Legacy Evolution Animated Prowl

Prelude: Most people, when they hear the name Prowl, they think of the police car guy from Generation 1, possibly the table-flipping, kind-of-a-bastard version from the IDW comics. There is another prominent Prowl, though, namely the ninja motorcycle guy from Animated. This is the one Legacy Evolution has decided to bring back in a slightly more G1-looking way. So choose your move and strike from silence! Let’s say go!

Robot Mode: Let’s get this figure’s one major problem out of the way first, shall we? Despite capturing the overall look of Animated Prowl quite well, the robot’s face doesn’t really look like him at all. It’s too G1-ny and too smiley. Prowl needs a long, long face and a constant scowl. So while the overall resemblance to Animated Prowl is great, the face doesn’t really capture him at all, sadly.

Face aside, this figure is an excellent rendition of Animated Prowl. While noticeably smaller, it basically duplicates both the look and the design of the original Prowl figure very closely. This includes its excellent articulation, now including ankle tilt for amazing running poses, too. In terms of looks and articulation, Prowl leaves nothing to be desired. He can even pull the same trick as the old figure and swivel in his lower thighs, making for a shorter robot with wheels on his feet. Nicely done.

Prowl comes with his original weapons, too, the hubcap shurikens. Twisting the hubcap makes the blades pop out, not quite as prominently as on the originals, but it works nicely. There is a groove in Prowl’s hands were the shuriken blades fit in nicely, allowing the figure to hold them very solidly.

So bottom line for the robot mode: if they had actually managed to give him a face that looked like that of Animated Prowl, this would be a perfect recreation. As things stand it’s still very good, but lacks that certain Prowl-ishness.

Alternate Mode: Prowl still transforms into a police bike, naturally, and the transformation is basically identical to that of the old figure, too. Apart from the size, the differences between the two bikes are really minor. The front looks a bit blunter, maybe, but it’s quite clearly meant to be the same bike. The new Prowl also has a kickstand, so making it stand up is not a problem.

Not really that much more I can write here, to be honest. I still consider Animated Prowl to be one of the best motorcycle-Transformers of all time simply for the smoothness of the transformation and Legacy Prowl is pretty much the same, naturally. So bottom line for the vehicle mode: a worthy successor.

Remarks: Prowl was probably my favorite Autobot in the Animated series, his constant frustration with his loud and obnoxious teammates and his love for Earth’s nature made him highly sympathetic to me. While his death in the series finale was a sad moment, it was not done for cheap drama, but rather as the pay-off to a good story.

This new Animated Prowl figure from Legacy is pretty great except for one thing: the face isn’t really Prowl. So to me, this guy here isn’t Prowl. It’s actually a young Cyber-Ninja who wishes to emulate Prowl, but only has Bumblebee’s stories of how Prowl behaved as a reference, so… yeah, slightly skewed. At least that is my personal head canon here. So bottom line: a pretty nice figure, but it lacks that certain something to really capture the essence of Animated Prowl.

Rating: B

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