It seems that with every recent Transformers production, there has been that one character that the fans just love. It could be based on how they are on-screen or how they’re played off in their character bio. A great case of the former is Blitzwing in Transformers Animated. I don’t think anyone was expecting a crazy German ‘con with multiple personalities. For the latter, I’d say Bonecrusher from the movies: a ‘con of pure hatred. Too bad he died in seconds. For Transformers: Prime, it is without a doubt Knock Out; a totally fabulous, crazy Decepticon. Surely the show’s most popular character will have a great toy, right? Right?
Well, I hate to say it, but this is probably the worst Transformers I’ve purchased in quite awhile.
I’m not sure if I’ve stated this before, but I love Decepticons as fast cars. To me it makes more sense for the Autobots to have like, civil protection vehicles like military and police stuff, and the Decepticons to have stuff that’s more “dirty”, so in terms of his vehicle mode, Knock Out excels. His weapon just… oddly hangs off the side however.
But the big issue here is how much smaller deluxes are now. He’s only barely bigger than a Scout, and is absolutely dwarfed by a Classics Deluxe! And to think they cost more now…
Now, I don’t mind the figures getting smaller when the quality gets higher. Well, the transformation for Knock Out is where things start to get messy. His transformation has no real rhyme or reason to it, namely in the top half.
And in robot mode… yeah, I kinda had to be told this was Knock Out before I realized it was him. His robot mode is just too… lanky, whereas in the show he has a lot more bulk and depth to him. While the mainline TF:P toys haven’t really been works of art compared to the First Editions, but I can only imagine how much worse he would have looked compared to a First Edition.
His face isn’t that great, on top of it all. It feels so… flat, and the silver just doesn’t help it. It needs more snark.
The biggest issue is with the chest. Not only does it not look accurate, but it barely holds together. If you move one of his arms up, chances are, a piece of his chest is going to go with it. On top of that, the arms are bad as well, as they’re just the doors folded up several times. The design is hideous and hinders a lot of articulation.
The legs fare a bit better, and he actually has really good balance! With enough fiddling, you can get him to stand on just one foot. Awesome, but not enough to make up for the upper body.
His weapon is a weird… pike thing. It looks cool, but it’s too small, and I haven’t quite figured out why it can split into two.
There’s nothing worse than when a character you really like finally gets a toy and it ends up not being very good. Still… he’s Knock Out, a character with a lot of fans, and he’ll certainly have those people buying him. If you’re just looking for a new Transformer when you’re at FPNYC, I’d suggest passing him up in favor of the Vehicon.
EDITOR’S NOTE: It turns out that the instructions for Knock-Out are incorrect regarding the transformation. Below is a picture of what it looks like correctly transformed. Weather or not this would change Loran’s opinion of the toy I don’t know, but the corrected transformation does address both the chest’s look and stability, as well as that of the arms. Check it out:
Hey, Knock-Out’s instructions are actually wrong! Poke around on-line: the toy was designed where you lift the front halves all the way up and they actually click into place in a much more show-accurate configuration. There are also several more steps ofr the arms which make them much more compact and normal looking. For some reason these steps were left out of the instructions.