To properly start this off, let’s go back to my review of Skiff, an unofficial Bumblebee figure created by the now-defunct MAAS Toys. Here’s what I said at the start of that writeup:
Back when Transformers: Siege started up, one of the mission statements of the line was to replicate some of the Cybertronian forms seen in the very first episode of the original cartoon. However, despite the fact that we only saw a few of them [in the cartoon episode], a number of these characters still didn’t wind up getting any representation in the line, including Bumblebee. In all fairness, he was shown transforming into a funky round hovering saucer thingie, while still having a robot mode that looked like it was made from VW bug parts, something hard to replicate at any scale.
As seen here.
Skiff was, at the time, the only attempt at imitating that first-episode Saucer Bumblebee design, making it happen by deciding to just give him a different robot mode design, rather than try and turn a bot who looked like he changed into a VW bug into a futuristic spaceship. Well, to the surprise of everyone, HasTak seems to have accepted the challenge, and belatedly made the Bumblebee we assumed we’d get in Siege, as a part of the Buzzworthy Bumblebee toyline, and it’s one that actually “does the thing,” i.e. look like he changes into one thing, while actually changing into something else.
Before moving on, I need to mention how strange of a line Buzzworthy Bumblebee is. It’s Target exclusive in the US, and Toys-R-us exclusive in Canada, and all of its releases keep being dropped into stores with no marketing, warning, or preamble (deliberately, according to Hasbro). Basically, it’s a line made up almost entirely of different Bumblebees from different Transformers continuities, and a few Bumblebee-adjacent characters. A large chunk of the line is just straight re-releases, or minor repaints of Studio Series, Cyberverse, Bumblebee Movie, and even old Robots in Disguise (2014) and Age of Extinction stuff, but once and awhile, they’ll drop something new into the mix, like this guy, who also has the War for Cybertron Trilogy logo on his packaging, marking him as basically being DLC for Siege. Regardless of the weird circumstances of his release, I’m interested in HasTak’s attempt to make this impossible design into reality.
Robot Mode
As the kids say, “they just tweeted it out.” Basically, he’s a pure G1 Cartoon Bumblebee, just with a few extra bits hanging off of him, and asides from those, he hews really closely to his cartoon animation model.
See for yourself!
The little roof-chest, complete with windows, feet that look like they form the front of a VW, with bumpers molded in, it’s all there. It’s not 100 percent his cartoon design, there’s extra details details around his stomach, and a few more panel lines here and there, but overall, this is a creative use of the fact that most of what we’re looking at is fake parts, since it means they got to tweak his proportions to be way more accurate to the cartoon than even the excellent Netflix Bumblebee could get. It makes me think of MP-45, the second Masterpiece G1 Bumblebee, and how it did the same thing, through fake parts.
Choose your preference: Cartoon-accuracy, or actually changing into the thing.
Speaking of that, the big concession to accuracy here, is, of course, the altmode panels hanging off of the sides of his lower legs, and forming a pretty big backpack.
He carries quite the burden.
There’s no ignoring these bits, they’re very visible, but in person, they’re less bothersome than you’d think. It helps that the ones on his legs lock down, and stay out of the way better than I expected. I do wish his backpack also locked down, it kind of hangs there on the end of a strut halfway up it, but this seems to have been done to keep it out of the way of his articulation, since you can rock it forwards or backwards as needed. The important thing is that he feels really solid, in hand, not panelly or fiddly.
Friendly vibes.
Again, the kibble makes me think of that second Masterpiece, which has a similar (albeit less pronounced) problem with parts hanging off his feet and backpack, but it feels more forgivable on this Bee, since he’s a fraction of the price, and those panels serve a better purpose, giving him a totally different non-VW altmode instead of reshelling him into a slightly-more-chibi-VW. That being said, I do wish the designers of this one had found a way to put those lower leg panels on the backs of his legs, instead of the sides. Even if they got in the way of his knees, they’d have immediately made his silhouette look better.
With cartoon accuracy comes cartoon scale.
While I’m on the subject of budget, there’s always a “price versus value” hullabaloo whenever a Small Guy comes out, and this guy came with one, but to me, he feels the same as the Hubcap/Cliffjumper/Netflix Bumblebee tooling: He’s hefty, he’s got a lot of engineering in him, it doesn’t feel like bad value, and they needed the cash to pull this trick off.
Relentlessly charming.
Since I didn’t organically talk about it, I’ll jump in here and say his headsculpt’s interesting. It’s not specifically the G1 cartoon design, or even the Siege cartoon design, it’s a bit wider and more bulbous, but it feels more correct for Sunbow Bumblebee than either of those designs, thanks to how friendly and chummy the vibe of him is. I like his little smile.
On his way to make friends!
After Netflix Bumblebee was rendered in an unusual (but nice-looking) honey-orange, this one goes back to a more traditional bright yellow, further adding to his cartoonishness. It’s a mix of yellow plastic, and yellow paint that’s been color-matched pretty well, and black plastic and paint. He’s got a few blue faux-windows on his chest (again, making him look specifically cartoony), a bright red Autobrand, and a nice silver face with blue eyes. I appreciate they painted the fake bumpers on his legs black, too. It helps sell the illusion that he might turn into a car.
“On Earth, they call this one the Van Damme!”
Like the previous Deluxe Bumblebee, this one’s madly poseable, coming with features like double knees (if you unclip the one panel on the back of each leg), feet that rock back and forth, gigantic ankle tilts, and a waist that works well thanks to that moveable backpack. He has nearly the same joints and range as the Netflix tooling, lacking only wrist swivels (whenever a Gens toy needs to fold their hands away, they skip them). And again, he’s impressively solid for a shellformer, and stable thanks to those big feet.
One Bumble that won’t stumble.
Speaking yet again of the Netflix tooling, they pulled the same trick as there (and as Studio Series 86 Hot Rod and Kingdom Rodimus Prime) of including a big pile of accessories to help add to the value. In Origin Bee’s case, he first comes with a black gun sculpted like a generic G1 cartoon pistol.
“I’m a Sweet Boy, but…”
Surprisingly, it isn’t based on the same design as the G1 Cartoon Pistol that came in the Centurion Accessory pack.
“I simply cannot choose!”
Next, he comes with a black rocket pack, seemingly inspired by the one he used in “Dinobot Island.”
This feels unwise.
He has a War for Cybertron accessory port on his back you can clip it onto, though it does introduce the problem of making his huge backpack even huger. Really, it seems more so designed to be passed off to the Netflix version. It actually fits onto that guy better, if you remove his back panel to plug it in.
“I’m sad that I’m flying.”
As a quick bit of toy science, I can confirm that while it works with both of them, it doesn’t look good on Earthrise Optimus (too small) or Siege Sideswipe (too low), so it doesn’t make the Centurion one obsolete.
Nope!
Also nope!
You can fit effect parts in the jets, though.
This Bee appreciates having wings!
Bee also has two more WFC accessory ports on the bottoms of his feet, and one on the side of each arm.
Call this his Energon Miner mode (combined with Powerdasher Zetar)
So, his last set of accessories is the strangest. He comes with five clear orange rods, with larger, q-tip-like ends on either sides.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
These are meant to be the “Conductors” full of energy that Bumblebee and Wheeljack were bringing back to Iacon in the cartoon’s first episode.
Essential supplies for the big rave back home.
It’s a clever idea, but it’s really not well-executed. Sure, they look nice enough, but the problem is that Bumblebee can’t really interact with them in any meaningful way. They can’t fit in his hands, they’ve got no pegs or ports to attach to him in any way, it’s almost impressive how non-interactive they are. The instructions tell you to have him physically grab and hug them in his arms, but it’s hard to get such an ad-hoc configuration to stay stable, so I’m inclined to just not use them.
This is a big pain to set up.
The best I can do is hand them to Earthrise Optimus and Kingdom Rodimus, since their opening and closing hands let them loosely grasp them.
They’re as baffled as I am.
I’d have been cool with fewer of these rods if they’d, say, made the ends removable so you could slide them into his hand, or something. As it stands, they’re a bit of a drag, especially after Netflix Bee’s clever deconstructable Bazooka.
The envy is real.
On the upside, as though it needed saying, there’s almost no point in comparing Skiff to Origin Bumblebee, the gap in quality is so hugely in Bumblebee’s favor.
It loops back around and makes me feel sorry for Skiff.
Heck, he runs circles around Skiff just on the basis of having shoulders that work properly, before getting into just how much nicer the sculpt itself is.
Transformation
This is the trick of Origin Bumblebee, the whole reason he exists, and they really pulled it off, though it requires him to be an almost complete shellformer to make it happen. Basically, his lower legs and backpack unfurl into a mass of panels that covers him like a tarp, to make his spaceship mode, which the rest of him does yoga to compress small enough to hide beneath that tarp.
That’s one flexible robot.
And yet, it manages to avoid the pitfalls of most shellformers: He’s not super difficult to transform, you don’t have to fight with the panels to get them to all stay flush (unlike the VW version of the Netflix tooling), and you’re mostly not in danger of panels popping off. I say mostly, because I’ve had one of his leg panels pop off if I’m not careful folding it along the ligature it’s mounted on, but it pops right back on, and doesn’t happen if I unfold it a specific way. Also, the two rearmost bits of spaceship panel, which sit on balljoints, would sometimes rather come off those balljoints than clip together, but to their credit, they seem to have “broken in” over time.
The troublesome panels, not clicking in.
In addition, a clever twist that I appreciate is that the robot chest folds up to make the front of the spaceship, giving it a real use outside of robot-mode visuals.
Spaceship Mode
You can just hear the stock sci-fi whooshing noise.
Origin Bumblebee takes a different tact than Skiff did, interpreting Bee’s saucer alternate mode as less wide, and more round. Looking at clips from the episode, it’s probably more accurate to the funky yellow UFO. So, design-wise, the big compromise to make this cute, circular thing happen is that from the top, he’s absolutely spiderwebbed with panel lines, thanks to the mass of individual pieces the saucer’s built out of.
Like someone hit a glass door with a hockey puck.
But this is a much easier-looking compromise than his robot mode, because the whole thing holds together really solidly and stably (as opposed to fragile and fiddly), and comes together nicely. I’d say the only wrinkle is those pesky two panels at the back have trouble lining up and smoothing down. Well, that thand there’s a couple of gaps above his front window. But overall, it looks good.
Considering the legal hurdles that make the Earth mode a rare thing, I’m in favor of this saucer showing up a little more often as a Bumblebee altmode.
So, in this mode, Bee’s almost entirely yellow, showing off the really good color-matching between the paint and plastic (well, it’s not perfect, but it’s impressively close). He’s got a little bit of grey on the front, a red Autobot symbol, and a clear blue window, and that’s it.
Do you need anything more, though?
He doesn’t do too much in this form, his big trick being existing. I do wish he had wheels, like Skiff did, especially since the show also depicted him as having wheels (which he lost one of when he got shot at).
Being able to wheel him around is Skiff’s only advantage in this form.
His only feature is three War for Cybertron ports up top, which you can clip his rocket pack and gun onto.
Call this “Run and Gun Mode.”
The energy rods, again, do nothing.
Well, he can use them with a little help from Zetar, again.
Overall
This is a bear riding a unicycle, you’re here to see it do the trick, and it certainly does the trick really well.
An average day on Cybertron.
I keep being reminded of that Masterpiece figure pulling off a similar trick for a more esoteric purpose, and this version of the trick working out a lot better. But more importantly, Origin Bumblebee goes beyond that to still manage to be a solid figure. The robot mode is better in hand than you’d think at first, doing pretty well at managing its kibble, and balancing it out with really good handfeel and articulation. And the fact that the transformation manages to not be nightmarish, or run into Shellformer Pitfalls, is nothing short of miraculous. The only thing I don’t like is how a big chunk of the accessories designed to inflate his perceived value don’t actually do anything. Because of that, I’ll admit that I think I like Netflix Bee a little better, but this is a surprisingly fun bot, and it’s a very arbitrary choice. Origin Bee’s way more impressive than I thought he’d be, and he’s got that endearingly cute spirit the character often embodies. In fact, since the Netflix one’s so difficult to get, and the next-best version of the tooling-as-Bumblebee is trapped in an expensive Worlds Collide four-pack, I’d call Origin Bumblebee the best mainline Bumblebee you can just go out and get, even putting the impressive trick of him aside.
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