Vehicle Mode:
There's something vaguely Dark of the Moon 'Stealth Force' about BH Knock Out, albeit with a scaly, beasty, rather than heavily weaponised look to the protrusions at the back. He's clearly the same car, but bulked out and enhanced - if that's the word - with a reptilian motif.
In Knock Out's case, this amounts to the sides and rear of the vehicle being remodelled and recoloured, almost as if he has extra armour wrapping round the original car's body, but revealing the original central portion of the bonnet, windscreen and roof. The back of the vehicle matches the other Beast Hunters cars most closely, in that it does feature spikes, but they're rather more subtle than the likes of Bumblebee and Wheeljack, for example, and blend into the surface of the vehicle quite successfully.
What's not so successful - and very much in common with the original Knock Out - is the paintwork. First and foremost, the sheer contrast between the marbled green on the outer sections and the red (now more burgundy versus the original's quite bright red) running down the middle is bizarre. Beast Hunters figures all featured one colour of marbled plastic, and I deliberately chose one where the effect was minimal - on mine, there's just a touch of yellow, like wisps of smoke, visible above the rear wheelwells, while the rest just looks slightly pearlised. Aside from the bonnet, all the red is painted on and looks different depending on whether it's painted over the translucent grey or opaque green plastic. Most of the rest of the paint budget appears to have been blown on the front of the car, where the reptile teeth are painted gold (though the coverage isn't great on mine), the entire front grille has been painted silver, and the headlights - transparent plastic on the original - have a silver background, extended into long wings on their outer corners, while the circular 'lights' themselves are yellow. Down the sides, there are patches of silver - one whole panel just behind the front wheels, then the bar below the doors, though the silver stops abruptly there and, while the sculpted detail carries on around the rear wheelwell, the paintwork doesn't. As was common with all the TF Prime toys, the back end features plenty of sculpted detail, not least the rear indicators, but none of it is painted, so it ends up looking very artificial. Naturally, also, the hubcaps are all unpainted, just like on the normal version of Knock Out.
Where most TransFormers weapon accessories tend only to plug in to the roof or sides of their vehicle modes (see the original and his spear), the 'Crocto Claw' supplied with Knock Out can be attached in two different ways. First is the obvious 5mm port at the back of the roof, which is about as daft as average because the peg is on the main bulk of the weapon. With no 5mm ports on remodelled sides of the vehicle, the alternative attachment point actually makes use of the weapon's spring-loaded jaws to clamp over the back of the car, giving it a stocky, rigid tail that blends very well with the sides of the vehicle. It does seem to lift the back end up very slightly, and it appears there's a wheel embedded in the 'gullet', though it's so small there's no way of telling whether it rolls or is in any way effective. Nevertheless, attaching the claw to the back of the car additionally emphasises the 'beast' motif that was applied, somewhat unevenly, to all the Beast Hunters characters - where most of them just grew random spikes, this is one of the few that gained recognisably animalistic features, making Knock Out one of the more visually interesting vehicles in the line, even if his paint job is a little basic.
Robot Mode:
Knockout's robot mode in the TV show was every bit as sleek and curvy as his vehicle mode, but this sadly didn't carry over too well to the original toy. The new version offers little by way of improvement on the whole, though the shoulder pads seems significantly larger. Much of the vehicle's pearlised green is hidden away in this mode, with the deep red becoming far more prominent. The paint job overall is similarly minimal to the original, with a brighter shade of red applied to the kneecaps and the sides of the groin plate, while the central section is painted gold to match the reptile teeth on his 'belt'. He ends up looking very mismatched in robot mode, and it feels as though the colour breakdown wasn't property thought through... Though the same could be said of most Beast Hunters remolds.
Aside from the obvious differences in plastic colour, the grey used for his upper arms, hands and thighs is a lighter shade than on the original, but they appear to be from the same molds, at least if the shoulder spikes are anything to go by. As far as I can see, the only robot-specific parts to be resculpted - aside from the head - are the shins, which have deeper, more curved ridges than the original.
The weapon seems bizarrely oversized in Knockout's hands, whether it's wielded as a club, a flail or a double-barrelled dragon cannon. With two handles, it's just about possible to get Knock Out to hold it in both hands, but the sculpting of the weapon does butt up against the forearm holding the top peg. The spring-loaded jaw is neat, and does allow it to grab on to either scenery or opponents, but it tends to catch on the handle part when connected, and the short plastic chain is stored inside the gullet, restricting the jaw's movement overall. While writing all this, I did what comes naturally with a flail-type weapon, and started swinging it around on its chain... only for the head to fly off, halfway across the room. The final link in the chain appears to have snapped and, while it's only screwed in place - so, theoretically easy to fix by simply screwing in the next link - the screw is actually inaccessible without first disassembling the spring-loaded jaw.
As new heads go, this one doesn't seem as different from the original as some others. For the most part, it just looks as though he's wearing a bulkier helmet with more prominent crests, though it does also appear as though his lower jaw now juts out slightly, and his mouth is downturned rather than showing his characteristic smirk - evidently this physical transformation occurs after Breakdown's death at the hands of MECH... Like the original, the head sculpt should be light-piped, but the eyes have been painted over. Additionally, the face is painted a sort of pearl white rather than silver, so it's slightly closer to the CGI, and the central crest uses the same sparkly yellow as the crotch panel. Probably the best thing about the new head, though, is that it seems to be mounted higher up on its neck joint, so it's not hidden behind his chest plate.
Like most other Beast Hunters remolds, Knock Out's transformation remains unchanged, yet in some ways it seems to work better. In particular, hooking the front wings over the bonnet in robot mode is both smoother and more secure, while the hinge on the neck plate seems a little tighter, making it feel a touch more stable even though it still doesn't actually peg into anything in robot mode. It's still a weird transformation, and the robot mode still doesn't look great... but at least now it has exaggerated shoulder pads as a distraction from the overall hollowness of the body.
The weapon isn't great, and it's ridiculously oversized, but it is at least imaginitive in the ways it can interact with Knock Out and vice versa... It leaves me wondering if it's primarily intended to be a flail, some kind of grappling hook, or a combination dual dragon cannon, because it functions equally well in any of those roles. The name implies it's a grappling hook or capture claw, but the formatting of the weapon tends more toward the flail or gun usage.
I didn't buy many of the Beast Hunters resculpts - Arcee and Soundwave are the only others on my shelves - because the whole concept of Beast Hunters as a toyline came across as half-baked, and didn't reflect the look of the characters in the TV show. Many of the weapons had a bizarre Fantasy look that seemed wholly out of place in TransFormers. Smokescreen was first released under the Beast Hunters banner, but didn't get his blue and yellow repaint, despite appearing that way in more episodes than in his original red, white and blue, though he did get reworked into BH Prowl with a new head. Hasbro's take on the concept, with the use of marbled plastic, makes much of the toyline seem like an experiment, while Takara Tomy's version was a bit more sensible. On balance, I rather wish I'd waited for Bloody Knockout, with its colourscheme seemingly inspired by G1 Bluestreak, but even that has the issue with the paintwork stopping abruptly down the sides and the red weapon doesn't blend in quite so well as the vehicle's tail.
Overall, this 'Croc Out' version is an improvement on the original - plastic quality feels better, there's more paintwork, and it feels generally slightly less lazy - but it's still a pretty terrible toy of Knock Out. The new head sculpt with its 'pissed-off and dangerous' expression works very well, and the size of the head, while only minimally different, seems far more suitable for a robot of this size. Considering how much fun the Knock Out was in TF Prime, it's sad that he never really got a 'knock-out' toy and now likely never will unless the character crosses continuities to appear in a different toyline. It seems equally unlikely that any of the Third Parties will turn their attention to TF Prime, at least in terms of actually transforming robots (Iron Warrior are developing Masterpiece-style non-transforming action figures), because most of the other toys were great... but Knock Out is probably high on many a fan's list of TF Prime characters deserving a more intricate reworking, possibly in a slightly larger scale to improve the potential accuracy to the CGI.
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