Prime - NYCC 2011 Arcee and Bumblebee

"Arcee is an accomplished, street smart and powerful fighter with little patience for those who don't know their way around a battlefield. Luckily, Bumblebee is as skilled as any other warrior in the Autobot army. Set loose on the streets of the big city with their human partners Raf and Jack, they're an unstoppable team in the defense of the planet."

Names: Arcee and Bumblebee (with Jack Darby and Raf Esquivel)

Faction: Autobot

Toy Line: Prime - First Edition (NYCC)

Continuity: Aligned

Arcee

Robot Mode

Arcee's robot mode is a mostly pink and white female form with some silver, black, grey and blue added to break up those colours.

Arcee's torso is made up mostly of her vehicle mode's bulk which includes having her seat as her abdomen, her headlights as her chest and even having the back of her seat as her tail/ass piece. Her windscreen, front wheel and handlebars are set up to just hang from her back behind her neck. Arcee's head is connected by a white neck piece that is connected by a ball joint, giving her the ability to rotate it up-down and side to side as needed. The actual head is made up mostly of a pink decorated helmet, featuring a frame around her face and a forehead chevron, her face is silver with sculpted feminine features like a mouth and thin chin. Her eyes are able to light up a bright blue thanks to her light-piping gimmick activated from the back of her head.

Arcee's arms are connected to the torso by a connector and ball joint combination, at the shoulder, which is hidden by a pink plate made from a side-piece from her vehicle mode. Her arms are very thin and white and features a pivoting joint under the shoulder guard, a pair of hinges to form her elbows as well as having a hinge on her wrist to allow her hands to be bent inwards or out. Her lower arms feature a small hole designed for her blade weapons, her hands are sculpted with thin fingers, but aren't able to hold anything.

Her legs are connected to her groin area by a ball joint that enables them to move as needed. Her knees are made of a hinge joint that is hidden behind a silver knee-plate leading to her lower leg, which is made of quite a large piece of her motorcycle mode's body, which also includes her split-apart rear wheel. Her feet are made up of small pieces of plastic that can only support her weight with the supports behind them (from the wheels)

Vehicle Mode

Arcee's vehicle mode is a pink and white motorcycle with some silver and black pieces and blue translucent windscreen and headlights. Her wheels are fully rotating (as you'd expect from modern toys) and she features several smaller pieces of detailing to make her more convincing.

If you don't have her blades attached like I have above she is able to stay upright by deploying her kickstand.

Accessories

Arcee comes with two pink and silver blades that clip into the round holes on her lower arms giving her an over-sized version of the blades she has in the cartoon. These blades are clipped onto the sides of her vehicle mode through a couple of smaller clips on the underside of the blades.

Bumblebee

Robot Mode

Bumblebee's robot mode is a mostly yellow and black masculine form with some silver, grey and blue pieces for detailing.

His torso is made of his car hood slit open and rotated to reveal his head, and also featuring several previously hiddenpieces from his vehicle mode (such as his abdomin piece and groin). His car doors and roof are reformed as his now iconic wings in this mode. His head is connected to his torso by a small ball jointed neck piece that allows him to move his head as needed. the head itself is made up mostly of his yellow helmet with chin-strap. This helmet features several ridges and the chin strap covers his mouth (as needed due to his lack of speech), his face is silver and features a sculpted nose and a pair of light-up eyes, which activate thanks to his light piping gimmick.

His arms are connected by a connector and pivot joint combination that uses the front wheels as shoulder pieces, covered by some more previously hiddenpieces. The upper and lower arms are connected by a ball joint each, creating an elbow as well. His lower arms feature holes for his blaster (or any other similar weapon), and the hands themselves are sculpted with fingers and a hidden peg hole for more weapons to be held if needed between the glasping hand, these hands are also able to bend inwards by about 90 degrees if desired.

Bumblebee's legs are connected to his groin by a a pair of pivoting ball joints that allow them to move as needed. His knees are created by a hinge joint, as like Arcee are hidden by a knee pad. The lower legs are mostly made up of the rear of his vehicle mode, including his rear wheels and windows. This of course makes Bumblebee very sound-standing and (shouldn't) fall over that much.

Vehicle Mode

Bumblebee's vehicle mode is a yellow and black sports car designed with a NYC Taxi motif, besides the taxi details this mode differs from the regular Bumblebee in a few ways, such as having a darker yellow and the black stripes being in different locations. His windows and headlights are made of a translucent blue plastic.

This mode also of course features several detailings common on car alternate modes now, such as wheels with hubcaps, eshaust pipes, side mirrors and more.

Accessories

Bumblebee comes with a single blaster that can clip onto his forearm, this seems a bit odd considering that the RID version comes with 2 blasters, one for each arm. This blaster can be stored in vehicle mode on a couple of clips found on the rear of his undercarriage.

My Final Thoughts

Arcee's colourscheme is of course meant to evoke the colours of G1 Arcee as well, whilst Bumblebee is just himself, but with an NYC Taxi design.

It's likely that this toy set influenced an episode in the Prime TV series which was set in New York city and involved Arcee and Bumblebee as well. The only differences though are that the Autobots stay in their normal colourschemes rather than taking on these new ones, Raf didn't go and was replaced by Miko, and they don't wear these different T-Shirts.

I personally really love this set, the alternate colourschemes used can make it very easy to recast these characters as ones other than Arcee and Bumblebee (so people who hate have doubles on characters can be happy too). The only problem you might have with these figures however is managing to find them, due to them being exclusives they're harder to find at a reasonable price on the after-market (I was lucky to find these guys at Auto Assembly 2012 for just £20 for the set though)

So in short, if you can find these guys for a reasonable price, then I'd suggest you buy them, but don't bankrupt yourself getting them, they aren't THAT great.

Prime - Bumblebee

"Bumblebee is a warrior and scout who serves as part of the elite squad commanded by Optimus Prime. Together with his human friend Raf, he stands as Earth's first line of defense against the evil Decepticons."
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.

My Thoughts

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.