Bot Reviews: Transformers: Legacy Deluxe Nightprowler

I decided about halfway through collecting Kingdom (and eventually Legacy’s) Beast Wars updates that I was going to stick to the characters who actually appeared on the TV show, for space and budget. So releases like Nightprowler here were something I filed away as a curiosity to look at when I walked by an aisle of action figures. And it turns out I looked at him a lot, because this Wal-Mart exclusive figure, along with fellow exclusive releases Legacy Buzzsaw and Sandstorm *really* didn’t sell, and, at least here in Canada, is still warming shelves in big swarms with his two friends, keeping the new releases away. He’s hit heavy clearance in some places as a result, but not anything local to me, and instead, this one was generously gifted to me (by someone who did find it on heavy clearance).

I can sort of see why Nightprowler and his two wave-mates haven’t been selling, though. All three of these bots are extremely obscure pulls, and maybe wouldn’t interest a casual collector. Buzzsaw was a Beast Wars toyline-only figure from 1996, while Sandstorm was a BotCon 1999 exclusive. And Nightprowler is the most obscure pull: An old, canceled toy, with this new one presumably being made because sometimes, fans love canceled rarities. The original, unreleased Nightprowler was supposed to be a repaint of the original Beast Wars Cheetor figure, released in the early 2000s in the Transformers: Universe line, a Wal-Mart exclusive in a “Halloween Horrorcon” two-pack with a Waspinator repaint. But the store decided they didn’t want it (presumably, they didn’t think it would sell), and so it got axed. And now, decades later, there’s a figure based on it, also not selling. Funny, that.

You’ll notice I haven’t said anything about the character themselves, and that’s because we literally don’t know anything about them. As a canceled figure, the mysterious Nightprowler hasn’t appeared in any stories, at all, save for being briefly mentioned in some Ask Vector Prime Facebook posts. Heck, their Legacy box doesn’t even have one of those QR codes that leads to a short bio. So Nightprowler’s a complete cipher. That being said, I’ve already repurposed him as something very specific: In the 2021 IDW Comics Beast Wars series (an excellent story that was tragically cut short in its prime), one of the mysterious energy-based aliens known as the Vok (a long-time Beast Wars staple), called Pakak, dove into Cheetor’s mind, and challenged him in a dream world made of Cheetor’s memories. He appeared to Cheetor as a solid blue duplicate of him, and while this figure isn’t solid blue, it’s close enough for me to squint-test it into a version of that character.

The Vok have never had any action figure representation ever, anyway. Wow, that’s a lot of words to introduce a figure that’s a repaint of something I’ve already reviewed, eh? By the way, Cheetor’s here, Shadow Panther’s here, and I’ll try not to retread too much ground. The rest will hopefully be more succinct.

Robot Mode

Thanks to the desire to have a realistically proportioned Cheetah mode, Nightprowler makes for a thin, lanky robot, with a skinny torso, and oddly long shoulders.

Like I said back when I reviewed Cheetor, it’s funny how nearly all of the details of his tv show design are here, just a bit stretched and warped. On Cheetor, this made him read like an agile runner, and on his first repaint, Shadow Panther, this made him look like a creepy, lanky stalking cryptid. On Nightprowler, it’s somewhere in the middle, thanks to the strange vibes of the color scheme. He looks like he looms, menacingly.

And the colors are the point here, so let’s get right to them. In person, he’s a lot less blue than I thought. In fact, his main colors are actually light gray, in two different shades, providing a bit of contrast, thanks to the darker shade being used on their hands, upper arms, knees, and other places. Beyond that, he has a couple shades of extremely bright, mustardy yellow, and some black spots.

Uptop, I get a kick out of the yellow helmet highlighting just how much Cheetor straight up had Bumblebee’s horns. Beneath the helmet, he’s got a darker, silvery face and green eyes, and the deco really highlights how serious and determined his expression is, in a way that makes him feel less like a youth, and more like an enigmatic warrior here to take care of business.

The most interesting bit of deco on him is a tiny Autobot symbol on his helmet’s crest, though, marking him as not being a part of the Beast Wars setting’s traditional Maximal versus Predacon conflict, but a part of the multiversal Transformers Universe storyline, which flattened everyone’s factions into the traditional Bots and Cons.

I’d rather they just gave him a Maximal insignia, though, considering the original figure didn’t have anything there. It’s an odd set of colors overall, befitting how the Transformers Universe line from which it was supposed to originate would have the strangest, most random decos on its figures, and I’m not sure what they were going for. Given that Nightprowler was supposed to be a “Halloween Horrorcon,” I’m guessing “spooky?”

It’s easy to see them as a ghost, or zombie, or something supernatural (or as a Vok projection).

No matter what colors it’s in, the Cheetor tooling’s a good one, and all the essential goodness is still here, with a ton of articulation, including wrists, ankles, all those nice bonuses. And though the feet are fairly tiny, they can, remarkably, stay standing really well.

The accessory is the same as previous releases, a gray axe, on the end of a tail-whip, which, like I said back when I reviewed Cheetor, is a bit oddly-shaped, with a bend in the tail that makes it go too far back for striking, unless you flip it backwards, and have him use it in an upswinging motion.

Like with Shadow Panther, it winds up giving him creepy vibes, though, so it feels like a plus here.

Transformation

The Cheetor tooling’s got a real good transformation, and it’s preserved here. It’s easy to do, feels good, and in a design quirk I really dig, transforms the same way the character model did on the show. And on Nightprowler, or at least my copy of him, there’s even been an improvement: That tiny tab on the back of the beast mode head that’s doomed to snap off seems to have been thickened a bit, and is staying in place this time around.

It was never a big deal if it did come off, since it wasn’t needed for stability, but the thought counts.

Beast Mode

For a long time, I was like, oh, this is a made up fake grey big cat, and then I just checked the Transformers Wiki, only to find that he changes into a snow leopard. Looking at pictures of them…yeah, yeah, he’s a snow leopard. Though regardless, my eyes still read him as some kind of Ghost Cheetah.

For one thing, the very well-done sculpt is still extremely Cheetah-like, lean and sleek. But there’s also the fact that the colors are a lot more balanced, being mostly solid light gray, with black spots.

The bits of dark gray are now located on his paws, and around his, uh, pelvic zone. The biggest thing that makes this feel like some kind of ghost or spirit to me is his eyes, which are solid unbroken orange against the gray.

Like the other two decos of this tooling, though, there is a slight problem in that bits of yellow still pop out around his shoulders.

Outside of that, he’s got the same great articulation as Cheetor, and the same generally solid construction.

Overall

I feel sympathetic for this ghostly cat, haunting the shelves of Walmarts long past the point where he should have shuffled off from the realm of retail. It’s not really his fault. The Cheetor tooling was one of Kingdom’s highlights for me (it made that years best-of list!), and all of the good aspects of it are preserved here, along with a little tiny fixed tab. And it’s based on an unreleased item, something fans usually eat up. And his funky colors aren’t even bad, just a bit unusual.

But at the same time, I can see why people didn’t pick this guy up. He’s the least visually interesting out of all these repaints, with a color scheme that’s not really odd enough to draw the eye (like Generation 2), he’s got a lack of any sense of character, thanks the modern practice of not bothering to give characters bios, and generally, is just too obscure of a reference to click with most people. That, and it’s clear that the original was canceled because this exact same situation would have happened back then.

Still, he’s not bad at all, and if you’ve got an interest in what he’s doing, or want to headcanon him into a ghost, or zombie, or mysterious cool warrior, or a Vok messenger in Cheetor’s shape, then there’s a good figure in there for you. And you have plenty of time to decide, he’s really easy to find, and maybe even on sale.

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