Tonight, in a very special Blossom #Deskbot

Transformers Collaborative mashes popular film and TV properties into the Transformers brand. We've had Ghostbusters (Ectotron), Back to the Future (Gigawatt), X-Men (X-panse) and even Stranger Things (Code Red). Now it's the turn of KNIGHT RIDER!

If you're going to make a popular franchise vehicle into a robot the Knight Industries Two Thousand (K.I.T.T) is probably everyone's natural first choice: he talked, he drove himself...clearly a Robot in Disguise!

Agent Knight here is the culmination of every 80s child's most fervent wish.

Alt Mode
The Pontiac Firebird Trans Am is sex on wheels, as it always has been. That pure black paint job with the wickedly iconic light-strip up front is primo design. And Agent here is a beautiful rendition of it. The paint finish is just the right mix of gloss vs matt and amazingly feels like silk to the fingertip. Just a delight from every angle.

What makes this extra special is the first-time appearance in Collaborative of an actual sound and light chip! Yes, the light-strip works exactly as you want it to! And KITT speaks in that classic suave yet slightly nerdy 'British' tone.

And the bonnet headlights can be pulled up. Nice to have but not world shaking.

Transformation.
Like Code Red he's a tall boy (Voyager class) with a very simple Transformation. I suspect this is Hasbro realising that maybe casual fans are picking these toys up as well as the hard-core TF Nerds, so keeping the number of conversion steps down helps (as does sticking to simpler molds). It's yer basic car to robot a la Siege Sideswipe and even shades of previous entry, Gigawatt, up-scaled and fairly intuitive. No surprises or anything really clever, just solidly done with nice, stiff joints.

Robot Mode...is a bit flat and generic, sadly. The head-sculpt opts for an almost human shaped head and face with visor look we've seen countless times before with only a couple of silver "mutton chop" details either side giving it any character. Legs and waist are blue representing The Hoff's fabled denim from the show though legs are black from the knees down, so...thigh-high boots? Some red paint picks out detail on the shins but other than that it's a weirdly basic sculpt after years of ultra-detailed mainline releases. It's better than the truly terrible Top Gun release but I dunno, a release this special feels like it should have wowed in both modes.

Accessories Agent Knight comes with two weapons, a generic rifle and pistol, and one very cool addition - a piece that slots into his wrist representing Michael Knight's cool wrist watch from the show, with which he used to talk to K.I.T.T while on-foot.

I'm really pleased I bought it; it's solid fun with that car mode bringing all the nostalgia flooding back. But there's not much reason to put it in robot mode and that's a bit of a missed opportunity.

#Transformers #KnightRider #Collaborative #AgentKnight #Photoygraphy