Bot Reviews: Transformers: Cyberworld Armored Cyber Changers Wave 1, and Cyber Changer Elita-1

Man, Cyberworld’s been a fun show. And a fun toyline! The show could have been slop, the figures could have been chintzy, Authentics-eque tat, but Hasbro decided to put their whole back into making both of them work, and it’s been the most fun I’ve had with a new Transformers thing in a long time. As usual, here’s a link to the full show, if you haven’t watched it yet, the episodes are only five minutes long, and here’s my look at most of the toyline’s first wave, along with the gigantic, affordable, gimmick-laden Grimlock figure over here. Put simply, this is a budget toyline, where most of the figures are about 4 inches tall, and include a simple autotransformation gimmick, yet actually have effort put into them, unlike so many budget and gimmick toys. 

Well, I’ve got one problem with Cyberworld: The second wave of figures still hasn’t shown up on shelves locally, and they’re already showing off the newest waves of stuff at all the usual Comic-Con shows.  I really hope Canada doesn’t skip it! So, to slake my thirst, I decided to finally bite on the two little Wave 1 figures I skipped out on, Bumblebee and Galvatron. And on top of that, a couple extra dollars on a giftcard lead me to order a singular Wave 2 figure off the ‘net, Elita-1, so today, we’re gonna look at her, too. But first, the Wave 1 stragglers.

Bumblebee:

So, Bee and Galvatron are part of a different size class from the normal Cyber Changers, called “Armored Cyber Changers.” Basically, they’re Cyber Changers with a big weapon accessory (so why’s it “Armored?” They’re “Armed,” that’s a different thing!). Either way, that accessory adds 5 entire Canadian dollars to the price. I didn’t really regard the price bump as worth it, which is why it took me until now to get in on Bee and Galvy. Honestly, with Bee, I mostly wanted to complete the show’s lead trio.

It feels like Bumblebee’s trying to further justify the 5 dollar price bump by being noticeably larger than your standard Cyber Changer. He’s a head taller than Optimus, and generally feels like he’s meant to scale with bigger figures, rather than the mainline.

This stands in sharp contrast to how he’s depicted on the show, where he’s scaled to be shorter than his compatriots. The figure’s about as tall as the Earthrise Bee/Cliffjumper/Hubcap tooling!

Design-wise, this Bumblebee’s pretty much got the layout of a Spychanger, with boots made of the back of the car, a hood-chest, and door-arms. It’s a competent, if boilerplate design, pulling heavily from Bee’s Evergreen look.

It’s also decently animation-accurate in the abstract, with the caveat that his headsculpt has the “stunt double effect” going on, where the details line up with the show’s design, but it still feels like a different guy.

For colors, he’s what you’d expect from a Bumblebee: Honey yellow and black, with bits of red, silver, and blue eyes. He even matches the show’s deco decently well, with only some missing blue highlights.

It’s his build quality that’s a little odd. Put simply, he feels a bit “cheaper” than the rest of this already-cheap line. Maybe it’s the vast tracts of undetailed, shiny plastic, or how his boots are entirely hollow from the sides, but it feels like his embiggening sucked out some of his materials budget. It’s not Authentics bad, but it’s taking a step in that direction. It doesn’t help that on my copy, there’s something wrong with his left knee, where it loves to pop off the mushroom peg when you move it, unless I’m squeezing the joint as I pose him.

I’ll try not to hold it against him, though, since most copies presumably don’t do this. The articulation’s the Cyberworld standard, by the way: Swivel knees, and ball-jointed hips and shoulders, with those shoulders feeling a bit limited by their sculpting.

Of course, the big story (and the reason for the inflated price) is his accessory, a strange-looking weapon consisting of two long double-blades, mounted to an overdetailed block, with a trigger uptop.

The thing’s mostly a metallic green (painted over yellow), with some black on the base. It doesn’t really visually match Bumblebee, and feels wholly unrelated to him, but the Cyberworld show justified it as a prize given to him for winning one of the planet’s video game-esque challenges, so I don’t mind the aesthetic clash. The weapon’s got a geared gimmick, where you hypothetically push or pull the trigger on top to deploy the blades sideways.

In practice, the weapon’s got enough resistance to it that I usually just manually move the blades with my finger. 

Said blades can also pop off, and are mounted on 5-millimeter ports. They also come with 5-millimeter pegs, as does the base itself, in three places, so there’s actually a fair amount of weaponizing potential here.

Bee himself has got his fists, plus 5-millimeter ports on his forearms and back. In fact, I’d say his Weaponizing potential’s actually more interesting than the geared aspect of the weapon. A shame he has to point the blades forwards, and can’t hold them like swords. 

Bee’s transformation’s also the standard Spychanger one: Flip up the chest, close the arms, move the legs up. The difference is he’s got an Automorph function, like the other Cyber Changers, where moving his chest up automatically pulls his torso up and his arms in, hypothetically making him a one-step changer.

And it mostly works! Okay, you’ve got to peg his legs together in advance, and adjust his arms afterwards to sit flush, but it’s fast and easy enough to feel fun.

His altmode’s pure Evergreen Bumblebee, a made-up sports car that’s a long way from being a VW beetle, and makes me think more of Earthrise Cliffjumper’s fake Porsche altmode, with some flared bits borrowed from Transformers Prime Bumblebee.

He’s actually decently painted in this form, with his windows and headlights both being filled in, something I wasn’t expecting on this budget. A shame he’s got a big gap on the back of the car, but on the positive side, those taillights also got some red paint.

He’s still got that cheap sort of feeling to his plastic and construction in this mode, but at least he holds together solidly. For features, he rolls just fine, and he’s got 5-millimeter mounting ports for his accessories on his hood, roof, and car-mode sides, enough to build a decent murdermobile.

Overall, this guy’s on the weaker end of the toyline. If he’d been a normal Cyber Changer, without the big accessory, I’d still rate him low, due to his strangely chintzy build quality, and how oddly out of scale he is.

I do like his automorph transformation, though, and his weapon’s got a bit of fun to it, especially when you take it apart and arm him up in different ways.

I don’t know that it makes him worth the extra fiver, though, even if it is the best bit. Maybe they released him in this format because they knew the base figure was one of the weaker ones. I’d say he’s kinda worth it if you can find him on sale, but otherwise, don’t loose sleep if you skip this one.

There’s a standard Cyber Changer version of Bumblebee coming in Wave 2, anyway, a new tooling based on his upgraded offroad Jeep form he gets later on in the show.

Amusingly, the show’s also given him the ability to hotswap these two forms whenever he needs to, presumably to help continuing to sell the earlier model.

Galvatron

Cyberworld’s one of those Transformers stories where Galvatron and Megatron are separate characters (unless there’s some time-travel or alternate-universe thing going on). Galvatron’s a big mystery right now, an immensely powerful bot that’s doing *something* unknown in the background. Also, they gave him a southern accent. Bee may be his normal kid-appeal character self, but they took a big swing on rewriting this bad guy. Let’s see if his figure holds up. 

One thing they got right with him is his size: He’s a bit taller than even Bumblebee, and this actually tracks with his appearance on the show. Sculpt-wise, much like how he’s written, this Galvatron’s a big departure from his standard appearance. In fact, there’s nothing on him that resembles his G1 self at all. He’s got a dragon-head chest, little jet wings on his back, and a headsculpt with a visor, a big moustache, and an Optimus-like antenna and forehead vent combo. He’s a good-looking bot, so I don’t mind the design departure. 

It’s the colors that are Galvatron-coding him. He’s equal parts medium gray and light purple, the traditional look for this guy. He’s also got a red visor, a dark gray moustache, bits of silver here and there, and little purple Decepticon logo on his chest. He’s a bit show-inaccurate, though, since his design there’s got more black on him, but I don’t mind.

Unlike Bee, Galvy’s build quality is on par with the rest of the toyline, so he’s solid-feeling, even if he’s got the usual hollowness from the back. His articulation’s also the Cyberworld standard, with the one wrinkle that his wings block his arms from swivelling far back enough to do my standard “ooo they walkin” pose.

Galvatron’s accessories are where he really shines. Well, let’s start with the dumpy one: He can hold his altmode’s tiny tail in his hand, pointing forwards, if you really want. It barely looks like a weapon, really.

His big accesory’s this huge flamethrower-type contraption, a big purple and gray number, with two flame effects attached to the front, each of which splits into two tongues of flames themselves.

The flames are opaque, instead of the usual translucent thing most mainline figures would do, and they’re hollow from one side, but they’ve also got a nice dark red metallic paint on them, and you can pop them out of the flamethrower on 5-millimeter pegs, to use on other figures.

This weapon’s also got a geared gimmick, where slding a little tab upfront moves the two flame launchers outwards or inwards. It works way better than Bumblebee’s weapon, though I question what the utility of having the weapon do this does, in-universe. 

Galvatron’s also got four 5-millimeter ports on him for Weaponizing, and the instructions specifically recommend slapping the flamethrower onto his back, as a flight-mode jetpack, which is equally fun.

Galvatron’s transformation’s a familiar one, because he shares it with Cyberworld Megatron and Snarl.

You pull his torso to Automorph his head away and reshape it into a belly-crawling mode, then then fold back his feet (after installing his tail), and peg in his arms. He’s got an extra step, though, where you lift out his dragon-mode head, and it clicks into place. When you transform him back, the torso-automorph makes it spring back down into its robot-mode position, a nifty little trick.

Galvatron’s altmode is a four-legged, horned dragon, with jet wings, a cool concept that’s a bit hampered by the same issues as Megatron and Snarl, where his forelegs still resemble humanoid arms with fists, and his rear legs still resemble longer legs bent at the knees.

Still, the whole mode’s got some charm to it, and reminds me of a late-G1 combiner limb, or Pretender inner robot. He’s got a great little headsculpt, too, which is where the lion’s share of the paint goes in this altmode.

His build quality’s the same in this form, even if his articulation isn’t. The biggest thing is that he can open his mouth, and you can wiggle his legs a little bit, if you unplug the front ones.

Again, the big feature is his accessory, which you can mount on his back.

The geared gimmick makes a little more sense here, as you can have the flames forwards for an attack mode, or rotate them back in a way that makes them resemble a second layer of insectoid wings, to my eyes.

Overall, Galvatron’s the complete opposite of Bumblebee. He’s well-designed, if a bit familiar, thanks his shared engineering with Megatron and Snarl. Importantly, his big weapon, and the features that come with it, genuinely add a lot to him.

Between things like how tall he is, and his extra bit of automorph, it feels like the designers put extra work into him. I genuinely think he’s also worth the extra little bit of money for the increased price point, and that he’s well worth picking up in general if you’re into this line. 

Elita-1

My lone Wave 2 figure was purchased specifically so I could own the third, final member of the show’s trio of protagonists. It’s 2026, Hot Rod can be pink now, but we’re still saving the girls until the second wave, eh? Like in the Skybound comics, this is a version of Elita-1 that initially has beef with Optimus, but unlike in thoss comics, they quash that beef pretty quickly, and the rest of the show plays her as a staunch ally, albeit one pining over her lost companion, Wheejack. 

So, funny thing about Elita-1’s sculpt, that people clocked pretty much from the get-go: She’s actually got the body of a whole different Transformer, an IDW-original Autobot named Riptide, introduced in James Roberts’s More than Meets the Eye and Lost Light comics.

Riptide’s never gotten a figure before, so there’s speculation she’s a pretool for him. Either way, it’s a design that works well enough for Elita, between its raised shoulders, and loincloth-like midsection.

The one “iconic” bit of Elita-1’s design, for me, is her headsculpt, and that part’s pure G1, little sideways antennas at all. Again, though, this line has real problems with facesculpts that don’t really feel like the characters from the show, but maybe that’s the show’s fault. I still like what’s here.

Her colors are interesting. See, on the show, she’s a few shades of pink, her traditional look. The toyline opts to hue-shift her into a set of colors I had to actually look up the name for, a kind of orangey-pink that’s apparently called “Coral.” She’s got two shades of it, plus some white paint and plastic, and blue eyes rimmed in black. It’s an interesting choice, and it can’t be because Hasbro’s afraid of pink, because, well, she’s still kinda pink.

Honestly, I like this deco better than her normal pink, and I don’t even mind the media-innacuracy. It reminds me of strawberry sherbert. Interestingly, my copy’s got a little paint blemish on her face, but I like it, because it looks like she’s got a little birthmark next to her nose. 

For build quality, she’s a brick……house, and she’s got the standard Cyberworld articulation. Her knees click into place for her altmode, so you’ve got to put a tiny bit of effort in when you bend them. One little annoyance is that she can’t pass my “stand on one foot and kick” test, because her feet are actually slightly tilted outwards, to support her standing in an A-stance. 

For features, we’re back in Cyber Changer territory, so she’s got nothing going on beyond some 5-millimeter ports on her forearms and back.

But hey, I’ve got plenty of accessories to equip her with. 

Her transformation is…well, kind of nothing. I can illustrate it in two photos, even.

You clip her legs together, then push them up, and that activates an Automorph that makes her arms compress slightly, and a little panel cover a bit of her face, but not much of it. And then you flop her onto her chest, flip a little cone up, and you’re done, save for fiddling a bit with her arms to make sure they’re plugged in and lined up. Every other Cyber Changer’s got some kind of involved transformation, and this is barely anything, which is honestly kind of disappointing. It reminds me of the Action Master Elites, European Transfomers from 1991 that barely had alternate modes. 

Anyway, she changes into a boat, like Riptide does. The detailing on the back of her’s trying really hard to hide that this is just a robot doing a belly flop, and it does kinda-sorta work, if you ignore her exposed robot fists.

Those fists get hidden on the show, but this is otherwise animation-accurate.

Riptide’s boat mode also mostly looks like this, it just benefits from the comic art stylizing it a bit more.

Still, I don’t automatically read it as a boat, just a vague techno…thing.

The sort of thing that would have been called a “spaceship” in the G1 line. It’s kind of nothing, much like the transformation. The one novelty here’s the colors, which add a bit of mustardy yellow on her fins and cockpit, which pops nicely with the coral.

For features, she, again, has weapon ports on her, and that’s it, though the top-mounted one’s at least in an ideal location to stick a weapon.

Overall, this is an odd one to rate, because she should be bad, but I still find myself liking her.

She barely transforms, her altmode’s nothing, she’s a glorified Action Master Elite. And yet, I still find her fun. I think it’s because everything on her is working as intended, it’s just that they were a bit under-ambitious with the transformation and altmode. She’s a more successful Cyber Changer than Optimus Prime, for example, whose altmode was a complete writeoff, and she has way better construction and handfeel than Bumblebee, on top of just having good vibes.

Maybe it’s the colors, maybe it’s the sculpt, but I can’t bring myself to dislike her. And for the little amount these cost, she still gets a recommendation from me, provided that she shows up at retail, because I feel like buying these figures online sort of misses the point.

This Batch Overall

Well, the Armored Cyber Changers still feel overpriced, and Bumblebee’s a bit of a lemon, but Galvatron still feels like a great get, despite the sticker shock, so he wound up the strongest of this bunch, for sure.

Hopefully, Wave 2 will finally show up locally, and I can grab more of them than just Elita, who, despite her weak transformation and altmode, still winds up in second place in this bunch, overall, for vibes alone.

I’ll echo what I said about Cyberworld earlier: This is the most fun I’ve had with a Transformers toyline in awhile, and broadly, I recommend picking a couple of them up, just for the fun of it. Maybe not this version of Bumblebee, though.

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