Bot Reviews: Transformers: Studio Series Deluxe B-127/Bumblebee (Transformers One)

Yes, the “Badassitron” thing was cringe. That was the *point.* The funniest use of it in the entirety of Transformers One was when Bee said it to Elita, she no-sold it, and after an awkward pause, he repeated the joke.

Bee’s whole thing was that he hadn’t had anyone to talk to in a very long time, and was full of unfiltered social energy. Heck, he was pretty much the same character as the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog was in his first movie. Also, “A.A. Tron” made me laugh, too. Sue me.

Either way, though, me getting the Studio Series version of Transformers One’s possibly least-liked cast member was, admittedly, an exercise in box-checking, which is why it took me a year to grab him (I had a giftcard left over from Christmas). And it’s always the unexpected guys that impress me, I’ve found, because, spoiler alert, this guy turned out to be pretty solid. Let’s dig a little deeper, and figure out why.

Robot Mode

You’d think this guy would be way shorter, like other modern “Deluxe Minibots” like Gears, Beachcomber, and, well, other Bumblebees, but that’s not the case! Sure, he’s a bit on the short side, but he’s only a half-head shorter than last week’s Deluxe, Junkion Jalopy.

The other thing about OneBee is that he’s kind of stout, and wide-looking. They could retool him into a new version of Brawn, and it would fit his proportions.

It’s what he looked like in the movie, too! Well, okay, he was a little more svelte, but not by much, and it’s mostly down to the figure itself giving him a bit of a backpack, as well as car-mode mass around his limbs. But he’s pretty closely screen-accurate otherwise, with the main points of deviation being a chest that has an extra chunk of car hood on it, and some odd little pipes around his shins, not sure where they got those details.

Accuracy aside, though, he’s a good little Cybertronian robot, all rounded surfaces and techy details. Stuff like the car wheels on his shoulders, and the tapered look of his backpack feel very deliberate. Similarly, they managed a design with no visible hollowness.

One little design trick I like is that he’s got these flat screwheads that are a part of the figure’s construction, and their placement on his arms and feet makes them blend in as a bit of Real Robot-type styling.

His face is kind of funny, though. It’s screen-accurate, sure, but they gave him this pursed-lipped expression, like he’s doing the Kermit Scrunch. Whatever he’s looking at, it’s bothering him.

For colors, they settled on a kind of darker golden-yellow as his main tone. It’s an interesting choice, and it suggests the kind of golden sunset lighting a lot of the film was done in, like how Optimus Prime’s Studio Series figure looked.

Beyond that, he’s got different dark grays in plastic and paint for his highlights, as well as some blue and silver paint for his headlights, eyes and face. It all looks pretty accurate to the film’s deco, save for the figure missing some panel-lining in his sculpted, well, panel lines. Importantly, it all looks good.

It’s his build quality that particularly impresses me, because the Transformers One Studio Series Deluxes have had a bad run with that, with Megatron as the only one so far that wasn’t fiddly, and didn’t have parts that came off easily. Well, Bee stands alongside Megatron as another good one. His backpack and chest stay pegged in, nothing on him feels like it’s going to come off, all of his joints are nice and sturdy, and he’s got a feeling of satisfying solidity to him. It’s one of those things that’s hard to say much about, but trust me, he feels good.

Bee’s articulation’s similarly pretty swank. I’m especially impressed with the industrial-strength ankle tilts they gave him right above his huge feet. Past that, he’s got swivelling knees and thighs, ball-jointed hips, a swivel waist, ball-jointed shoulders, swivels on his biceps, and a ball-jointed head.

For his accessories and features, there was something that pleasantly took me by surprise: You can take the knives out. So, among Bee’s accessories are a pair of stumpy guns that fit over his hands via 5-millimeter handles, to simulate his hands morphing into weapons. They’re colored yellow, and painted silver, and both work and look good, so long as you don’t look undeneath them, which exposes his hands, and some hollow parts.

These blasters have been consistently photographed with his solid blue Knife Hands melee weapons sticking out of them, and I’d assumed they were permanently affixed to them. Nope, you can take them out of there, to give him plain old gun-hands, and you can pop the knives back in when he wants to get stabby.

That said, you can’t fit anything else in the rectangular ports on the guns, but the knives themselves can be held in his hands, if you want to get a little too disturbingly real.

It’s the little bonuses that make this guy.

One of those bonuses is that Bee’s got a solid black, curved laser rifle, of the kind used by the Death Trooper soldiers in the film, and repeatedly stolen by the heroes, like the Stormtrooper Blasters in A New Hope.

Elita came with one of these, too, though Bee’s is a different tooling.

The differences are that this one’s just the one solid color, and doesn’t have the inexplicably jointed handle. It does have a 4-millimeter peg on the side, which means it can conveniently mount on the ports underneath his forearms, if you want.

The downside to these ports, though, is that they’re only 4-millimeter, so he’s locked out of interacting with the modern 5-millimeter ecosystem.

Personally, I’m just going to give this weapon to Optimus, since he didn’t come with a ranged weapon, and Bee’s already got two of them.

When it comes to weapon storage, meanwhile, you can plug the big gun onto, well, Bee’s butt. More sensibly, his hand-cannons can fit into rectangular slots on his backpack.

They’re meant to just kinda de-manifest in-universe, but I always appreciate non-diegetic storage solutions like this one.

Also, those slots on his back can be used to mount the jetpack that comes with Elita-1, a bit of side-compatibility I continue to be impressed with, considering how she came out long after Bee, Prime and Megs.

Transformation

This is the best Transformation out of all the Studio TFOne guys so far, bar none. I can instantly muscle-memory how it goes, it’s all about moving big chunks around, everything works, and everything tabs in easily.

It’s particularly neat to me how his lower legs split in half and unfold, so there’s even a bit of cleverness here.

Again, there’s not much to say other than “it works, and it’s fun.”

Vehicle Mode

Bee changes into a swoopy Cybertronian race car, same as his War for Cybertron and Bee Movie iterations. The funny thing about this sculpt is that it kind of gives me Batmobile vibes, for some reason? I think it’s the combination of a grille and headlights that look kind of like a mean face, and the two fin-like projections at the back.

Someone should digibash what this would look like in black.

Either way, it’s a good-looking tron-adjacent Future Car. And hey, it turns out that those mysterious pipes on his robot mode legs were a vehicle mode detail. What isn’t is the fact that there’s a noticeable gap in the car’s midsection when viewed from the side, a detail the similarly-scaled Prime Changer Bumblebee avoids, but ehhh. It’s a Cybertronian altmode, it can be whatever.

Same goes for the transformation hinges on the car’s top-rear section. Close enough, and good-looking on its own merits.

For colors, he’s still the same golden yellow and silvery gray, with the his highlights being a bit more concentrated, and less scattered, including a signature gray stripe down the middle of the car, and some blue headlights. Like the robot mode, it’s decently film-accurate, just missing some panel-lining, and with a bit of extra gray on the roof due to the way the plastic’s sprued out.

Also like the robot mode, the build quality here’s impressive, with everything staying tabbed in place, and the car rolling really well.

For features, it’s all about the weapon storage again, with a blaster that can peg onto either side of the car, and HandKnifeGuns that can tab onto the car’s roof.

Sure, it isn’t anything from the film, but makes for an impressive attack mode.

Overall

This feels like a weirdly short review without a lot to say, but it’s all positive stuff, because B-127’s a startlingly good Deluxe. Out of the four Studio Series Transformers One Deluxes I have, I’d still say Megatron’s a bit better, but this guy’s a very close second.

He just…does everything really well. He’s well-engineered, solidly built, has a bunch of fun accessories, is a good likeness to the movie, all the things you’d want. I’d say the only reason one might skip out on him is that there’s a lot of Bumblebees available in general, and you might have found this particular iteration of the character annoying in the film he was from. But hey, it’s better than how the Optimus I raved about last month was from the worst Michael Bay movie. So, yeah, don’t sleep on this one like I did. He’s a really sharp Deluxe, and well worth getting yet another Bumblebee over.