Bumblebee and his giant transforming block

by David Willis on May 8, 2011 at 10:59 pm
Posted In: Blog

Lookit me, wiling my way into pre-street date Dark of the Moon toys!  I’m like a DPCI ninja.

Here’s the new Bumblebee.  Normally I’d be satisfied with my old Bumblebee, but the third movie gives him an altered vehicle mode and a retooled robot mode, so I kinda need a representation of the “current” version.  Now Bumblebee has a little skirt on the front of his bumper and a new spoiler, plus this toy has those little NASCARish grills in place of the side windows.

(Disclaimer: I know very, very little about NASCAR.)

Oddly, during the transformation to robot mode, the NASCARish grills stay attached to the back kibble and translucent blue windows fold up in their place for robot mode.  These blue windows are only for robot mode, and cannot be used in vehicle mode.  Weird!  Movie 3 Bumblebee also has a new, bulkier torso design that this toy tries to replicate the details of.  Pieces of the front bumper skirt fold up into new abs for Bumblebee, while the sides of front of the car still fold out and up.

I am told that this mold is very similar to last year’s “Battle Blades Bumblebee,” a reportedly fantastic toy that I skipped ‘cuz I knew Bumblebee was getting an upgraded form in a year.  Some say this toy is a slightly scaled-down version of Battle Blades Bee, but I don’t have Battle Blades Bee to compare with.  Regardless of its creation history, this version of Bumblebee is pretty easy to get back and forth from robot mode.  …compared to previous Bumblebees, anyway.  The first Concept Camaro Bumblebee from the first movie was a relative chore!  I don’t mean to say that this toy is simple, no, because it’s not, but it’s complex in a way that everything fits together neatly and transforms logically and cleanly.  What seems to aid the toy’s transformation, versus the prior Bumblebees, are the way the front wheels fold out of the way entirely during transformation, allowing the arms to maneuver out freely.  And large parts of the car’s roof fold up into a big ball of stuff which hangs off his back… which definitely gets it out of the way, though it can look inelegant in robot mode.  This kibble snaps back into vehicle mode very easily, which is a trait that I believe makes up for any ugliness.

Bumblebee’s forearms have “c joint” rods so you can attach clippy weapons on there.  I’m glad that functionality is continuing.

And finally, we get to Bumblebee’s MechTech weapon.  Ratchet’s, if you recall, was glorious.  I couldn’t stop playing with it.  Bumblebee’s isn’t nearly as great.  All pressing on its lever accomplishes is open up the gun into a larger gun.  When you’re done pressing on the lever, the gun reverts back to its brickish form.  Not a single spinny saw!  Oh well.  It can plug into 5mm ports on his forearms, be held in either of his hands (the thumbs open a tiny smidge), or they can be pegged into hidden 5mm ports in his back kibble, which, when mistransformed, extends the weapon over his shoulder.

It’s a very good movie Bumblebee.  It’s probably not the BEST movie Bumblebee, since the very awesome deployable battle mask of Battle Blades Bumblebee is missing from this version, but it’s definitely up there.  Perhaps it’s the second best.  I own a very small fraction of all movie Bumblebees, so I can’t give a real informed opinion on that.

There are a lot of movie Bumblebees.


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