The Energon Pub

Mykltron wrote:He is still too fat to be a convincing and stealthy spy.

He's a specialist...he's the go-to spy for when someone needs an infiltration agent in a Mayer lemon orchard.



Just try to choose which one is the real Bumble!

Wow, you know what? I really had a hard time spotting him in there!

Mykltron wrote:
Diem, I don't understand why you say the arm articulation isn't very good - it seems really good to me, and isn't hindered by the wings in any way. Was it because you hadn't transformed him properly?

It really depends on how you have his wings. If you have them flung back Grimlock style they don't really get in the way but if you have them tighter to the body then there's problems. Also, his rear-bumper/arm-plates catch his tyres annoyingly. Admittedly you can generally work around it by rotating the arm or the plate, but it's vexing. Generally I was comparing him to the other Alternitys, and by that token he suffers badly. They, despite their huge shoulders suffer no problems in the way of clipping and can rotate at the shoulder by a full 360. That's the minimum I expect from a premium price figure like this.

Diem wrote:

Mykltron wrote:
Diem, I don't understand why you say the arm articulation isn't very good - it seems really good to me, and isn't hindered by the wings in any way. Was it because you hadn't transformed him properly?

It really depends on how you have his wings. If you have them flung back Grimlock style they don't really get in the way but if you have them tighter to the body then there's problems. Also, his rear-bumper/arm-plates catch his tyres annoyingly. Admittedly you can generally work around it by rotating the arm or the plate, but it's vexing. Generally I was comparing him to the other Alternitys, and by that token he suffers badly. They, despite their huge shoulders suffer no problems in the way of clipping and can rotate at the shoulder by a full 360. That's the minimum I expect from a premium price figure like this.

You don't need to have the wings thrown all the way back to stay out of the way of the shoulders. I like to keep them fairly close to the body (as pushing them back seems to put pressure on the door hinge) and I like to pose my figures in grandiose and epic poses.

The tyres are on the front, the plates are on the back. What on earth are you doing that makes them bind?

Why would you need to rotate the arms 360? Can your arms do that? Sure, you can pull your arms back but so can can BB/CJ.

Hope the tone of this doesn't read like I'm laying in to you - I'm just trying to discuss the guy with you!

Mykltron wrote:

The tyres are on the front, the plates are on the back. What on earth are you doing that makes them bind?

I know the instructions say to put the plates on the back of his arms, but doing that makes him incapable of straightening his arms! That doesn't seem terribly helpful for a pistol-wielder. Of course rotating his arms so that the plates are on the sides causes the tyre problems. It's a lose-lose situation!

Hope the tone of this doesn't read like I'm laying in to you - I'm just trying to discuss the guy with you!

No worries! I'd be the first to admit that this review was a little more...hasty...compared to my others. Truth be told, I didn't think so many people would be buying this figure!

Convotron wrote:

Mykltron wrote:He is still too fat to be a convincing and stealthy spy.

He's a specialist...he's the go-to spy for when someone needs an infiltration agent in a Mayer lemon orchard.



Just try to choose which one is the real Bumble!

Mykltron wrote:Wow, you know what? I really had a hard time spotting him in there!

lol, you guys...that literally made me laugh out loud.

My BB came in the mail yesterday. Pure love. I mean, the only complaint I really have now is the shade of yellow isn't the same as all the other BBs. Heh, that's it. I guess maybe his feet take a bit of fiddling before I can balance him for some reason as well. I'm amazed how much he's grown on me since the first detailed pictures surfaced. Love the little guns. I also like how his transformation is pretty different from the previous Alternity molds. Overall, he looks like a great update of Bumblebee, and I think I like him even more than the Classics version. He's going with my Alts though.

Oh, sad note, they forgot the yellow paint app on the top of his right front door.

Also, if you haven't bought him by now, I will reiterate what other people have probably said: Be extra careful when sliding his windshield up while pulling out the legs. You have to make sure the steering wheel and dash go up over the seats, and not jammed under them on the floor. Almost got it jammed twice now, the first time I didn't know, the second I forgot.

kirbenvost wrote:lol, you guys...that literally made me laugh out loud.

Mission accomplished.

kirbenvost wrote:My BB came in the mail yesterday. Pure love. I mean, the only complaint I really have now is the shade of yellow isn't the same as all the other BBs. Heh, that's it. I guess maybe his feet take a bit of fiddling before I can balance him for some reason as well. I'm amazed how much he's grown on me since the first detailed pictures surfaced. Love the little guns. I also like how his transformation is pretty different from the previous Alternity molds. Overall, he looks like a great update of Bumblebee, and I think I like him even more than the Classics version. He's going with my Alts though.

Oh, sad note, they forgot the yellow paint app on the top of his right front door.

Also, if you haven't bought him by now, I will reiterate what other people have probably said: Be extra careful when sliding his windshield up while pulling out the legs. You have to make sure the steering wheel and dash go up over the seats, and not jammed under them on the floor. Almost got it jammed twice now, the first time I didn't know, the second I forgot.

It's good to see that this figure has a different transformation than Convoy and Megatron, which had fairly similar transformation layouts. I'll have to be wary of the windshield portion of transformation...when I eventually buy the figure.

Diem wrote:I know the instructions say to put the plates on the back of his arms, but doing that makes him incapable of straightening his arms!

I've been looking at this and I don't think it's a problem. The plates are on ball joints. You can straighten his arms completely but you may need to put the plates at a slight angle to the arms, say 15°. Try it, if you can't figure it out ask me for a pick.

Convotron wrote:

kirbenvost wrote:lol, you guys...that literally made me laugh out loud.

Mission accomplished.

kirbenvost wrote:Also, if you haven't bought him by now, I will reiterate what other people have probably said: Be extra careful when sliding his windshield up while pulling out the legs. You have to make sure the steering wheel and dash go up over the seats, and not jammed under them on the floor. Almost got it jammed twice now, the first time I didn't know, the second I forgot.

I hadn't noticed that part, but I'd say make sure the hood/bonnet and windshield are close to the body when sliding. If they're too far from the body they get stuck.

Hey, newbie to the forum, ancient TF fan (and lurker). Very much enjoyed reading these reviews, and just wanted to chime in with a couple of things about this figure.

I think it's a superb figure (although I certainly understand the reservations some others have), and about as good a version of G1 Bumblebee as I could have hoped for, all things considered. A couple of things I particularly like: The markings on the thighs and knee pads are a nice homage to the original G1 figure. The upper arms, although mostly hidden by the wheels, have bands around them in accordance with the G1 cartoon/comic version of BB. The head sculpt is in my opinion the best yet of BB, and the Classics head sculpt, as much as I liked it before, looks clumsy and gurning by comparison. The Alternity head is a good mish-mash of features from different iterations of Bumblebee, too. And the car mode I think was a good choice in the absence of a licence from VW (which still riles me), as the Swift is a good match for the character.

The main reason for my post, though, was to add another caution on top of the warning about the steering wheel getting trapped. That is definitely an issue - I managed to jam it good and proper the second time I transformed him, and it took a while to unjam (the steering wheel now has a couple of stress marks where it had to bend back to be released). It's easy enough to avoid once you're aware of it, and now whenever I transform him, once the legs are done I open the front door to check the dash is pushed up before sliding the legs down. Given that not everyone seems to have this issue, I am wondering whether it is down to how loose the dash hinge is - on mine it's quite loose so the dash will drop down into the wrong place quite easily.

But one other area to be wary of which hasn't been mentioned is the spoiler. I'm probably just particularly clumsy and careless, but it's worth mentioning anyway. You have to open the boot (trunk) to transform him, and I had got in the habit of pulling or pushing on the spoiler to move the boot out or in as that's the easiest way. This turned out to be a bad idea, though, because after a couple of weeks of transformations the accumulated stress on the rather thin plastic spoiler caused it to snap in the centre. Fortunately it was a clean break and a dab of superglue sorted it (and as it lines up perfectly with the centre seam of the roof it doesn't look too bad), but I thought it was worth mentioning that you might want to avoid pulling on the spoiler too much when opening the boot or transforming him.

Thanks for the heads up, Ambitron.

Yeah Mykltron, the arm plates come back a little. I guess his arm articulation isn't bad. It just annoyed me at first.

ambitron wrote:Hey, newbie to the forum, ancient TF fan (and lurker). Very much enjoyed reading these reviews, and just wanted to chime in with a couple of things about this figure.

I think it's a superb figure (although I certainly understand the reservations some others have), and about as good a version of G1 Bumblebee as I could have hoped for, all things considered. A couple of things I particularly like: The markings on the thighs and knee pads are a nice homage to the original G1 figure. The upper arms, although mostly hidden by the wheels, have bands around them in accordance with the G1 cartoon/comic version of BB. The head sculpt is in my opinion the best yet of BB, and the Classics head sculpt, as much as I liked it before, looks clumsy and gurning by comparison. The Alternity head is a good mish-mash of features from different iterations of Bumblebee, too. And the car mode I think was a good choice in the absence of a licence from VW (which still riles me), as the Swift is a good match for the character.

The main reason for my post, though, was to add another caution on top of the warning about the steering wheel getting trapped. That is definitely an issue - I managed to jam it good and proper the second time I transformed him, and it took a while to unjam (the steering wheel now has a couple of stress marks where it had to bend back to be released). It's easy enough to avoid once you're aware of it, and now whenever I transform him, once the legs are done I open the front door to check the dash is pushed up before sliding the legs down. Given that not everyone seems to have this issue, I am wondering whether it is down to how loose the dash hinge is - on mine it's quite loose so the dash will drop down into the wrong place quite easily.

But one other area to be wary of which hasn't been mentioned is the spoiler. I'm probably just particularly clumsy and careless, but it's worth mentioning anyway. You have to open the boot (trunk) to transform him, and I had got in the habit of pulling or pushing on the spoiler to move the boot out or in as that's the easiest way. This turned out to be a bad idea, though, because after a couple of weeks of transformations the accumulated stress on the rather thin plastic spoiler caused it to snap in the centre. Fortunately it was a clean break and a dab of superglue sorted it (and as it lines up perfectly with the centre seam of the roof it doesn't look too bad), but I thought it was worth mentioning that you might want to avoid pulling on the spoiler too much when opening the boot or transforming him.

Oh no! Sorry to hear about your spoiler. I did try that the first time but realized it's pretty thin plastic and I didn't want to break it, so I try to pry from the bottom of the door. And yes my dashboard assembly is quite loose as well, so it's very easy for it to fall down and get jammed under the seats. I also open the door to hold it up while I pull the legs.

One more thing, I really agree with what you said about how he looks, especially in comparison with Classics Bumblebee. Classics BB looks so cartoony in comparison, which may not be so bad, but I definitely like Alternity more.

Oh yeah, and welcome to Seibertron! I'll leave the next part to someone else...

ambitron wrote:but I thought it was worth mentioning that you might want to avoid pulling on the spoiler too much when opening the boot or transforming him.

Pulling from the bottom of the door is best but how do you do that if you don't have long nails? I'm a classical guitarist so that part is fine for me! If you pull up the 'wings' (where the back set of doors are) it's really easy to lift up the trunk/boot door from the sides.

kirbenvost wrote:Oh yeah, and welcome to Seibertron! I'll leave the next part to someone else...

Right, here goes:
SEIBERTRON CONTAINS BEER no that's not it, something about nuts... SEIBERTRON CONTAINS BEERNUTS no, hang on, I'll get it. NEW GUY BUYS THE NUTS? NEW GUY HAS NUTS?

SEIBERTRON CONTAINS NUTS!
NEW GUY BUYS THE BEER!

Phew, I got there in the end!