Top 5 Best Movie Bumblebee Toys
Bumblebee has so many movie verse toys out there that making one general Best Bumblebee list including all his incarnations was impossible. So, two lists were done, the best movie toys and everything else. This week we look at the best movie toys, which was a rather hard list to do since so many of his toys are mere improvements from one to the next. Of course, there were plenty that making a top 5 proved more than feasible. Let's get to it!
5. Transformers Dark of the Moon Cyberfire Bumblebee (MurderBee)
First of all, the base mold is pretty good and one of the best deluxe class movie Bumblebee toys we ever got. It's better than any other deluxe we got since (spoilers for the rest of this list) and it was the mold chosen by Takara to commemorate the best of the best for the movie lines (twice even). The Cyberfire redeco brings all that up an extra notch and it being such a striking CyberHellfire deco, especially with the light piping, that he was nicknamed Murder Bee. With such a singular deco, it means that no matter how many Bees they keep releasing it will always have a place in one's collection.
4. Transformers Hunt For The Decepticons Battle Ops Bumblebee (Costco)
Speaking of striking decos, we have this gorgeous gold redeco of the awesome Battle Op Optimus mold (which was released as a literal Masterpiece in Japan). While Bumblebee is a smaller character, him being so present in toylines and marketing means he has a lot of larger toys too and out of all the leader (or larger) sized movie Bee toys, this is the best mold we got. It had cool gimmicks that came with the size such as the ability to change from guardian to warrior mode in robot mode, which would give him different weapons and sound effects. Speaking of sound effects, pressing down on the front left end of the vehicle three times will play the first verse of the original Transformers theme song, and pressing it three more times will play the second verse. Plus he looks just plain awesome, and even better covered in that gold paint.
3. Transformers Human Alliance Revenge of the Fallen Bumblebee
This was the closest we got to a Masterpiece Movie Bumblebee in the right scale until we actually got one. It was even heralded as one of the best toys of the decade and I can see why. The impressive aspect here is that while it has a very accurate robot mode, the car mode has the extra accuracy of having an interior with seats. Even the later Masterpiece toy did away with that idea using the extra available space in car mode to store more robot parts. The fact that you can actually use this toy as a model car that can also seat figures inside is a true achievement in Transformers engineering and really sets it apart from anything that came before or since.
2. Transformers Hunt For The Decepticons Battle Blade Bumblebee
Easily the best deluxe Bumblebee toy and quite possibly the best value you ever got for your money. For the price of a deluxe, you get a toy with a very tall robot mode (so tall, it was repackaged as a voyager later) with integrated weapons and battle mask. Plus both modes looks great with a very accurate vehicle mode. While it is a rather complex toy, it is very solidly built, with tabs connecting well, unlike more annoying releases of movie Bumblebee that came out recently.
1. Transformers Masterpiece Movie Series MPM 03 Bumblebee
For a character that has so many movie toys, it is surprising how few stand out (aside from deco) and are actually good or worthy of a top 5 list. They feel like the transformers equivalent of the Call of Duty franchise where each one is slightly different than the previous one, with minor technical improvements, and little effort is put into making it truly amazing since it will sell regardless. Masterpiece MPM3 Bumblebee truly stands out though. A fully new mold, and the most accurate yet. I especially love how the feet come together and how the entire car shell collapses. I always love when a figure gives a hint of what is actually happening in the film, where the bot's insides are the car and vice-versa. You see where everything goes and that fascinates me. Lots and lots of smart designs here, like the tiny back wings, and well worth its name.
Honourable Mentions: MPM Volkswagen Bumblebee. It's a very good toy and far better than any other Bumblebee toy that came out in 2018, the year he got his own film. You can tell that Hasbro really wanted to give its best output possible, it's just too bad that the CG model they used was so inaccruate. In the years to come, when Hasbro will have released more accurate looking toys, this will always remain a decent, yet expensive, toy that doesn't really represent a specific version of the character well enough (a lot like Legendary Optimus Prime).
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It's Hasbro's fault they end up looking weird together in the HFTD Autobots class photos.
