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.

Prime - Cliffjumper

Name: Cliffjumper

Toy Line: Prime - Robots in Disguise

Generation: Aligned Continuity

Faction: Autobot

Size Class: Deluxe Revealer

Strength: 8

Speed: 6

Rank: 4

Firepower: 7

Intelligence: 5

Endurance: 6

Courage: 8

Skill: 5

Robot Mode

Cliffjumper's robot mode is a muscled masculine build that is mostly red and grey in colour and fetaures some silver and black details. Cliffjumper's chest uses a faux part version of the rear of his vehicle mode and his front bumper combined (whilst the real parts are on his back). His waist is formed by a pivot joint connecting the bulk of the red parts and the grey lower parts together.

Cliffjumper's head is connected to his upper torso by a ball joint connector that allows it a great amount of movement. His head itself is a red helmet, with a pair of grey horns to the sides of the top surrounding a silver face with a scowling expression and a shouting mouth. The head sort of resembles his G1 counterpart's, but just more detailed and stylized.

His arms are connected to the upper part of the torso by a connecting bar and ball joint combination, leading to his shoulder pads. The pads led to his upper arm by a pivot joint that allows them to move around as much as needed. His elbows are created by a pair of hinges that allows the arms to flex inwards, again as needed. His lower arm is mostly hollow and made up on most of the sides of his vehicle mode folded in on itself. His hands are connected to the ends of his lower arms by a ball joint each. The hands are simply sculpted with fingers in an open manner, suggesting that he's forming a fist, this allows him to fold his weapon (and any other that's compatible) without needing the hands to have peg holes in them like most older toys do.

The upper legs are connected to the groin area of the lower body by ball joints (as what seems to be quite popular to do nowadays). His knees are created by a hinge that allows them to fold backwards, allowing him to go into sitting or running poses with ease (he even has a sculpted knee on each leg too). His feet are connected via a small connector bar and ball joint combination, allowing his feet to be positioned in any number of ways needed.

Cliffjumper randomly features an odd example of faux parts, I mean his chest is one thing, since they weren't able to tool his rear vehicle mode to work the way they needed, so they gave him a fake roof on his chest...but on the backs of his upper legs he has (unpainted) false wheels...meaning that he has 6 wheels visible in his robot mode...depsite him being a four wheeled vehicle....odd....

Alternate Mode

Cliffjumper's vehicle mode is a red muscle car with a pair of bull horns on the hood. His bonnet is slightly raised, which implies that he has a large engine (though since you can actually open his bonnet up, you can very quickly learn that that's a lie!). Cliff's windows are made of clear plastic, which sadly shows all his inner workings instead of any seats or details.

Cliffjumper features a full set of free-rolling wheels that allow him to roll along a smooth surface without much trouble (although his robot mode feet do stick out the bottom a bit, so they might catch if there's anything sticking up slightly on the surface). The wheel's feature black textured tires and silver 5-pointed hubcaps.

Cliff features a great amount of detailing in this mode sculpted details like door handles, streamlining, boot, hood, lights, door seams, grills, 2 pairs of exhaust pipes at the sides, side view mirrors, and even a licence plate (minus any licence of course). The only things that really mar this vehicle mode are the 2 peg hole sused to hold his gun.

Accessories

Cliffjumper comes with a weapon that can be used both as a gun or a bludgeoning weapon, depending on what peg hole you make him use. It's completely grey in colour and has details that makes it look like it could be make of some of his vehicle mode's internal parts (despite it not being able to be stored inside him at any point). I personally prefer to use it as a bludgeoning weapon however in robot mode.

The weapon can be clipped into either of 2 holes on his vehicle mode either on his roof (as shown earlier) or on the right side of his vehicle mode, giving him a mounted gun weapon either way.

My Thoughts

For some reason a lot of people don't like this figure (most likely because he had a toy in the ill-fated First Edition line as well) but I personally do like him (not as much as Wheeljack, but I do like him).

One reason why I like him is that despite him being a character who was only alive for the first 5 minutes of the series (SPOILER: Starscream murdered him!) he's nonetheless already had several toys made for him, and somehow, I'm not sure why, but his toy actually somewhat evokes his voice actor as well (Dwayne Johnson, AKA The Rock).

The second main reason I like him is because of his modern vintage aesthetic, in vehicle mode he looks like he could fit in with the older toy lines, as it's quite a detailed vehicle mode, and yet when he transforms he takes on the Prime aesthetic very well...I have strong suspicions that evil magic may be at work on this toy....

All in all, I do recommend this toy to the fanbase, he looks nice in both modes, and let's face it, you're not likely to find his First Edition counterpart that easily now, so he's the best you're going to get (especially for a reasonable price)

Prime - Wheeljack

"As a former member of The Wreckers, Wheeljack is more than capable of taking care of himself. But he's glad to know that at least one of his old friends - Bulkhead - is still around, bringing the pain to the Decepticons."

Name: Wheeljack

Toy Line: Prime - Robots in Disguise

Generation: Aligned Continuity

Faction: Autobot

Size Class: Deluxe Revealer

Strength: 8

Speed: 6

Rank: 6

Firepower: 8

Intelligence: 6

Endurance: 7

Courage: 9

Skill: 9

Robot Mode

Wheeljack's robot mode is perfection, he's in a standard bi-pedal humanoid looking male robot mode, but he's just been made so wonderfully.His body is mostly white, but also features a lot of grey portions as well as some green and red markings, straight from the vehicle mode. His chest features a fake black windscreen (despite his actual windscreen being blue). Behind his head are a pair of grey "wings", much like he has in his G1 incarnation. His head is mostly grey but also features a silver face, mouthplate and "ears" (again all references to his G1 version too). Wheeljack's eyes are fitted with a blue light piping effect which allows them to glow a dark blue when enough light is allowed to go through the back of the head.

Wheeljack's shoulderss are connected to his upper torso by a pair of connectors that lead to a ball joint/pivot combination, allowing them to move in almost any direction needed. His upper arms are connected to the shoulder pieces by hinges that allow them to move up and down, and is also how it is connected to the lower arms too, again allowing them to move up and down as needed. Wheelajck's hands are on a pivot joint on each arm that allows them to flex in and out, he's sculpted with fingers on each hand, but has a gap large enough to hold his included swords in as well (without it looking like a peg-hole as well)

Wheeljack's legs are connected to his groin area by a pair of ball joints that allow them to move as much as needed, barring any obstructions. The knee joint that connects the upper and lower legs to one another are created by pivot joints and also feature a knee protrusion for decoration.

The lower legs are quite amazing honestly, they are created from the majority of the front of the vehicle mode, but folded out in a short sequence of flips and clicks. You fold out the inner most parts of the hood about 180 degrees each then you slide the outer parts upwards (along the small metal bar inside it), then the now upwards outer parts are folded outwards again by 90 degrees (so the wheels are on the outside, and then you just fold in the feet.

The feet are on a ball joint that allows him to be posed in pretty much any way desired, depending on the surface he's set up on of course.

Wheeljack features a pair of peg holes on his shoulders that can be used to hold his blades when he's not fighting, and due to the positions of his arms, you can even make him seem to draw them on his own (for comic uses if you'd like to)

Vehicle Mode

Wheeljack's vehicle mode is a mostly white race car with red and green markings upon it, he also feature son grey markings near the rear of the vehicle. The basic shape of the vehicle mode is rather different to a conventional real life race car in that it's quite angled. Wheeljack features several pieces of sculpting in this mode, such as his head-lights, rear lights, side view mirrors, spoiler and other minor details to add realism to the vehicle.

Wheeljack's rear lights are painted red and yellow, but don't work in any way (unsurprisingly) and the head-lights are unpainted, leaving them just white.

Wheeljack's windows are a translucent dark blue that allows you to see inside (though there's not much to see inside honestly). His four wheels are fully mobile and allow him to roll freely along a smooth surface as he also lacks any major undercarriage issues.

In this mode Wheeljack can insert his blades into the recesses at the front of his vehicle mode (just under the hood) by inserting them into the small rectangular nubs on either side.

Accessories

Wheeljack comes with 2 identical swords with curved handles, a connector knob on the hilt and a curved blade, which gives the appearance of a cutlass. The handles are a dark grey whilst the blades are a shiny silver colour. On the blades are several Cybertronian looking markings (which I have yet to decipher sadly). This is similar to the feature seen on Drift's toy which also features markingson his long sword.

As well as being stored as shown in the vehicle mode section as a weapon mode, the swords can also be stored on the small holes on the rear of the vehicle mode to give him some small wings or side weapons (this method also seems more legal in terms of road regulations honestly).

After finishing this review it was pointed out to me that Wheeljack can also hold his swords in a pair of sheath-like holes on his back as well (Found thanks to Mark Moore)

My Thoughts 

I know I say this probably a little too much, but I LOVE this toy! He's basically perfect in nearly every way if I;m totally honest, he works as a great new characters, and as an update for the G1 Wheeljack character at the same time. I also love how his entire form subtly exudes a Drift vibe as well (it's mostly the swords I think) but regardless of why, it remains a fact that on multiple occasions whilst writing this review I've accidentally written "Drift" or "DriftJack" instead ofhis actual name.

This toy's transformation sequence is utterly beautiful as well, from the way you have to fully convert his legs (rather than them being hidden in his vehicle mode fully intact or being just a large chunk of vehicle mode that you pull out a foot to make the legs) or how his head is revealed from behind his chest.

I whole-heartedly implore anyone who loves either Drift or Wheeljack (G1 or Prime!) to buy this figure as he is just proof that sometimes, just sometimes Hasbro does love it's fans.

X is for X-Brawn

COMING SOON



The Winning Toy

"X-Brawn loves extremes and is at his best in disastrous and brutal climates such as dry deserts and snowstorms. He doesn't waste tme on long-winded speeches and can be counted on to say it all in just a few words. He's very reliable and has fearsome strength. He is a martial arts master with an especially powerful left arm. His "Southpaw Lariat" is invincible."

Toyline: Robots in Disguise US

Generation: Robots in Disguise

Size Class: Deluxe

Faction: Autobot

Function: Strong-Armed Fighter

Quote: "Strength wins!"

Strength: 10

Intelligence: 8

Speed: 8

Endurance: 9

Rank: 9

Courage: 7

Firepower: 6

Skill: 6


Robot Mode



X-Brawn's robot mode is mostly silver and green with some red detailings and has a humanoid shape, except for the large car hood on his left arm.

X-Brawn's torso is sculpted with several car detailings, like a small engine in the center. His head is able to rotate to either side and bend backwards to his ball joint/hinge connector. The head is sculpted with a moth plate, forehead decorations and two golden eyes. He features a pair of holes on his back pack that can be used to store his two weapons (I only have one pictured, as I only own the gun/blaster, the other weapons resembles a blade/sword.

His upper arms are connected to the torso by a ball joint each that gives them articulation as long as there's no obstructions. The right lower arm is connected to the upper arm by a ball joint. The end of that arm leads to a set of sculpted fingers and a projectile slot where you can slot the weapons into to act as a gun or a sword. His left arm is connected to the upper arm by a pivot/hinge joint, and the lower arm is simply his vehicle mode hood. X-Brawn's hand is connected to that by a hinge and ball joint combination that allows it to move as far as you desire. His fingers are sculpted, and his thumb is able to move on a hinge-joint, which allows you to slot the silver bars on the weapons from his back, or the silver bumper from his vehicle mode as weapons

X-Brawn's upper legs are connected to his groin area by a pair of ball joints that allow them to move as freely as needed. his lower legs are connected by a pair of hinges on both legs that give him a knee and a second lower knee in you want him to (it's really just for his transformation sequence). His feet are made of of his spare wheel being split in half. The wheel becomes his heels and the guard for the wheel becomes the front section of the foot.


Alternate Mode



X-Brawn's vehicle mode is a silver SUV with green trim and a large Autobot insignia on the tip of the hood ("Robots in Disguise" my ass...<<)

X-Brawn features a few details like headlights, front grill, a hood that covers an engine, treaded tires on working wheels with silver hubcaps, and a sculpted spare tire on the very back with a guard around it.

X-Brawn's windows are transparent and allow you to see inside his vehicle mode, which whilst being good, so it looks realistic...is also bad since you can see his robot head and right arm folded inside..yeah...so much for a good disguise there X-Brawn...although quite shockingly, this small fault was actually featured in an episode of the Robots in Disguise cartoon, where the human Kelly was driving X-Brawn and then suddenly noticed his head right next to her in the passenger's seat, prompting a swift freak out of course.

X-Brawn's two main weapons are held in his undercarriage and act as extra support struts and steps etc, and the small silver piece that can be clipped in at the front as a front bumper.


Legacy

X-Brawn was a new character created for the Robots in Disguise series and acted as the eldest of the "Autobot Brothers" sub-group, made up of Side Burn, Prowl and himself. He appeared in most of the episodes and even gained an upgraded form when Ultra Magnus accidentally gave him and his brothers a power boost (making him look like a rally race car)

X-Brawn's toy was repainted a few times as alternate versions of himself (ie a clear version in Japan, his upgraded form, and some of the light differences between him and his Car Robots counterpart Wild Ride). He was also repainted as the Autobot Ratchet from the 2003 Universe line. He also had a smaller Spychanger sized toy made for the Robots in Disguise line based on his Deluxe toy as well.

X-Brawn's name and basic characteristics (ie very strong, SUV) are references to Brawn, whom he almost shares a name with. It's likely that X-Brawn is actually meant to be an alternate version of Brawn (like with Prowl) but since there have been other Brawns made in recent years, with the name Brawn still intact, it just makes sense to treat X-Brawn as a totally separate character.

X-Brawn is the only one of the Autobot Brothers whom have not had a recent G1 style update toy. Side Burn had one from the Collector's Club, Prowl's is the Universe 2.0 toy, but none for X-Brawn so far (here's hoping!)


Is he Cool?

Honestly? Yes, he is cool, though there are many toys who are better in both terms of character, looks and features, and I did only chose him because he was the only X in my collection, but he is still cool.

The Robots in Disguise franchise altogether is one of the most popular due to it being a mostly vehicle based series after a few years of mostly beasts (with only the Predacon being beasts in this one). This of course appealed to the G1 purists as it was like they were getting their own way, but also appealed to others due to it's new mold toys having great articulation, detail and characterizations, as well as most of the characters acting as updated versions of the older characters that the masses had loved over the years, whilst also bringing in new characters.

I personally feel that if you see this toy or any of his repaints, then he's well worth getting, especially if you can also get his brothers as well (and even more so since he's the only one to not have a Classics style toy yet as well)