Knock Out

Knock Out is of a rare breed: it’s a Decepticon automobile. In the Transformers Prime cartoon, Knock Out is the Decepticon medic and despite being aligned with the “bad guys” he has a sadistic appreciation for the Earth-made automobiles

I picked up this guy because I liked the car mode and the art made him look like a cool character. Unfortunately I ended up getting a merely average Transformer.

In vehicle mode, Knock Out is a red sports car (maybe a Nissan?) with some odd paint apps and blacked out rims. I thought the lack of paint on the rims was a design decision with Rumble, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe they are just being cheap? We’ll never know.

The windows and headlights are clear plastic, the rest of the details are paint. The paint job on the car is meant to be sleek and sporty but it seems incoherent. At least the paint is sharp.

The rear quarter panels have 5mm ports in which you can attach the weapon, a spear that separates into two parts. More on the spear when we talk about robot mode.

Transformation is both simple and frustrating. The legs are amongst the simplest transformations I’ve seen in a deluxe class toy, but the chest area is needlessly complicated with odd tolerances. The arms fold out in an interesting fashion and the chest flips down. In this process the head is supposed to pop up but there is simply not enough room for it to flip up on its own; it needs to be coaxed.

Robot mode is lanky but it stands well enough. The arms seem rather long. I keep thinking the side windows on the arms should flip in, but they don’t. The parts on the hips do not like to stay plugged in much.

From the side he seems a bit hollow. The instructions don’t make it clear where exactly the chest parts are supposed to rest, and if you look online everyone has their own opinion.

Articulation is decent and relatively standard for a Transformer of this size.

The weapon is really crappy. As I mentioned before it’s a two-part spear that can be attached to either hand. The tolerances are pretty tight and each time you try to get the combined spear in a hand it separates in two.

The solution of course is to put one portion into each hand. It doesn’t make for effective weaponry.

Overall, it’s an average Transformer and probably only for diehard Tansformers fans or completists.