Masterpiece Prowl Update - Things that should have come with him to start with!

When I originally reviewed the Masterpiece Prowl figure, I did not have the Amazon exclusive launchers to go with him. At the time I did not mind, as he looks great without them and in the cartoon he did not have them.

But when a deal for £12 posted for the pair, popped up - I had to jump. I am really glad I did...

The launchers are designed to mimic the original shoulder launchers that came with the original G1 toy. They have a great likeness, whilst being very subtly different.

They have no springs inside, and are a single molded piece of plastic - so they don't fire

Attaching them to Prowl is easy enough, as you just fold out the already attached launchers, and slide these over. It is a very easy process and the new launchers fit snugly without requiring any force or effort.

They simply slide over the top, and look great.

They do have an element of articulation as a result of being attached to the stock shoulder launchers, and that is that they can move up and down, with a bit of side to side movement.

Pushing them down, echoes his original toy look a bit more I find and it does look good. But they pivoting them upwards goes more to his IDW comic interpretation, and just looks a whole lot better in my opinion.

There is some good detailing to them, mostly lifted from the original toy. The barrel is (I am assuming) chromed silver, and looks suitably nice and shiny. As I said earlier, they don't launch so are decorative purposes only. But as anyone who had the original toys can attest, launching missiles are very easily lost, so perhaps its a good thing that you cannot really lose the missiles to your expensive masterpiece figure, by them randomly firing into parts unknown.

There is really not a whole lot more to say about them, other than they look very good and should have been included with the toy - not just as an exclusive.

They really do add a lot to the figure, and whilst I cannot say they are essential to the toy - the toy does feel like something is missing without them. It seems odd that Takara would go to the lengths of adding things like Sideswipes piledrivers, Red Alerts blue ear things and Soundwaves huge range of accessories, all of which no-one really was expecting - whilst instead opting not to include these as standard when they are such a more iconic character trait.

3rd parties are releasing a plethora of launcher sets for Prowl and Bluestreak, so cheaper versions are more easily available now and with lots more options. One company is putting out a set that actually do fire!

So you have plenty of choice, though I am very happy with the Takara ones myself.

They do attach in car mode, but it looks silly and like the car has rocket pontoons, or tiny rocket wings. I am running out the door to play football, so have not got time to take a photo of that.

But don't worry, you really are not missing anything!

One other thing I did get this week, was a little bit more exciting though...

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