053
Takasa/Tomy: Masterpiece, MP17; Prowl
I suppose at this point I'm just asking for the police to bust down my door this time with yet another KO. Before you cast judgement just know that not only do have legitimate MP figures in my collection, but I have been religiously buying and collecting Hasbro toys since 1985. I'm not suggesting that this makes up from anything, I'm just saying that I have hopefully earned a bit of good will over these recent transgressions.
Prowl here is a bit of an enigma for me. Like many kids in the 80's my brother and I were lucky enough to receive our fair share of toys, but we had an unwritten rule that we both followed; no multiples of the same figure. The reasoning was simple as it allowed us to collectively increase our toy ranks with different characters, but naturally lead to inherent favourites regardless of the characters personality.
For example, one Christmas I was gifted Dirge and he received Ramjet so logically Dirge was my favourite Seeker and his Ramjet. Looking back it seems that we were both wrong as Thrust was the coolest of them all, but I digress; you get the idea. With that in mind, you can maybe see why Prowl is an enigma; he was my brothers first Transformer as a kid and therefore I'm bound to not like him.
However this mould makes it so hard to stay true to the rules that we had as kids; it is so great. (forget the fact that he doesn't collect, nor care about trivial things!). Thankfully for me, I also picked up Smokescreen so I will be able to admire what I consider to be one of the best MP Cars to date, while not going against my natural instinct of disliking Prowl on principle.
From a KO toy perspective, Prowl seems to be the best quality of them all so far. Loose joints aside, everything lines up and functions nicely. I also really like how they engineered and archived the bulky feet, while not sacrificing mobility. The seller (TF-Direct) also included the shoulder rockets in separate packages; a nice touch and made me wonder if the legitimate release included them. They fit (loosely) of the movable tabs and really complete the over look.
Overall, like with the other KO releases, I'm pretty happy with Prowl and am very surprised with how well they did with him. I may even pick up a KO Bluestreak to complete the trio because I like the mould so much.
Pros: Overall decent quality for a KO. Great sculpt, articulation and overall feel.
Cons: Shoulder Rockets just kind of sit on the pegs loosely, minor paint blemishes, is a KO.
