New Galleries: Masterpiece MP-21 Bumblebee with Exo-Suit Daniel Witwicky

Never realized how big Bug Bite is.

Mindmaster wrote:

Nice one!

Hasui said that the Witwicky in the exosuit is Spike (スパイク.)

Hasui said that the Witwicky in the exosuit is Spike (スパイク.)

I think they dropped the ball on this. I'm assuming the intention was to have this be Spike. That would make the most sense since Bumblebee and Spike were always together in g1 and the animated movie. But the face and hair sculpt sure looks like Daniel plus the image used in the instructions is 100% Daniel. Someone can say Spike all they want but it certainly looks like daniel. If hasui is the designer someone should tell me if he wanted that to be spike they should've done a better job with the head sculpt, called the product "Spike Witwicky Exo-Suit Ver." And used an image of Spike in Exo suit from Headmasters (I'm assuming they don't have rights to usage of imagery from animated film for some reason).

If the instructions or box specifically call the product Spike in Japanese, I'll change it but if it's something from Twitter it stays how it is.

Seibertron wrote:

Hasui said that the Witwicky in the exosuit is Spike (スパイク.)

I think they dropped the ball on this. I'm assuming the intention was to have this be Spike. That would make the most sense since Bumblebee and Spike were always together in g1 and the animated movie. But the face and hair sculpt sure looks like Daniel plus the image used in the instructions is 100% Daniel. Someone can say Spike all they want but it certainly looks like daniel. If hasui is the designer someone should tell me if he wanted that to be spike they should've done a better job with the head sculpt, called the product "Spike Witwicky Exo-Suit Ver." And used an image of Spike in Exo suit from Headmasters (I'm assuming they don't have rights to usage of imagery from animated film for some reason).

If the instructions or box specifically call the product Spike in Japanese, I'll change it but if it's something from Twitter it stays how it is.

Diem posted this in the MP-21 Bumble thread:

Diem wrote:Also officially the figure that comes with Bee is Spike.

The above pic is a shot of the back of the box.



エクセルスートのスパイクも変形。 = "Ekuseru Suuto no Supaiku mo henkei." = "Spike's Excel Suit also transforms."

Though, one thing puzzles me:

Seibertron wrote:(I'm assuming they don't have rights to usage of imagery from animated film for some reason)

Why would they not?

While I agree that they've made it pretty clear from the start that this is Spike, and it makes way more sense for it to be Spike, given the two being onscreen together as such, I'd be willing to make a bet that this exo-suit will be back, unchanged, with MP Wheelie or Arcee.

a most excellent looking bee

Sabrblade wrote:Though, one thing puzzles me:

Seibertron wrote:(I'm assuming they don't have rights to usage of imagery from animated film for some reason)

Why would they not?

It seems like imagery from the Animated film is rarely used in the past few years, specifically since Paramount obtained rights to it. In the US, that's because Paramount owns the rights to it currently so they could block it from being released because they apparently felt that it would confuse the marketplace with the live action movies (doesn't make any sense to me). I think the Australian Madman Blu-Ray release was the last time that it was available so I wonder if it has now been somehow restricted worldwide. My speculation could be running wild here ... just something I've noticed.

I changed the gallery to Spike but I still stand by my opinion of it. The sideburns and facial proportions are that of Daniel and not Spike. Daniel has the smaller triangle sideburns like this toy has whereas Spike has the longer rectangle sideburns that go the length of his ears. Also, the face is round like the boy Daniel instead of a more "chisled"/longer adult face like adult Spike has. They can call it Spike all they want, but that's Daniel's face/head (and the instructions seem to back this up as well with the picture of Daniel in it and a picture of Spike nowhere to be seen).

Sabrblade wrote:

エクセルスートのスパイクも変形。 = "Ekuseru Suuto no Supaiku mo henkei." = "Spike's Excel Suit also transforms."

Ah. Good catch. That, plus the fact that shots of Magnus's packaging state that he's coming with a figure of Daniel. This Exo-Suit is Spike, Daniel comes with Magnus and younger Spike came with MP-10, so all we're missing is a Carly and a Chip Chase.

EDIT: Here we go.

Could someone please identify the larger bright yellow "bee" in the comparison pics that is neither the MP or the G1? Is it third-party? Thanks.

procyon wrote:Could someone please identify the larger bright yellow "bee" in the comparison pics that is neither the MP or the G1? Is it third-party? Thanks.

That's Bug Bite from Tonka's Gobots. He's a so-called Super Gobot, larger than normal Gobots, but his transformation is a standard one used by half of the Supers. Thanks to Hasbro buying out Tonka in the 1990's, the Bug Bite character could be used for BotCon 2007 as a white repaint of Classics Bumblebee, based on one of e-Hobby's G1 Gobots:



By the by, pretty interesting that Gobots Bug Bite is practically the same size as MP Bumble in vehicle mode.

Seibertron wrote:It seems like imagery from the Animated film is rarely used in the past few years, specifically since Paramount obtained rights to it. In the US, that's because Paramount owns the rights to it currently so they could block it from being released because they apparently felt that it would confuse the marketplace with the live action movies (doesn't make any sense to me). I think the Australian Madman Blu-Ray release was the last time that it was available so I wonder if it has now been somehow restricted worldwide. My speculation could be running wild here ... just something I've noticed.

Would Paramount's hold in the movie in the U.S. extend to Japanese markets as well, though? To my understanding (though it could be wrong), ownership rights of American material mightn't affect those in foreign markets that already have their own versions of the material. Paramount might be keeping the American version of the movie out of the American market, but what's to stop Toei from putting out a new domestic (for Japan) DVD release of the Japanese audio version of the movie that neither Hasbro nor Paramount ought to have any ownership of? If Toei wanted to, that is. Would Paramount step in and object to a foreign release that would otherwise ignore the English-language markets that Paramount's been trying to keep that movie out of?

Seibertron wrote:I changed the gallery to Spike but I still stand by my opinion of it. The sideburns and facial proportions are that of Daniel and not Spike. Daniel has the smaller triangle sideburns like this toy has whereas Spike has the longer rectangle sideburns that go the length of his ears. Also, the face is round like the boy Daniel instead of a more "chisled"/longer adult face like adult Spike has. They can call it Spike all they want, but that's Daniel's face/head (and the instructions seem to back this up as well with the picture of Daniel in it and a picture of Spike nowhere to be seen).

Maybe someone goofed up and based it on the wrong visual reference. They might have used that The Headmasters screengrab of Daniel in the transformed Exo-Suit that we see in the instructions and mistook it for Spike. Who knows. *shrug*

Autobot032 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

エクセルスートのスパイクも変形。 = "Ekuseru Suuto no Supaiku mo henkei." = "Spike's Excel Suit also transforms."

Ah. Good catch. That, plus the fact that shots of Magnus's packaging state that he's coming with a figure of Daniel. This Exo-Suit is Spike, Daniel comes with Magnus and younger Spike came with MP-10, so all we're missing is a Carly and a Chip Chase.

EDIT: Here we go.

The Daniel here looks just like the Spike above, so confusing. I wish the figures were larger!

The should be a 3rd party that should be able to make a line of MP human figures that scale up with the robot modes. Whom to send proposals to.

539

Agent-539 wrote:The should be a 3rd party that should be able to make a line of MP human figures that scale up with the robot modes. Whom to send proposals to.

539

One company already made Spike and Sparkplug to go with MP-10. Dr. Wu, I think?

Sabrblade wrote:

Seibertron wrote:I changed the gallery to Spike but I still stand by my opinion of it. The sideburns and facial proportions are that of Daniel and not Spike. Daniel has the smaller triangle sideburns like this toy has whereas Spike has the longer rectangle sideburns that go the length of his ears. Also, the face is round like the boy Daniel instead of a more "chisled"/longer adult face like adult Spike has. They can call it Spike all they want, but that's Daniel's face/head (and the instructions seem to back this up as well with the picture of Daniel in it and a picture of Spike nowhere to be seen).

Maybe someone goofed up and based it on the wrong visual reference. They might have used that The Headmasters screengrab of Daniel in the transformed Exo-Suit that we see in the instructions and mistook it for Spike. Who knows. *shrug*

I'm switching it back to Daniel. The toy's head is clearly Daniel. The line-art in the Masterpiece book that came out a few months back is Daniel as well. The prototype in that book appears to have the head of Spike oddly. I'll post scans in a few minutes so you guys can see the difference in Spike and Daniel's heads in the exo-suit.

The guys over at the Wiki also seem to agree: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Bumblebee_(G1)/toys#Masterpiece

Seibertron wrote:

Oy vey. Then someone at Takara really did goof up since the packaging does acknowledge it as Spike, as スパイク is how one writes "Spike" in Katakana (unless the packaging just meant that the Exosuit belonged to Spike even though it's Daniel inside it). "Daniel" would be ダニエル. But... yeah, it is very much Daniel.

Only thing I can guess is that Hasui might have planned for it to be Spike, but somewhere along the way somebody else didn't get that exact memo, got working on the Exosuit, remembered that Daniel was seen in it more than his father was, thought that's who it was supposed to be, and made Daniel instead.

Though, this does raise the question of whether they'll try again with giving us an actual Spike from this toy in some later release. Maybe either with a variant release of Bumble or with a completely different figure.

Seibertron wrote:I'm switching it back to Daniel. The toy's head is clearly Daniel. The line-art in the Masterpiece book that came out a few months back is Daniel as well. The prototype in that book appears to have the head of Spike oddly. I'll post scans in a few minutes so you guys can see the difference in Spike and Daniel's heads in the exo-suit.

Is changing it Daniel really a good idea though? The fact that the instructions clearly state it's Spike would make things final no matter what people may think he actually is. You may think it's Daniel, TakaraTomy claim it's Spike. In the interest of being factually accurate with the site, which side takes priority? The evidence does point to him being designed originally as Daniel, I'll give you that. but the name given, eh... I agree with Sabrblade here that TakaraTomy made a Galaxy Goofup.

Keeping the name Spike, but at the same time acknowledging the sculpt to be based on Daniel would be the way to go IMHO. Keep both sides of the argument ("It's Spike, the instructions say so" vs. "It's Daniel, look at the sculpt!") appeased.

It's tough to tell from this scan but at a lower resolution it looks much more like Spike on the printed page. Notice the elongated face versus the rounder face for Daniel plus the part in his hair on his left side that is absent on the Daniel head mold.

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:Is changing it Daniel really a good idea though? The fact that the instructions clearly state it's Spike

Do they, though? Looks more like they just call the toy "Exo-Suit"/"Excel Suit":