The newest addition to the Minimates vehicle line is the popular 80′s property, Knight Rider! We review the Knight Industries Two Thousand better known as KITT. Does this Minimate vehicle Turbo Boost into our collections or does it suffer a system malfunction?
Like the other vehicles in the Minimates lines, KITT is blister carded with the Michael Knight Minimate displayed outside of the card. The back of the card has a nice photo of the toys and a small blurb about Michael & KITT. (Excuse the already opened package picture, I was too excited to remember to take a picture first)
Let’s start off with the Michael Knight figure, He’s got all the basic minimate articulation and construction. Unlike most Minimates, Michael has the cowboy boot shaped feet that don’t have holes in the bottom of them so he’s not compatable with any building blocks. He has the classic black jacket over red shirt with bluejeans look.
One nifty detail is the sculpted communicator watch Michael uses to talk to KITT
The figure is great in it’s own right. It resembles David Hasselhoff in this iconic role and is a great addition to any minimate or Knight Rider collection, but the figure is a small portion of the whole package so let’s move on to the car….K.I.T.T.
Kitt has the same slightly squished look that all of the Minimates vehicles have, it’s got a nice gloss black paint job with a flat tan interior. Both doors open and the wheels are free rolling wheels. While many of the details inside and out are made with stickers, I’m happy to report that KITT’s red hood scanner is an actual piece of plastic rather than a paint or sticker detail.
On the back there are stickers for the license plate and the tail lights. KITT comes with a clear plastic plate that plugs into the back of the car to cover the tail lights sticker after you apply it. This adds a tiny bit of realism and cool factor to the toy.
Like previous vehicles, the bottom of KITT also has a bunch of sculpted details that you’d expect to see on a car.
The interior looks pretty faithful to the show using stickers for most of the dash instruments. KITT’s voice modulator is a sculpted piece. This is really the only gripe I have about the whole toy and that’s just because it is very difficult to get those stickers on. With the Back to the Future Time Machines, I would unscrew the bottom of the car to get to the dash easier, due to KITT’s construction, that’s fairly impossible (The nose cone is a seperate piece glued to the upper and lower halves of the car) But with a patient and steady hand implementing toothpicks and small knife blades, one can get the stickers on after many attempts and a few minutes.
Michael fits in the car snugly, it’s a little tight getting his head to clear the door frame but once he’s in there, he fits fine. He looks great both in and out of the car just like David Hasselhoff should.
I also wanted to mention that while I said earlier that KITT is squished like the other minimate vehicles, he’s not as squished as the Back to the Future Time Machine. In fact KITT looks so sporty next to the Time Machine that it looks like Marty is driving a boxy hatchback type of car instead of a Delorean.
KITT with Michael Knight is currently at Toys R Us for a grand total of $9.99. So the big question would be, is it worth the price?
YES!
$10 is a steal for this toy. Fans of the show will love it, it has a coolness factor and play value that should grab casual or even non-fans of Knight Rider (though I would have liked some way of having the scanner light up or show some movement) and the design has improved over previous Minimates vehicles.
