I'm skipping Animated because the design Aesthetic does nothing for me. Well there might be some Dinobots at some stage ;-)
These have showed up first on the Hasbro website for £12.99 each, but the Hasbro site is free shipping on orders over £25. I'll remember that when they get the Star Wars: Big Millennium Falcon in.
Prowl is a black and white police car. Well he's passed the first test then ;-) He does look like the G1 version, and the form is quite close to the original, though having checked TFU.INFo the original doesn't have a spoiler. The wheels - my goodness what is going on there ? Huge 5 spoked hubs and non existent tires. Haven't seen wheels that bad on a TF since Nightbeat ! Red angled lightbar atop the car looking a bit like an arrowhead or Prowl's head crest on the roof of the car. Windows are clear smoked plastic, and front headlights are clear plastic.
He comes with a fold up gun which stored under the car. The handle wants to be facing down from the car body and the hinge needs to be at the head end. Instructions don't make this clear.
TF: Remove the gun. Pop the sides of the car - from the rear of the door to the front - out and forward slightly - there's a small arm and ball joint connecting them to the main body of the car, and you're pretty certain to pop the ball joint off at some stage - I'd pop the front off and pull from there. Reminded me of Movie Barricade. Hold the car looking at the bottom. Pull the side fronts down and over the wheels so the outside half of the sides is pointing forward. Fold the side fronts up inside the doors giving you the traditional Prowl door wings. Next the legs - note how they're slightly bent in car mode at the knees - necessary when reversing the TF. Flip up the rear bumper and fold the rear of the car back and down to form the lower legs. The feet.fold out, and from there you can fold the heel spurs back. Fold the door wings back a bit, and pull the front wheels out to the side - again they're on a little arm - and pull the arms out. Again not that the fists are positioned almost so they're holding the guns in his back. Look at the front of the car and position the arms so the wheels face back, the arms can bend forward at the elbow and the fists are correct. Push the head up through the bonnet - it will autoTF into place. Fold the doors as far forward as possible and fold the bonnet onto the robot's lower body. Position the roof of the car to form the back of the robot. Now from here you've got the option of folding the back down, folding out a pair of blasters that mount on his shoulders original Prowl style. I like the option. Unfold the gun and place in the hand.
The robot is very G1 Prowl, the only real differences being the body is slightly narrower having lost the sides of it, and that the rear of the car is on his knees not his feet. Colours are all white and black here - anything you'd expect to be silver or grey is white so some of you might be getting your paint pots out on this one to finish it off. Head is perfect - with a pale blue lightpipe - huzzah ! Love lightpipes. It's a little back heavy so you may want to weight it slightly forward at the legs.
Articulation: Ankle, a joint where the lower leg connects to the rear of the car which is essentially part of the TF but gives the robot some extra movement, a swivel below the knee, bending knee, ball jointed hips, a waist and neck joints. Far too much going on at the shoulders - they can bend forward and back on the connecting arms I mentioned earlier, and up to the sides at where they connect to them. The shoulders themselves swing back and forth, and raise to the sides. There's a bicep swivel, a bend at the elbow and finally a swivel at the wrist - these joints are open at the bottom of the wrist and one of my fists popped out due to not having been inserted properly. Might be worth checking yours but they do pop back in easily and securely.
Overall: Apart from a few more paint aps you couldn't really have done better. bucket loads of articulation and definitely shouting "I'm G1 Prowl !" at you. Get it. Ian (Shockprowl) will love it.
Prowl is a Wave 1 2008 Universe toy shipping with Sunstreaker and Tankor (Octane).
Prowl was released as Henkei toy C-08, which chromes the spoiler, gun and missiles.
This takes the Prowl mold and repaints it. The car mode is basically silver - similar to the silver used on Energon Hotshot - with the back window, roof and bonnet painted black. Gone is the lightbar on top of the car revealing the sunroof - which was there on the original. The bumper stay black but now has a silver insert and the Autobot symbol is moved forward. The windows have a slight blue shade to them.
TF is the same as Prowl but what I didn't notice on Prowl was that the ankles slide down inside the legs slightly allowing a little sideways movement at the ankle. Having dug Prowl out I find this is because the ankles were much stiffer on Prowl than Silverstreak. The robot mode reveals red upper legs and shoulders, silver/grey forearms, black fists, elbow joints and waist. The waist has some silver detailing down the front with some blue to the sides. Head is grey with a red crest, white face and blue lightpiping. The molded in missiles & launchers are molded in red plastic, but the missiles themselves are painted silver grey this time, and the gun is molded in the same colour.
Bluestreak is an obvious Prowl repaint, and they've done a very decent job here, hit the nail on the head.
Silverstreak was a Wave 3 Generations 2008 toy sold alongside Ironhide and Sideswipe, a repaint of Sunstreaker.
Silverstreak was released as Henkei toy C-10 Streak, which chromes the spoiler, gun & missiles as well as tinkering slightly with the paint job.
The robot mode requires more pickiness - the chest is all red, the blue at the sides of the bonnet having been folded away with the doors. Upper arms & legs plus missiles are grey .... looking at the original a majority verdict would have moulded these in white. The wrists and the gun are the same bright red as the car body and that just doesn't work - could do with being black like Prowl. The spoiler and rear bumper have ended up on the knees and the blue looks a little odd there.
But broadly speaking this is a decent enough Smokescreen. It ticks most of the major boxes and it's only a little of the fine detail where it's gone wrong.
Smokescreen is a Wave 5 Transformers Universe release appearing in 2009 with Dinobot.
Transformation reveals similar improvements to the robot mode with the arms – previously dark blue and grey – now being light blue and the wrists – which were red – are now the correct black. Similarly the grey of the legs is now white and the head is now the paler blue. Shoulder cannons and guns are chromed now.
Superb improvements, producing a really G1 accurate version of Smokescreen. This is the one you want.
Smokescreen is Henkei toy C-21, the final release in the Henkei series.
The car mode body is black, with clear blue windows. It's lightbar is blue on one side and rd on the other and looks very different from the previous version of the toy. However Streetstar's robot mode looks very like Silverstreak's robot mode, except that all the grey has been turned to black. There's a nice touch on the waist where there's red & blue panels mimicking the lightbars.
Streetstar was sold in the main Botcon 2010 boxset with Breakdown, Sky-Byte, Clench and Spark.
I can't see why they used the grey, the pale blue again for these parts would be a lot better. It's a colour clash nightmare but then so was the original so it's done the job.
Rapido was sold at Botcon 2010 in a pack with Cindersaur, a repaint of Beast Wars 10th Anniversary Megatron.
