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Welcome to my ‘old’ Bumblebee review. This version of Bumblebee transforms into a black-and-yellow 1976 Chevrolet Camaro, with ‘battle damage’. Basically, battle damage translates to ‘black marks’.
His vehicle mode is nice, and unusual. Other deluxe sized car-Transformers, for example Swindle or Stockade, tend to have transparent plastic windows. Bumblebee’s are painted dark blue. The headlights on this figure are painted silver, and it has painted-on rear lights, and wing mirrors. No, the wing mirrors are not painted-on, that would be stupid.
On the underside of the car, you can see the back of Bumblebee’s head, if you’ve not yet transformed him, and his crotch, which has a licence plate, the only one on the car.
According to the transformation instructions, ‘Bee’s arms, or something, are supposed to be in the centre of the car, but on the actual figure, there’s nothing there. Curious. At first I thought my figure was faulty, but he doesn’t appear to be missing anything. His first of two Automorph features you’ll notice is the button on his bonnet (yes, I’m British. I don’t say ‘hood’). This will flip his bonnet down. According to the Transformers Wikia, my primary source of information, folding the bonnet down manually will break the Automorph, and I’m not going to try it.
The other one is on his feet, where his feet fold out when you move the rear windows outwards. Our buddy BB is armed with a pair of missile launchers, that actually fire missiles. They can be held in both hands, or on his shoulders.
In a word, his robot mode is….doofy. He leans forward slightly, and that’s unavoidable, since it’s down to the design of the back. His feet are creepy, too. This robot is actually quite detailed, and well-articulated, except for his feet, they can’t rotate. The ‘scout’ is beefy. There’s no evidence of agility in this fella at all.
Most movie toys have their faction symbol in red or purple, respectively, but Bumblebee’s Autobot one is silver. One of the only flaws I can find is the doors and windscreen. They look like they’ve got a neat little home to go to, but I can’t find it, so from behind he looks rather idiotic. They bother to sculpt detail on the insides of the door, but they make all the windows one way. Where the outside is blue…the inside is…err…yellow.
Wow, get your priorities right, Hasbro. I’ll rate Bumbles an 8/10. Slight problems with detailing, but otherwise a nice lookin’ figure.
