Bot Reviews: Transformers: Studio Series Deluxe Offroad Bumblebee

The neat thing about the Studio Series line is that between going on for over ten waves (and counting!) and having a mission statement to specifically plug missing holes in people’s live-action movie collections, we often see a lot of unusual designs finally getting the plastic treatment.

Case and point: Offroad Bumblebee, based on a setpiece near the start of his solo movie where ‘Bee very briefly assumed the alternate mode of a Sector Seven army jeep to evade capture, and eventually face off against Blitzwing.

Bumblebee’s entire name is derived from him being a yellow VW Bug, and it was already a bit of a stretch to see him as a Camaro in previous films, so him turning into an alternate mode usually reserved for Hound or Brawn was certainly a novelty, on top of it being used in a particularly memorable tone-setting early-movie battle.

It’s much later than the rest of the world, but Offroad Bumblebee has finally showed up on store pegs here in Canada. As someone trying to complete a collection of Bumblebee movie figures, this was always going to be a must-grab to me, and to a lot of collectors who weren’t happy with his Studio Series VW Bug iteration, there was a question of whether this do-over would outdo him. So, let’s have a look.

Robot Mode

Bad news: Bee left me with a bad impression right out of the box, after one of his feet came off, and then a few moments later, a little panel on his backside came off, too. The good news is they were easy to put back on. But still, yeesh.

The sculpt on this figure’s still definitely movie Bumblebee, but with a few unique flourishes all to his own. Between the jeep patterns on his chest (which are fake, the real one’s underneath) and the wheels on his shoulders, he kind of gives off an old-fashioned look. They’ve never made a proper Hearts of Steel Bumblebee/Centurion figure, but this guy gives me similar vibes.

Compared to VW Bumblebee, he’s a lot cleaner, with no giant backpack, or door wings. He’s also, strangely, actually a hair bigger in scale, slightly taller, with features like his head and arms slightly upsized. Speaking of that, his headsculpt looks almost like the same CAD file as his previous version, just upsized a bit, which is a good, thing, since it’s a good-looking headsculpt.

In terms of movie accuracy, all of the important details are there, and his proportions feel right, save for his backpack, which is kind of funny. VW Bumblebee isn’t supposed to have door wings, but the toy does. Meanwhile, Offroad Bumblebee actually does have door wings in the movie, but the toy omits them. Still, if I had to pick between “too clean” and “too busy,” I’d rather have the former.

For colors, he’s very yellow, with dark grey as his secondary collor, and some painted silver, red and blue bits, plus some nice-looking transparent bits in his chest. There’s a little bit of a color discrepancy between the painted yellow and yellow plastic on him, but rather smartly, the color blocking on him avoids the two kinds of yellow really touching, making it harder to notice. He’s a little plain, but that plainness is pretty accurate.

So, a big issue with a lot of Studio Series stuff, to me, is handfeel, and Offroad Bee has that same problem. Basically, he’s composed of a lot of tiny panels mashed together instead of bigger chunks like Generations, so while he’s not exactly fragile, he feels kind of fiddly. Stuff can fall off if you’re not careful (like his balljointed feet or some of his back panels), and messing around with his lower legs too much can easily make them start to come apart and unfold. He’d not the most fragile, but it’s kind of dissatisfying to handle.

For poseability, he’s a bit more limited than I’d like, but there’s still plenty there. He’s got a balljointed head (and unlike VW Bee, it’s not restricted by his backpack) though making him look upwards unhinges his neck. His shoulders and elbows are oddly tight, but work well. There’s no wrist swivels, and the waist joint is a little bit blocked. He’s got hip and knee articulation, though the way his knees are constructed makes them look odd when bent, in that his actual knee comes apart, and there’s a tiny joint behind them. His feet are on balljoints, though they’re too restricted to ankle-tilt. Luckily, the size of these feet keep him stable.

Bee’s got a lone accessory in the form of a brown piece that pegs into his right arm (it won’t fit over the left one)  to form his gun-arm, a solution that works much better than VW Bee’s “replace the whole arm” system. It’s supposed to be able to stash on his back, but I can’t make heads or tails of what the instructions are trying to tell me to do. It’s the accessories that he lacks that bug me. Studio Series has a habit of splitting up a character’s complete set of gear between multiple releases of that character. So, 2007 Optimus came with his gun, while Revenge of the Fallen Optimus came with his swords, for example. With Bumblebee, seeing that he lacked his mask and sword, I assumed he’d be backwards compatible with the ones that came with VW Bee, but that’s only half-true.

To their credit, he can use VW Bee’s sword just fine, on either hand, something that was specifically sculpted in. In fact, he can use it on either arm.

 

On the other hand, between his slightly-larger head, and the fact that his looks-like-it’s-removable face is either glued or screwed in, he has no way of masking up. This is something that bugs me, because minute for minute, Offroad Bumblebee’s little role onscreen mostly involved him being masked (as you can see in the screenshots uptop), so the figure not being able to do that is a bit of an omission.

Transformation to Vehicle Mode

VW Bee was more or less a game of “unfold the backpack and build the car up around him.” This guy seems like he’d be less of a panel-former, but in practice it’s “pull the panels out from inside his chest and legs, and build a jeep with them” The problem here is how fiddly these panels, and the transformation is. A lot of things need to be aligned just-so, or specifically fit into small, out of the way tabs. It’s not a difficult transformation per se, but you spend just as much time afterwards fiddling and adjusting and massaging bits of him until it all fits together, along with noticing tabs you previously didn’t see.

One thing that did trip me up: Make sure to lift his head up along its little swivel before folding it away, or it won’t fit in its storage space.

On the upside, it’s a simple enough transformation that I was able to do it without the instructions after the first go. But even after completing it, I still find myself stopping to readjust panels to fit better.

Vehicle Mode

The star of the show is this unusual alternate mode for a Bumblebee, that of a very stock-looking army jeep, but in Bee’s trademark yellow. Its mundanity and smoothness is oddly appealing to me.

That being said, I wish it was a cleaner alternate mode. His robot arms and hands are clearly visible on either side of it, with no attempt to hide them away, and it’s not a good look.

It also comes across as looking almost too plain, being almost entirely solid yellow with bits of brown, with only a tiny pair of red headlights in the back to break up the colors.

Still, there’s details I like, like having actual clear windows, and a little steering wheel in the Driver’s seat.

I wish the chairs were just a smidge bigger though, because Titan Masters almost fit in them, but are a little too big, and having them be able to roll around in it would have vastly increased the fun in my books.

One little thing that I do appreciate here is that they made sure to give him enough ground clearance for his wheels to roll nicely. One thing I don’t appreciate is, once again, his weapon is supposed to stash beneath his alternate mode, but doing so involved aligning a bunch of tiny panels in a way that’s almost impossible, so I typically don’t bother.

 

Overall

To tell you the truth, this guy’s a bit of a letdown to me. He’s not bad, but he’s underwhelming. I like the idea behind him conceptually, with his unusual alternate mode, and the design of the robot mode, but as a figure, he’s a bit too fiddly for my tastes in both handfeel and transformation, and is missing important elements of his onscreen appearance. I was hoping he’d be an improvement on VW Bee, and while he’s got a cleaner robot mode, the rest feels like a lateral move. I picked him up, as I’m going completist on Bee movie figures, but if that’s not you, or you’re not interested in owning someone for the upcoming Studio Series Blitzwing to fight, there’s not much here to recommend.