and you can store Prowl's weapon underneath. I can't think of anything else.

Remarks: Prowl was Optimus Prime's second in command during the first two seasons of the G1 cartoon series and he was always portrayed as the logical thinker. Highly intelligent, strategic, but not very good when it came to innovative or imaginative thinking. Kind of the Autobots' version of Shockwave, I guess. Prowl was killed in Transformers the Movie (1986), but he has resurfaced numerous times in the various Transformers series.

The Universe incarnation of this figure is a good, solid mold with a rather unfinished-looking paint job. I like the robot, don't get me wrong, but the way he's standing here in front of me is just... cheap. You kinda get the feeling that they wanted to shave off a dollar of two of the costs, so instead of giving him that last coat of paint he'd have needed, they left him like this. Not sure whether it really went down like that, but that's what it feels like to me. He's pretty good otherwise, but he leaves me feeling dissatisfied.

Let's just say I'm looking forward to the Silverstreak repaint of this mold, which (at least judging by the pictures I've seen) should look a lot better than Prowl does colour-wise. As things stand, I can recommend Prowl only to Prowl fans and Universe completists.

Rating: C+