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Just bought Samurai Armor Prowl. I looked through the package and saw the removable hubcaps, figured they were still the fold-out weapon ones.

BUT THEY'RE NOT.

No, instead of giving us Prowl's blades, they went to the expense of molding an entirely new one-piece component to insert in there that only looks like it folds out.

So if this is a deal-breaker for you, you should skip him. In the meantime, somebody at Hasbro NEEDS to get kicked in the junk. HARD. scream

They don't usually remove combo gimmicks. Movie branded Wingblade combines with him just fine.


Back on the subject of Samurai Prowl, you're also going to want to have some superglue on hand to tack down the sections of the armor that clip it to his lower back.

Currently, I think if I can get the false blade component out of there I can cut it into something resembling its original pieces. It won't have the gears because those have been omitted, but I think I can do the same thing with a silicon o-ring in the center.

Fair enough.

The sidecar is fairly solidly built, except for the clip sections on the back. The way the car is built, there's two squarish pegs on the bottom corners, and there's housings that slip over these with the bits that actually hold the car to his lower back. The second time I removed the car from his back I found out the hard way that these clips aren't actually secured in any way, and I almost lost one when it went flying off. You'll want to superglue these suckers down.

Also, on mine at least, one of the hip armor sections tends to like to slide off its mounting when you rotate it into place. I think that can be easily remedied, there just seems to be too little space in the mounting to allow it to freely swivel as the other one does. If I shave the tiniest bit from the inside, it should be fine.

Another curious thing to note, not only do the early pics of the toy shown at the top of the instructions show gears inside the hubcaps, they also show the sidecar wheel splitting into a sword and shield. But the actual sidecar wheel is screwed together, and only shown as a sword in the instructions. Methinks I shall have to do some tinkering to see if I can restore this functionality.

Looking again at these prelim pics, I'm ever more cheezed off. The hubcap blades are black, not gold as they would have been if they'd just slapped the old Prowl's on. Which means at some point they'd actually had working hubcap blades intended for Samurai Prowl, and cast in test shot form. Which means they really went out of their way at some point in the middle of the process to specifically mold a dummy blade component for the sole purpose of removing this function.

And if you're worried about Leo Prime's faction symbol I'd find some kind of clear-coat to put over it. But then again, without the sound gimmick, the mouth gimmick's kinda worthless anyway.

I had a problem putting on Prowl's Armor the fist time, but once I got the hang of it I haven't had the problem again. As for his weapons, I'm waiting for the Stasis Cuffs from the newest accessory set from Unicron.com to give him.

I took the screw out of the hub, and it looks like I can just cut a flat plastic disc to fit on the axle of the wheel/shield half, and cut a slot in it to fit over the wrist mount tab. The axle already has a tab to prevent twisting when fitted to the inner hub half, just cut the disc to fit this and it'll be nice and solid.

After that, it should be fairly simple to cut the existing slot on the sword half all the way through so it can mount on the inside. This should restore the functionality. The two halves hold well together without the screw.

It's really so simple that anyone can do it. I just need to find a sheet of plastic of the proper texture. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the craft store we go!

Star gimmick? What's that?