Series: Revenge of the Fallen
Allegiance: Autobot
Categories: Scout
Year: 2009
The universe is full of puzzles. Nightbeat lives to solve them. Highly intelligent and curious, he prefers to work independently of the other Autobots, since they usually just get in his way. He is a master of investigative techniques who prefers the boredom of a stakeout to the frantic pointlessness of a battle any day.
Remarks: Nightbeat is a repaint of ROTF Dead End, so look there for the full review. Just some words on the differences here. Nightbeat was originally meant to be a homage to Packrat, a character from 3H Enterprises aborted Universe series (whose only toy appearance to date is a repaint of Rattrap). Which would have been a nice fit, in my opinion, as the rather inhuman face of the Dead End mold does bear some resemblance to Rattrap/Packrat's. It was not to be, though, as the name Packrat was judged to be too kid-unfriendly. So some flames were added to his paint job and presto, we have a G1 Nightbeat homage.
Nightbeat is not a particularly good homage, but he's still a very nice little figure and while looking at him doesn't exactly make me think of G1 Nightbeat, the blue and gold paintjob looks good on him and actually manages to make a rather scary and evil-looking mold look... less evil. Not exactly like a good guy, but not evil incarnate, either. So kudos to Hasbro for making a repaint that does manage to look both good and very much different than the mold's first incarnation. I'm not saying you necessarily need both versions of this figure, but you should at least own one.
Rating: B+
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