Bot Reviews: Transformers: BotBots Gumball Machine Surprise Unboxing

I always like when I get to take a look at something out of my usual wheelhouse, and this is one of those times. Plus, it comes with a story. BotBots, as a franchise, is an area of Transformers I haven’t really gotten into. It’s a toyline that started way back in 2018, cashing in on the evergreen trend of blindpacks. In this case, they’re small, collectible transforming minifigures, available in a variety of formats.

The premise is a kid-friendly spin on the same Bayverse-originated idea that spawned the Real Gear Robots 15 years ago: Small objects getting spontaneously turned into Transformers. This time, the lore is that a shopping mall got jolted with Energon, and a bunch of items in the mall got turned into Transformers, and have since grouped into tribes, themed after the kinds of items they turn into. But, since this is aimed at kids, they come with a silly, cartoonish style to them, and are a more diverse set of objects than just machines.

I feel like most collectors gave BotBots a shot back in 2019 or so, and kind of got bored, and fell off paying attention. But kids must like them, because they kept on trucking, and are still releasing new ones! It helps that a Netflix show just made its debut this year, and I hear it’s pretty good, as far as these things go. This set here, according to the Wiki, is from 2020, a part of the “Surprise Unboxing” pricepoint, though apparently, the contents of the box are fixed, and not actually blind.

So, how’d I end up with this? I won it at TFCon, on their Saturday trivia night, during a Transformers edition of Wheel of Fortune (the winning answer was “Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Victory”), as part of what would turn out to be a Transformers Wiki Discord Sweep of the event (to be fair, there’s more to Wheel of Fortune than just knowing things, but being a takes-part-in-the-Wiki kind of Transformers fan does give you an edge in that part). For prizes, there was a whole box of various BotBots sets (I think it was a promotional box), and I pulled this one out. The BotBots inside turned out to be mostly themed after food, and again, aren’t actually blindpacked, this is in every edition of this specific box. So, let’s have a look at what BotBots, in their entirety, are like, based on this sample. But before we get going, I need to talk about how it’s presented, because that’s an important part of the whole experience.

The Gumball Machine

So, that big box is designed to look like a gumball machine, with all of the BotBots in these plastic balls. And here’s the thing: It works like one, despite being made entirely out of cardboard. After punching the bottom of the box out, there’s a paper lever you can slide back and forth, and it drops a plastic ball into the dispenser, for you to take out and open.

This is an incredibly clever bit of engineering, especially considering the whole thing’s cardboard, and honestly, it’s kind of satisfying to do. I was able to delicately cut the tape off of part of the box, so I could reload the plastic capsules in and “reset” it. As for the capsules themselves, they’re kind of hard to pry open if you don’t have substantial nails.

My only complaint here is that, as far as I can see, there’s no identification for who these characters are, at all. I had to look their names up on the Transformers Wiki. But to start with, we do have:

Stickers

Yup, there’s four of them in total, each getting a capsule to itself. I’ve got no idea if these are random, or what, and the Wiki doesn’t seem to document them. Not that they’d want to. I mean. Look. Two of them are alright, there’s a purple BotBot looking at stars, and three BotBots having a dance party. But the other two are a dog-bot peeing on a snowman-bot, and one bot squirting another with ketchup from a third bot. I watched another of the TF Wiki Sweepers open his box, and a bunch of the stickers were along the same lines. This is sort of the underlying thing with BotBots that comes out here: This is targeted at the young blindbox-loving crowd, and with it comes a kind of grossout humor with distressing undertones that reminds me of those questionably-produced Youtube videos that you find in odd corners of the site. Like, it’s kid-friendly, but feels a bit off. Anyway, onto the actual guys:

Goldenberry D’uhnut

Each of these sets comes with a gold BotBot From the “Winner’s Circle” tribe. Goldberry here’s apparently a repaint of a Sprinkleberry D’uhnut, who’s more conventionally colored. As for this guy, he starts out as a plain gold ring.

To get a sense of scale, Goldberry (and all of these bots) are about half the size of a Siege/Earthrise Micromaster, but are a lot wider and denser, and feel like they have a similar level of mass and partscount.

The whole line’s at kind of an odd scale, though, too small to be 1:1, too big to be Generations scale. They might fit with guys like those giant Mega Action Series robots I reviewed awhile back. Despite that, I think they still work as novelty Large Comedy Props for your Transformers, and you can squint-test them into scale, depending on the exact object.

Importantly, Goldberry and his kin are made out of solid, rigid plastic, which is worth noting because a lot of other Blindpack things (including previous Transformers blindpack lines like Tiny Titans and Tiny Turbo Changers) were made out of soft, rubbery plastic, feeling a lot cheaper.

Anyway, back to Goldberry themselves. I took the time to talk about the line as a whole because, as a monocolored gold ring, there’s not much to say about him, outside of him being covered in seams, which is necessary for him to transform. Speaking of transformation, none of these guys have instructions, or even photos on the box, meaning transforming them is guesswork, or a matter of looking up a photo online. Luckily, most of these BotBots, including Goldberry are pretty intuitive. In this one’s case, you just pull the arms and legs out, and rotate the face into place. In a clever bit of engineering, one of the little tabs that you use to get a fingernail in to rotate the face makes their mouth.

The transformation makes for a waddling little robot with tiny feet that like to vanish up into their body, big hands, and a rectangular face with a kind of angry, haughty expression on it. The only bit of deco on him is revealed here, in the form of some black lines to make the eyes and eyebrows. There’s no articulation to speak of, and I don’t like how the feet want to curl back up into the body, but the design is charming enough.

Overall, were I ranking the bots in this set, Goldberry’s kind of in the middle of the road, in terms of what’s here, not bad, but outclassed by the others. I think I’d like one of the other decos better, especially the original Sprinkleberry one.

Fancy Flutter

As I mentioned uptop, this set is broadly food-themed, with Fancy Flutter, and the next two entries, coming from the “Sugar Shocks” tribe. So, Flutter changes into a Macaroon, and is purple, with pink frosting, the exact right amount of deco for this. There’s some nice sculpted detail around the frosting and the sides of the cookie, but the frosting is broken up by joints and holes. Still, I’ve had some tiny macaroons in my lifetime, and I appreciate that this one feels like it might actually be 1:1 scale.

When I said most of the BotBots here were intuitive to transform, Flutter’s the exception. I couldn’t figure out how to transform this one for a long time, mostly because I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be.

You flip out a tail, and some fins? I thought it was some kind of scorpion at first.

The Wiki’s photo has you flip it upside down, though, and rotate the tail and fins that are sculpted in the sides, to make what I think is some sort of fish, or maybe a bird? It’s still very unclear.

There’s a hint of a face in there, painted in white, that seems to be wearing goggles, possibly putting it more in the “fish” camp. There’s also some tiny fin-like tampo slightly inside the macaroon, on either side of the head.

At least Flutter’s well-articulated, with both fins and the tail being on ball joints. Still, I’m super-unclear on what I’m looking at, which is enough to make this bot the weakest one here, though they make a good cookie, at least.

Frostfetti Frostyface

Okay, here we go, time for a standout entry, even if that name feels a little too algorithmically generated to be “lol random.” Whatever it’s called, we’ve got a solid alternate mode here, literally a piece of cake in miniature. There’s a lot of sculptwork put into it, with mottled surfaces all around, frosting on the top, and a flaming candle at the back. There’s also a ton of detail here. Frosty’s cast in light vanilla-cake beige, with white and pink frosting, tiny blue sprinkles, and a yellow flame. There’s still seams and gaps on the side, but between the sculpt and deco, this is way more solid of an altmode than I expected.

Frosty’s one real flaw is that it’s irritatingly easy to pop their feet out during transformation, since they’re on ball joints and you need to rotate them, but hey, they pop back on. Either way, it’s a simple matter of taking their arms and legs out, rotating the candle up, and flipping a flap to expose their face.

Frosty’s robot mode’s an upside-down triangle on two stumpy legs, with tiny arms, and a really enthusiastic face, with a candle uptop. The big design issue’s the odd overhanging flap for their face, which really needed a better joint, to hide it on top of their head, or something. Otherwise, this is a well-executed character. A bunch more deco went into their face, which has an extensive, multi-color tampo of an enthusiastic, happy expression. For poseability, they’ve got balljointed arms and hips (albeit limited,) and manage to be really stable on those feet, even.

If it’s not clear, this is one of the stronger ones in this set, if not the strongest.

Smore N’ More

This is a cool alternate mode. Like the name says, this bot changes into a S’more, but it’s a way richer than anything I’d make. The graham cracker (which has some nice sculptwork on it) is ludicrously thick, there’s like six marshmallows in here (usually I just need one), and a sculpted gooey thread on each side, and those marshmallows aren’t squished at all, which I thought was the point of roasting them.

But this is me being a dessert snob, this is a really good looking miniature snack alternate mode, cast in brown and white, with some very slight “roasting” on the marshmallows, via (intentional, settle down) yellowing, plus a little bit of brown deco on the inside for the chocolate.

Split the top open, flip it out, rotate four of the marshmallows up and down, and we’ve got a robot mode. Again, there’s lot of deco on the face, tampographed into an expression that looks somewhere between nervous and shy.

Proportionally, Smore’s kind of an odd figure, with huge chunky arms. But a poseable one, though, probably the most poseable one in the set. They’ve got ball jointed legs (apparently misassembled, says the Wiki, but in a way that increases articulation), a balljointed….headdress thing, and arms with balljoints at the shoulders and elbows. Again, I think there’s more articulation here than anyone else.

Unfortunately, and there’s no delicate way to put this, so here we go: They made the weird choice to give Smore articulated ball jointed large marshmallow nipples. It is what it is. and I don’t know how deliberate this was. I suppose they had to go somewhere.

Regardless, this is still another really solid figure, just behind Frosty as the set’s strongest.

King Cubano

Stepping outside the sweets theme, this bot’s from the “Los Deliciosos” tribe. Another very well-sculpted one, they’re a Cubano sandwich (I’ve never had one, so I looked up what it is, looks delish). They’ve got really well-sculpted bread, with grill marks molded in, and is decoed to include yellowy-white cheese, and browned meat. There’s some ball joints, and foot pads visible inside the buns, but it’s a pretty clean altmode otherwise, and just the right size to be a Comically Large Sandwich for most mainline Transformers.

For the transformation, Cubano does the same kind of split as Smore N’ More, but this time of the shell rotates to become a “crown” or antlers, the other chunks are arms.

In robot mode, this is a charming sculpt of a cheery fellow, with a nice hat on their head. Cubano’s feet are sculpted and solid, and their hands are molded on the insides of the panels. For articulation, Cubano’s got ball jointed arms, and ball jointed “crown” (despite also wearing a hat).

Again, they did impressively good work on the tampographed face, it’s got a big, eager smile that makes their eyes into crescent moons, and an ample mustache, plus some white deco on his chest and arms. What Cubano lacks in articulation, they make up for in personality, coming off as earnestly happy, in a non-chaotic way (unlike Frosty).

I’d rank this one as second place, ahead of Smore, and behind Frosty.

Game Older

Our last bot’s from the “Retro Replays” tribe, and is another repaint, apparently, of someone called Skillz Punk. Supposedly, Game Older changes into a game cartridge, but doesn’t look like any one I’ve ever seen, even allowing for the fact that they didn’t want to directly copy a brand.

The whole design’s kind of ornately complicated, and honestly, out of the box, I thought it was some kind of soda machine at first, on account of the red paint on the front with purple bubbles (actually pixels).

I guess that’s cover art? Regardless, it kind of doesn’t look like much of anything. For deco, this undefined lump of technology is mostly grey, with some purple and white uptop, plus that red and purple art.

Their transformation feels satisfying to do, though. You telescope the head up, and the arms out, and snap the foot-piece into place.

Regardless of the alternate mode, Game Older’s got a cool robot mode. In fact, it’s the only robot mode in this set that actually looks robotic, coming off like an old-fashined remote-controlled robot toy.

Game older’s got painted red and purple glasses for eyes, a grill-mouth, and a pair of swivelling arms (their only articulation). It’s a cool retro-robot look, and honestly, it feels like it compensates for the Nothing altmode.

For ranking, I’d place this one behind the three Sugar Shock members, but ahead of Goldberry and Flutter.

Overall

These BotBots are, across the board, pretty impressive for blindpacked things, actually. They’re made of rigid plastic, all have plenty of paint apps, (mostly) have actual articulation, and all transform, which puts them above most stuff of this ilk. I don’t like the undercurrent of the stickers (and whatever’s going on with Smore N More), but like, the product itself is charming, and well-made, and this gumball machine setup is surprisingly clever and fun.

I don’t know if I’m going to go in on any more of these, but from what I’ve seen of the rest of the line, some of them make good props for your larger transformers, including BotBots that transform into a rubber ducky, and a laser gun. But as for what I’ve got, what’s here is good, and chock-full of unique personality. If you have a shot at some of these, I’d say it’s worth the novelty to own a few. I’ve got no idea what this box retailed for (I’m seeing it go for $20, $40, and even $100-plus online, it’s all over the place), but I’d say it’s worth a few dollars for the whole cleverly-engineered unboxing experience. And if not, one or two of these bots, solo, are a fun time.

For over 100 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.