In keeping with tradition, Prowl transforms into a police car... but, while the colourscheme of the original version was a clear homage to G1 Prowl, the version I picked up - his 'Super' form, albeit unacknowledged on the packaging - does things a little differently...
Vehicle Mode:
The TransFormers brand has a bit of a history of using unlikely choices for robots disguised as Emergency Services vehicles (see G1 Red Alert - a Lamborghini Countach as a fire chief's command car), the Lamborghini Diablo is perhaps not as unlikely a police vehicle as one might think... At least, not if you're in Italy, where the police force appear to have a long history of using various Lamborghinis. Even the paint job - metallic blue for most of the vehicle, with white on the doors and roof - is not dissimilar to that of an Italian police vehicle, just lacking some of the white arrows and stripes that highlight their curves and angles. The main difference is that the Italian police force use a lower-profile lightbar, so as not to ruin the look of the high-performance car.
There is, I think, something a little Super Deformed about this car - the front seems too narrow, with too steep a bonnet, and it looks too tall for its length. The curve along the bottom of the sides, between the wheels, seems to go up too high and, in any case, on the real vehicle, it's more of an inward curve than an upward curve. Nevertheless, this is recognisably a Lamborghini... or just enough of one to keep the lawyers at bay. In terms of specific details, I think the back end is a bit too long, proportionally, the scoops in front of and above the rear wheels aren't quite deep enough, and the rear indicator lights are in one trapezoid chunk on each side rather than the manufacturer's characteristic separate, circular lights. Additionally, the dip in the bonnet has been squared off and the central pair of exhaust pipes have been replaced with two pairs, each mounted just inside the rear wheels. The hubcaps feature an interpretation of Lamborghini's five-petalled flower design, but without the holes and coated with a rather ostentatious gold chrome, and also fitted with rubber 'TransFormers 2000'-branded tyres.
Prowl's paint job is excellent, despite its apparent simplicity, and I deliberately got this one figure in its 'Super' form despite getting both X-Brawn and Side Burn in their original paint jobs. The metallic blue is a truly gorgeous shade though, without a glossy topcoat, it does look a little a little grainy due to the overall matte finish. It's the smaller details that really make this figure and, again, present such a sharp contrast with Hasbro's current output. Leave aside for a moment that, just like X-Brawn, the entire car body has been painted either metallic blue or white because a good chunk of it was molded in translucent plastic. The front and rear bumpers are painted black, then all of the external lights - even the small side-mounted indicators, front and rear - are painted silver or metallic orange, as appropriate. The rear indicators, meanwhile, are separate pieces of painted translucent plastic fitted into the rear. The slatted panel at the rear - over where the engine would be in the real car - is painted with a dark gunmetal. It's curious to see that the only significant difference between this toy's paint job and that of the Japanese version is that the hubcap chrome is a lighter, yellower shade. He even has the Japanese character's name - Mach Alert - still on his doors.
One fairly cool feature of this vehicle is that, due to the way transformation works, you can sort-of open the doors. It's not remotely natural-looking - they have to essentially swing forward on one joint while 'opening' on another - but it does reveal that the soles of Prowl's feet have been sculpted to (vaguely) resemble seats.
Packaged along with the vehicle are two friction-launch missile launchers, which can be attached to Prowl's spoiler to act as boosters, since the translucent grey plastic missiles have a flame-like design at the ends, which is coated in orange paint, with yellow tips. Both the launchers and the missiles look pretty basic, but work remarkably well considering the launchers are not spring-loaded. The sculpt of the launchers features wings that extend the spoiler and supplement them with vertical fins, presumably to help with steering at his booster-enhanced speeds. Each one can be mounted on either side - directed forward or back - but I tend to think they look more natural pointed backward.
Robot Mode:
I really don't know what it is about Japanese robots and massively wide shoulders, but Prowl is certainly the most swish-looking of the Car Brothers. There's also something slightly Bayformer-esque about him, albeit substantially simplified, in the fundamentals of his styling - he's a barrel-chested, but very humanoid robot with slender limbs, large shoulder chunks and the car's doors hanging off his hips. There's actually something specifically reminiscent of movie Crosshairs in the latter point, since the doors can be raised up on their joints so that they almost connect with his chest, or lowered to function like a battle kilt, or hip sheaths for swords he doesn't have. The rear wings of the car stand out - and are actually decorated - much like exaggerated military epaulettes... Somewhat similar to, albeit vastly more convincing than Energon Rodimus' shoulders. The gold paint highlights mechanical detail that would otherwise have been completely invisible due to the use of dark translucent plastic, and the bulbous details in front of the wheels are painted to match his vehicle mode lightbar - red on the left shoulder, blue on the right.
While Prowl isn't exactly a shell-former, a good deal of his vehicle mode does end up just hanging off him rather than being properly integrated into his robot mode. The doors and rear wings, as mentioned above, are probably the least elegant part, while the front of the car, the windscreen and the roof are folded up on his back, all very compact. The central portion of the rear of the car, including the spoiler, is attached to his left arm and, in this form, acts as a small shield. It's hinged within the forearm for transformation, but this also gives it a certain amount of articulation, albeit not fully eliminating the risk of clashing with either the shoulder mass, the car doors hanging off his hips... or both.
As I mentioned in my write-up of X-Brawn, looking at these Deluxe class figures from the very start of the millennium really brings the inadequacies of the current lines' paint jobs into sharp focus. The body and shins feature generous applications of metallic blue paint - matching that of the car's bodywork. The main part of Prowl's chest was molded in the same translucent smoky grey plastic as the windows, and, along with the metallic blue, features applications of a slightly bluish silver on the sculpted pipework, as well as a large, bold, gold-chromed Autobot insignia right in the middle (though something about the sculpt here makes it look sulkier than usual). The sculpted detail of the legs is mostly elaborate armour plating in a very humanoid shape, suggesting mechanical musculature beneath, and somewhat reminiscent of the sleeker stylings of Optimus Prime and Megatron in the last couple of Michael Bay movies. The arms are a bit more intricate, with hints of inner workings beneath lighter armour.
The combination weapons/afterburners from vehicle mode now pair up and attach to Prowl's right arm via two large tabs. This makes for what is easily the most streamlined weapon among the three Car Brothers, though even its comparatively small wings are still a little unwieldy, and the weapon's sleekness is offset by the bulky shield on the other arm. Being pressure/friction launched, the missiles also become a little tricker to fire off in this mode, since Prowl's shoulder bulk gets in the way of accessing them. With the elbow being a combination of a hinge and a ball joint, it's easy enough to pose him in a nice firing position, but getting at the missiles' exposed nubs can still be a little tricky. Since the missiles are designed to look like flames, another option is to plug the guns into Prowl's lightbar, on his back, which gives the appearance of a jet pack. It is, of course, still possible to attach the guns to the car's spoiler, now part of Prowl's shield, but that starts to look a little silly and unbalanced.
Prowl's is probably my favourite head sculpt of the three Car Brothers, though it reminds me a lot of movie Sideswipe in his battlemask - amusing, considering his Lamborghini vehicle mode would normally be associated with G1 Sideswipe. Like Brawn's head sculpt, it's very traditionally robotic, but the face in particular has the movie-styled multi-layered interlocking part look. There's also something of a robotic Batman to it, with its swept-back 'ears's and the pointed forehead, though what appears to be a spoiler on the back of his head does counteract this impression, and makes it look as though he's wearing a tiny shuttle as a hat.
While transforming all three of the Car Brothers is something of a case of moving car parts out of the way to reveal the inner action figure, Prowl is arguably the most sensible about it. I particularly like the way that his legs and feet simply fold back along his extended groin, so that his feet lay against the underside of the robot's shoulder span, and become the car's seats. Another feature I quite like is that the robot's chest swings up and under the rear of the car, concealing Prowl's head between itself and his arm-mounted shield, while the exhaust pipes swing from the robot's shoulders to the traditional position, poking out from the rear of car. It's accomplished in a very simple way, but that makes it no less effective and - again - quite movie-like. The fact that the front of the car simply concertinas back to be enclosed under the car's roof and windscreen, while the rear wings just fold out to become enormous shoulders does lead to a huge amount of wasted car mass, but it's handled better here than on either X-Brawn or Side Burn... That said, those car door hip skirts are a pain, and always seem to want to clash with something. The wheels sticking out of Prowl's thighs are probably the main offenders on that score.
Prowl has no less than twelve ball joints on his limbs, of which four are supplemented by pinned hinges, so his articulation is enviable, even today. Granted his shield clashes with his shoulder bulk (particularly the rear wheel hanging down from it), but the shield's own hinge can help increase the arm's range. The shoulder ball joints offer full 360° rotation and can be raised 90° due to transformation, while the hinged upper arm has an independent range of about 135° swing forward, also due to transformation. The elbows can rotate 360° and bend 90° via the ball joint, with a theoretical range of about 270° swing inward and outward thanks to the pinned joint just above. The ball-jointed hips have a forward-backward range of just a little under 180° due to the wheels clashing with the front of the car on Prowl's backside, while their sideways swing is limited to just under 45°, again due to the wheels. Additionally, the car door hip skirts can present a challenge for posing, but the combination of a pinned hinge at the hip and a ball joint inside the door means their impact - both on the legs and the arms - can be minimised with a bit of finagling. The limits on his upper legs are balanced somewhat by the ball jointed knees, which can rotate the full 360° due to transformation, though they don't quite manage even 90° bend due to protrusions from the tops of the calves. The ankles, meanwhile, are constructed out of a double ball joint - one at the base of the leg, the other embedded in the foot. Their range of sideways tilt is somewhat limited by the sculpt of the feet, but their range in every other way beats even today's most articulated action figures by a considerable margin. The head, unfortunately, can only rotate... but with the range of motion available everywhere else, that's hardly going to be a problem.
I suspect Prowl was always going to be my favourite of the Car Brothers, simply because he transforms into a Lamborghini... but, of the three, I feel he's also the most successful 'action figure hidden inside a car', and probably the most traditional-looking TransFormer as well. Considering this is very definitely not a G1 Prowl, my purchase of this version of the mold was a deliberate choice rather than a decision made out of convenience. I think this colourscheme works far better than the G1-inspired Japanese police paint job (and, in retrospect, one has to wonder why Hasbro didn't change G1 Prowl's paint job to more closely resemble a US police car), and adds a nice pop of colour to the shelf he's displayed on. Granted, he'd probably have looked better alongside the red 'Super' Side Burn repaint rather than the blue original... but that version looks a bit too 'Hot Rod' for my liking... and the black, red and grey Universe repaint looks rather untidy.
Because of my mild OCD when it comes to toys I enjoy, I have looked into repaints of this figure... But neither the clear version nor Hasbro's 2004 Walmart-exclusive Universe repaint are as appealing to me as this one.
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