Prime - Knock Out

"Knock Out is oily slick; the ultimate salesman. Everyone knows his weapons are dangerous and prone to malfunction, and his installation methods often leave Decepticons scarred or crippled. But who can resist having quantum disintegration at his fingertips?"
Name: Knock Out
Continuity: Aligned
Toy Line: Prime - RID
Faction: Decepticon
Size Class: Deluxe - Revealer

Strength: 6
Intelligence: 8
Speed: 8
Endurance: 5
Rank: 7
Courage: 4
Fireblast: 5
Skill: 4

Robot Mode

Knock Out employs a masculine robot mode in mostly red, purple and grey, like most (if not all) Deluxe sized Prime figures, Knock Out is missing his insignia, but it's clear he's a Decepticon even without it.

Knock Out's torso is mostly made of his vehicle mode car hood with it being folded ina  way to form a chest-design (with headlights as nipples) and even an abdominal area, his lower torso and groin area are formed from hisfront grill and a piece of his undercarriage. His front wheels hang off his back, to resemble the look of his character model (but not quite right).

Knock Out's head is connected to his upper torso by a small ball-joint based connector that allows his to nod and shake his head by a small amount. His face is silver and is surrounded by a red helmet featuring a spiked design on top, the middle spike also leads onto his face a bit creating a nose for himself. His face features a sculpted smirk for a mouth and features a pair of red painted, sculpted eyes.

Knock Out's arms are created mostly from his vehicle mode doors, roof and windows folded in on themselves creating quite a convincing(ish) solid arm, and also featuring what I call (jokingly) Knock Out's wrist mirrors. His hands are connected by a ball joint that allows them to rotate as needed. The hands are sculpted with sharp fingers that surround a hidden peg-hole for his (or someone else's) weapon to be held in.

Thespiked shoulders are connected to his upper torso by a ball joint connector, which leads to a pivot joint and a hinge creating his elbow, all of this gives his arms quite a lot of articulation, which is prefect for an articulate character like Knock Out.

Knock Out's legs are connected to his groin area by a pair of ball join connectors, his upper legs feature pivot joins near the top, so you can rotate them if needed for poses. His knees are created by simple hinge joints which allow them to bend back enough for the backs of his legs to scrape his bum. The lower legs are formed mostly of the rear of his vehicle mode, with his feet created from this rear bumper section creating the heels whilst he has a small trinagle as the front of the feet, connected to the main part of the leg by a small connector-ball joint combo.

Vehicle Mode

Knock Out's vehicle mode is a red and purple sports car with clear plastic windows, headlights, side windows and four working black wheels. This vehicle mode features several aesthetic details like side mirrors, front grill, license plate area, lights etc.

Knock Out's paint job is fairly flat, but the purple parts seem to feature a faded effect from a silver part at the front, which whilst Knock Out probably wouldn't allow such a defacement of his perfect body in the fiction, for the toy line it looks quite nice.

Knock Out features 2 peg holes on his sides that his Battle Spear (or other weapons) can be slotted into.

Accessories

Knock Out comes with a black "Battle Spear" which can be split into two smaller weapons (it doesn't really work well that way though). This weapon doesn't really like to be placed into Knock Out's hands, except with the small tab on the lower part (see picture at bottom of page).

One positive part of this weapon though is that it can be stored in robot mode very easily on either of the two peg holes on his back. To make it look neater, I tend to have the spear bent at the connecting joint for the two halves and pose it that way.

My Thoughts

Knock Out is a hard one, I personally like him, but I've heard a lot of people say he's not a good figure, this is mostly because of his paint job however, but as you all must know, personal tastes for colourschemes are very subjective to the viewer (much like with artwork in a comic). Another problem people might have with him is that his toy instructions are basically useless, meaning you have to work out how to transform him for yourselves (and the chest formation isn't very clear as to how it's meant to be either), however once you figure it out for yourself, he's a fairly easy figure to deal with though.

My only real issue with this toy is his weapon as it's not that well designed and is very difficult to insert into his hands in an effective pose, and his split spear just looks stupid (so in that case it may be worth getting his Takara version just for the Micron, but nothing else, thanks to that version having lots of hideous holes mounted on him). Another mild issue is that the purple paint job is very sudden, it looks like it was added late in the process, rather than being blended into the red to make it more "natural" looking.

Like I said earlier, the decision to buy this figure depends solely on your own aesthetic standards, if you personally like the look of him with his purple and red paint job, and don't mind spending a while working out the transformation, then go ahead and buy him, otherwise, you might just be happy with skipping over him, or just buying him for the shelf and nothing else.