Name: Bumblebee
Toy Line: Prime - Robots in Disguise
Generation: Aligned Continuity
Faction: Autobot
Size Class: Deluxe Revealer
Strength: 6
Speed: 8
Rank: 7
Firepower: 6
Intelligence: 8
Endurance: 7
Courage: 10
Skill: 6
Robot Mode
Bumblebee's robot mode is a standard bi-pedal masculine form. He's yellow with black stripes and translucent blue "glass" parts (like his door windows and headlights). He also has some grey parts to help break up the yellow some more. He also features a pair of wings made from his vehicle mode doors.
Bumblebee's torso is mostly his vehicle mode hood and some interior parts giving him a very chesty body (which has been automorphed so they are at an angle as well). Bumblebee's head is connected to the torso on a flip-out flap made from the middle of the vehicle hood, and a ball joint connector that allows him to rotate his head as much as needed. His head is a yellow helmet with a large forehead chevron in the middle, "ears" on the sides and a small mouth-plate covering his damaged mouth. Bumblebee's face is silver and features a sculpted nose, eyebrows and a pair of light-pipe activated blue eyes.
Bumblebee's shoulders are connected to his upper torso by a pivoting joint (rather than the more commonly used ball joints). This allows the arms to move on the pivot for 360 degrees. The shoulders are connected to the upper arms by another pivot joint that allows them to move for a little under 180 degrees, without obstruction. The elbow joint is created from a combination of a pivot joint and a segmented hinge that allows them to rotate 360 degrees around and bend inwards by about 90 degrees, giving it some realistic articulation. The lower arm is basically just a large lump of yellow plastic with a hole for the blaster accessories to fit into on each arm, which surrounds his actual black arms as armour. Bumblebee's hands are black and sculpted with segmented fingers, positioned so he can hold standard sized weapons in them (so yeah, give him a gun or a sword or something to make him look less pathetic)
Bumblebee's legs are connected to the lower torso by a pair of ball joint connectors that allows them as much articulation as required, below the ball joint is a pivot that allows them to be repositioned as required as well for posing reasons. Bumblebee's knees are created by a simple hinge that allows them to bend backwards by 90 degrees, and also feature a knee-pad cover that's just for decoration. His feet are just standard feet connected by some pivots, but they can be repositioned again to make it more suitable for different surfaces as needed.
Alternate Mode
Bumblebee's vehicle mode is a small yellow and black sports car (the fictional Urbana 500 according to the TV series). He also has translucent blue windows and headlights (the windows also show his folded up robot mode, rather than car seats etc, which sort of ruins the hole point in having see-through windows, but whatever).
Bumblebee has a set of fully working and non-obstructed wheels that allows him to roll along a smooth surface without any problems. Bumblebee also features several sculpted pieces of detail, such as a slightly exposed engine (which can have guns added to it), front grill, (unpainted) indicator lights and rear lights, side mirrors, door handles (the doors can open as well, but it just reveals a folded down robot, so it's not so impressive inside). He also has a slight spoiler at the rear, unfilled licence plate area, exhaust pipes and what is likely a brand emblem on the very rear.
Accessories
Compared to the other three figures in Bumblebee's toy wave, Bumblebee definitely drew the short straw on his accessories, he has a pair of tiny twin blasters that can either be placed one on top of the other (like a double targetmaster of G1 could, as seen below) and can only be slotted into the holes on his forearms as blasters, in his hand pegs, or in the hole on his vehicle mode hood.
Those who know me, know one very important thing about me...I HATE Bumblebee's, they'e been too heavily focused on in recent years and he's now been worn very thin. Luckily however so far this particular Bumblebee hasn't been stealing the spotlight in the TV series that much, and he hasn't usurped leadership from Optimus either, so he's not annoyed me much thus far (however there were mostly Bumblebees in the box I got my Prime figures from though....)
Honestly, this figure isn't that good, compared to the other three figures in his wave of Deluxes he seems to be the one they just gave up on before they even started. The other three have great articulation, accessories and play value, which Bumblebee just doesn't have. The two modes are nice enough to look at, and are a very nice simplified version of the Movie incarnation of Bumblebee's toys, possibly being more popular for kids, but not really for adults in my opinion. He has a very easy transformation, especially compared to most modern main-line figures.
So in my opinion, buy him if you're a character/mold completist like me, buy him if you like Bumblebee (unlike me), but don't buy him if you expect a lot of fun playing with him, if you want fun from him you may as well just wait to see if they bring out a more complex or accessory-bound version in the future.
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