There used to be this thing in Transformers collecting called the “Furman Bump.” It’s what would happen when longtime Transformers scribe Simon Furman would take a minor character, and arbitrarily decide to give them a central role in one of his Transformers comics, thus turning a random D-list action figure from the back end of G1 (or the early years of Beast Wars) into a sought-after character. In the last decade, James Roberts, Nick Roche, John Barber and Brian Ruckley have all done the same, really. Nightbeat was one of the first examples of this effect in action.
G1 Nightbeat.
Nightbeat was one of the second series of smaller Headmasters released in 1988, long after the cartoon was over, but while the Marvel comics were still running, and under Furman, became an important, central character in multiple stories within the comic.
This pretty much set the tone.
As written, Nightbeat was a detective of the hardboiled crime-solver sort. He’d strike a chord with fans, become popular, and would get resurrected in the 21st century for Furman’s rebooted IDW Comics, followed by James Roberts later scooping him up and adding him to the crew of the Lost Light.
Still mentally wearing that trenchcoat.
Still, he was a bit too obscure to get a lot of merchandise. Outside of his G1 figure, he’s mostly been represented by random repaints, to varying degrees of fidelity (and one body-less Titan Master). The Thrilling 30 release is one of these mold-reuses, and it’s the one that tries the hardest to replicate his G1 self, even if he’s not a Headmaster (to be fair he was basically never shown being one in fiction, even in Marvel.)
The original release of the tooling.
Thrilling 30 was the 2014 line of Transformers Generations, done up as a 30th anniversary celebration for the franchise, and had a bit of everything in it. Nightbeat was a retooling of that line’s deluxe Bumblebee, who was in turn based on a Bumblebee design in IDW’s comics that was essentially a G1/Bay movie hybrid. Let’s see how he’s held up, both as Nightbeat, and as a figure in general.
Robot Mode
You know, the biggest reason this works is that the Bumblebee body didn’t have much going on to make it specifically Bumblebee-esque, being more of a generic car-former body. And in that context, it does kind of work as Nightbeat. Sure, outside of the new head, the sculpt hasn’t really got much of anything Nightbeat-specific about it, but it’s not ill-suited either.
A meeting of the minds (a Headmaster that shouldn’t be one, a non-Headmaster that should be one, and a proper Headmaster).
He’s got a chest that looks like a split-apart car hood, the sides of the car front as shoulderpads, with car-door-wings on his back like the classic Autobot cars, plus the trunk and back bumpers on his shins, another G1 carformer staple. It doesn’t quite look quite right as Nightbeat, but it does look good, and this was at the tail-end of an era of Generations when slavish design loyalty wasn’t really a thing, it was more about creating new spins on characters.
As mentioned above, the head’s new, and it does the heavy lifting when it comes to converting him to Nightbeat. It’s accurate to his Marvel and IDW comics look, meaning he’s got a blue helmet with black antenna, a yellow face, and a red visor. The best part of it is the hint of a smile, though. It (and the head in general) really tie the whole figure together.
Snooping as usual, I see.
Another thing I’m really fond of is his colors. He’s mostly blue and black, with bits of yellow, red, and silver as paint apps. It’s an interesting kind of blue his plastic is cast in, kind of a Blue Raspberry looking shade, with kind of a pearly sheen to the whole thing that gives it a unique look to it. As for his paint apps, he’d look more like G1 Nightbeat if he had a solid yellow chest, instead of the blue, with a small yellow divider and the Autobrand, but I like how this design looks. Parts of the sculpt, like his waist, feel like they ought to be painted, but they blocked the colors out enough that he avoids looking plain. One place they could have omitted paint from is his eyes, though, which look to have been designed with lightpiping in mind, but were painted over on both the front and back.
Nightbeat, and the mystery of the messy backpack.
While he generally feels solidly-built in hand, one thing that doesn’t work about the design is his unruly backpack of car parts that doesn’t want to stay locked in. The top panel’s technically supposed to tab in at the back of his neck, but it comes off at the drop of a hat, and the lower of the two panels isn’t even secured that way. It’s tight enough that the backpack doesn’t flop around, but still, it’s ungainly, and most modern Deluxes would find a way to compress it somehow. Similarly, the bits of car bumper on his lower thighs can’t decide whether or not to move with the knees or stay where they are. It all gives him a slightly messy feeling. On the upshot, his shoulder panels feel fine, when I’d have expected them to feel loose, and thanks to his big feet, he’s nice and stable.
Mystery kick!
Nightbeat’s articulation is okay for the time he was released, meaning he’s missing a waist joint and wrists, but he does have balljointed ankles. His elbows are oddly tight, compared to the rest of his joints, feeling almost like they’re geared, but I’d rather have them too tight than too lose. The rest of his joints feel good, and he can kick pretty well thanks to those big stompers (and thanks to those ankle joints, can point his toes). On top of that, the fact that his hands are sculpted in a slightly-open position means that he’s unusually expressive when posed, in a way that works for a detective character.
Thanks to those hands, he contemplates well.
The other thing that was explicitly Bumblebee-inspired about this tooling was its odd-looking “stinger” weapons. Basically, they’re two yellow and blue half-cylinders, with clear blue “stinging” effects on the ends, and rotating black handles.
He never was the action hero type.
Personally, I think they look kind of awkward no matter what you do with them. If they’re kept as two separate weapons, they look kind of thin and insubstantial when handheld.
I like to pretend it’s a flashlight, since he’s a detective and all.
They can be pegged together into a single flashlight-looking apparatus, though, but the double-handles and general size and shape of it just look odd to me. I wish he’d come with a more conventional weapon, myself.
Turns out he’s compatible with most modern War for Cybertron weapons.
On the upside, you can peg them into holes on the sides of his lower legs, and they look like he’s deploying jets.
On his way to solve your girl’s mystery.
Transformation
This is a pretty great transformation, actually. I was able to do it from muscle memory after not having picked him up for a long time, since it generally feels good to do. Basically, you pull his torso up, unfold his backpack, fold his legs up, flip his shoulder panels up, and snap it all together.
Snug as a Nightbug in a Nightrug.
It’s a bit shellformery, but it’s nice and easy to do, and all fits together well. One particular bit of engineering that I’m fond of is the way his open hands fit around his waist when you compress them.
Car Mode
Come to think of it, “Nightbug” isn’t a bad alternate name, considering who he’s retooled from.
Just like the robot mode, this isn’t quite accurate to Nightbeat’s curvier, Porsche-inspired G1 altmode, but it does happen to be a really nice-looking car, and I’ll admit I’m weirdly fond of it. It helps that, again, despite being a Camaro-adjacent design, it’s not very Bumblebee-esque. It’s just a sturdy-feeling, nice looking sports car.
*insert snarky caption about the Lost Lighters never transforming here*
In this form, he’s almost entirely colored in that shiny, otherworldly raspberry shade of blue that I’m really fond of, and he’s got cool-looking white-outlined red flames on his doors. In fact, he’s got a surprising amount of paint apps in this mode, between his yellow bumpers (and lower doors), his silver-painted rims, silver front headlights, back grill, and red rear headlights.
It’s surprising that backside isn’t barren.
This figure was released at a time when Generations was struggling to square its paint budgets with rising materials costs, and so there were a lot of car modes out there that left paint apps like these off, so it felt (and really, still feels) like a bit of a luxury to have so many details picked out. I’d say the only thing here that doesn’t work is the rear windows, which are opaque, instead of the clear blue of the rest of them. They tried to fake them by painting them blue, but blue paint on a blue body means the app is barely visible.
For features, this car mode rolls really nicely. Outside of that, the ports on his feet migrated to the back of the car’s sides, and you can mount his stingers there to turn them into blasters, or jets (which definitely look better).
For when you need to do more than just peel out.
Overall
Holmes and Watson, if Watson never shut up.
I’ve said this a few times already, but while it doesn’t look right for Nightbeat, it looks good. This is a very generic carformer design, and honestly, with a different head, it could be almost any random late-G1 Autobot (or Decepticon) sports-car-former, and in fact, it has been (see Goshooter and Carzap, two other uses). But it’s a pretty decent generic body, with a really nice car mode, good transformation. A shame the robot mode’s a bit awkward to handle, and the weapon is strange. The whole package is good, but not great, and was definitely being outclassed by other Thrilling 30 Deluxes at the time. As a stand-in for the character of Nightbeat, it gets the job done, but could’ve been better. If you can find him for a fair price, he’s fun enough, and looks good on my Lost Light shelf, but I think it’s high time he got an update, maybe one that remembers he’s a headmaster.
