Prowl (RID)


 * Prowl is an Autobot from the Robots in Disguise continuity family.



Prowl lives life "by the book," and wants to make sure everyone else does too. He's proud to be a police officer and works to maintain discipline both among humans and his fellow Autobots. Prowl usually speaks in a clipped firm manner as he informs all around him of what they have recently done wrong. His strict reliance on the rulebook often hinders him from thinking creatively, and he can also be so impressed by seeing someone else stick firmly to procedure that he won't analyze whether they're actually being helpful.


 * Japanese name: Mach Alert

Robots in Disguise cartoon

 * Voice actor: Wankus (English), Takayuki Kondō (Japanese)

Robots in Disguise



 * Prowl (Deluxe, 2000/2001)
 * Japanese ID number: C-003
 * Accessories: Left & right thrusters, 2 "flame" missiles


 * Robots in Disguise Prowl transforms into a Lamborghini Diablo police highway pursuit vehicle. As with the original Prowl, he is painted in Japanese police ministry colors. Unusually for non-vintage transformers at the time, he has rubber tires over silver vacuum-metalized wheels.


 * In robot mode, Prowl is armed with two pressure-launch missile launchers with two flame-shaped projectiles. These launchers are mounted upon his right arm in robot mode, but can also be mounted on his sirens, to form a sort of jetpack. In vehicle mode, they can be mounted on two pegs located on his spoiler.


 * Early versions of Mach Alert (the Takara release) used an almost completely transparent colorless plastic for its windows and flame missiles, with semi-transparent paint on the flames. Later releases used a darker clear-plastic with brighter, more opaque flame-paint. This version was used by Hasbro for their release, but made the additional change of adding an Autobot faction symbol to his hood.


 * This mold was also used to make Universe Inferno, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker.




 * Side Swipe & Prowl 2 (Basic 2-pack, 2001)
 * Accessories: Rifle


 * Originally an unreleased Generation 2 Go-Bots mold, Prowl transforms into a police car based on the Chevrolet Caprice. He has through-axle construction to allow for super-fast rolling in car mode, and is compatible with many "Hot Wheels" and "Matchbox" racetracks.  Like his fellow "new"-mold teammates, his rifle stores under his car mode.  He was available in a two-pack with Side Swipe.


 * This mold was used to make the Universe version of Generation 1 Prowl and the Universe-original Prowl.


 * Prowl 2 (Tiny Tins, 2001)
 * Accessories: Rifle, carrying tin


 * Prowl 2 was one of several Robots in Disguise toys to be sold as an individual in a Tiny Tins release, with a pocket-sized carrying case. The actual toy is unchanged from the two-pack version.


 * Prowl (Deluxe, 2000/2001)
 * Japanese ID number: C-025
 * Accessories: Left & right thrusters, 2 "flame" missiles


 * Prowl got a US-police-inspired redeco as a "super mode". Now with extensive blue paint across his body and blue-and-red lights on his lightbar (and in his shoulders), Prowl also features English "POLICE" text instead of Japanese, with "MACH ALERT" underneath. The toy retains all of its gimmicks from the first version.


 * The Hasbro and Takara versions are nigh-identical, except that the Hasbro version yet again adds an Autobot symbol to the hood. While this version of the toy was simply called "Prowl" again with no modifier to denote his new "super mode" coloration, in Japan he was called "Super Mach Alert".


 * Super Car Robo 3-Brother Set (Clear Version) (Multi-pack, 2000)
 * Japanese ID number: C-025S (Prowl only)
 * Accessories: Left & right thrusters, 2 "flame" missiles


 * Prowl and his brothers Side Burn and X-Brawn were cast in mostly colorless-clear plastics (some of the unpaintable plastic "structural" bits remained opaque), given much of their normal super-mode deco (Prowl lost his car-mode blue), and sold in an exclusive three-pack. The set was first available at the Toys Land Osaka toy show on September 24th, then again at Super Festival on October 9th, both times for 6000 yen. The set was limited to 1500 pieces total between the two shows.

Universe (2003)

 * Prowl (Deluxe, 2004)
 * Accessories: Left & right thrusters, 2 "flame" missiles, CD


 * The original Prowl toy was redecoed as one of a half-dozen Wal-Mart Universe exclusives put out in 2004. The robot mode is almost completely identical to the original deco. The vehicle mode uses the same base colors and black "Japanese police" lower deco, but all the police markings have been removed. Instead, his doors are adorned with stylized dragon tampographs, his hood has a massive Autobot symbol, a large "1 0 5" crosses the top of his windshield, and random red boxes dot his spoiler and lower portion of the doors. Wow.


 * He also came with an interactive CD-ROM!!! with all sorts of content.

Trivia

 * Prowl's strict, by-the-rulebook persona is in amusing contrast with his English voice actor Wankus's um... profession. Ahem. Well, he doesn't do anything illegal, but some folks probably want it to be.


 * The "Prowl 2" toy is wrapped up in some headache-inducing character ambiguity that has some excessively convoluted thing to do with an offhanded shout-out in the Binaltech story, Car Robots being retroactively brought into the Japanese Generation 1 uber-timeline, and probably the Beast Wars Sourcebook too, and the non-Car-Robots Spy Changers' lack of Hasbro bios.