Dave's Human Alliance Rant Wave 1 Bumblebee with Sam Witwicky Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/HA1 The Human Alliance line gives us larger vehicles with sorta-to-scale human (or mechanoid) figures that can ride inside. The vehicles themselves are roughly 1:24 scale, but tend to end up taller than Alternators in robot mode. They come with attachment points in robot mode that let the human figure ride in various ways, plus the vehicle modes have proper interiors. Wave 2 is more of Bumblebee, plus a shortpacked Sideswipe with Sgt. Epps. Later waves will include bonus Scout-sized Arcee components to compensate for smaller vehicle modes (Mudflap and Skids will be to scale with the other HA cars, and they're about 2/3 as big). As an amused aside, Hot Wheels is selling a 1970 Chevelle station wagon in yellow with teh same rally stripes on the hood as Bumblebee's. It's Bumblebee after Sam settles down and raises a family! ;) CAPSULE Bumblebee with Sam Witwicky: Shows some "first time invokes a demon" flaws along with the usual issues of working in yellow plastic, but it's got a rather forgiving design while retaining complexity. And the Sam figure is surprisingly good. Recommended. $29.96 at Walmart. RANT Packaging: Like the Screen Battles sets that these are the descendants of, the packaging emphasizes display-without-opening, with a larger clear area (most of the top, most of the front, some of the sides) and a fancier non-rectangular shape. The sides angle in slightly for an inverted keystone effect, and then the top side edges are truncated. You can set one on the side and it won't fall over, but you can't stack anything on top of it that way. The box is 11.5" (29cm) wide at the bottom, 10.25" (26cm) wide near the top just before the truncation, and 8.5" (22cm) wide at the very top. 5.5" (14cm) deep and 6.5" (16.5cm) tall, with the windowed part being a little shallower and shorter. The clear part is about 3/4 of the top and front, and a little bit on each side. A large faction symbol is molded into the top, and the top of the front has a shallow rectangular indentation in which a sticker with "HUMAN ALLIANCE" in white on clear is placed. The front of the card part extends up at the left with a cutout of the robot mode with Sam resting on Bumblebee's right arm. Sam's head (in his usual vaguely confused and contused expression) pops up on the right. Along the bottom are the choking hazard warning and logo, with each character's name below the relevant cut-out and "ACTION FIGURE Interacts with ROBOT" between the names. On the right side (your right, when the front of the box is towards you) has Bumblebee in an action pose from the movie with Sam in the foreground, "HUMAN ALLIANCE" on the truncated part and "BUMBLEBEE" just below that. The Autobot symbol is in the lower right. On the left side is a crouching Megatron with a larger Sam (presumably looking up at the Megatron, um, behind him), with "HUMAN ALLIANCE" at the top and "SAM WITWICKY" below. The same Cybertronian glyph used on the combiner packaging is in the lower left. The underside has cosells for Voyager Ironhide and Starscream, plus the usual legalese and ownership statements. The back is dominated by the robot mode on the left an the bio note over the car mode on the right. There's a small inset in the lower left showing how Sam can ride behind BB's shoulder, while the main robot pick has him in a seat on BB's arm. The main robot picture shows the battle mask in place. The vehicle is still called "Camaro Concept" rather than 2010 Camaro. Callouts on the robot mode: "Battle mask slides into place!" "Launching 'plasma pulse!'" "Human ally rides on arms or shoulder!" and "Flip out cannons!" Callout on the vehicle mode: "Human allies ride inside (additional figures sold separately)!" This implies that human-only packs were at least considered, although as far as I know the only way to get other humans is to get other Human Alliance sets. Unlike most "nice on display" packaging, it's rather easy to open up. Getting the outer cardstock shell off is easy enough, just cut one piece of tape on either of the upper sides. The instructions are loose between this and the core. Two more pieces of tape hold on the clear plastic (top back and front bottom). Two ties hold Bumblebee in, and you don't even have to remove them entirely, just untwist and loosen a little. Sam's a little trickier, being sealed into a clamshell with tape and rubber bands, but as long as you have a knife or good fingernails it's pretty easy to free him too. AUTOBOT: BUMBLEBEE Altmode: Camaro Concept Licensor: GM Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: None Function: Bodyguard Motto: "We all need somebody to lean on." BUMBLEBEE and Sam were best friends almost from the moment they first met face to face. As they learned more about one another, that connection grew deeper and deeper. Now, whether Same is behind the wheel, or standing side by side with his friend, they work together as a team. Against BUMBLEBEE and his human friend, no DECEPTICON stands a chance. STR 6 INT 8 SPD 6 END 5 RNK 5 COUR 10 FRB 3 SKL 9 Avg Kinda oversells the benefits of partnership, yes? Vehicle Mode: It's a golden yellow 2010 Camaro with black rally stripes, like pretty much every other Bumblebee toy out in the movie line, what more to say? :) It's the right size to play with the Alternators, and generally well sculpted, but the side mirrors are oddly blade-like. 7" (18cm) long, it's actually 1:27 scale rather than the 1:24 scale of Alternators, but the 2010 Camaro is a fairly large car at 190" (4.8m) long to begin with, so it fits in decently with Alternators. It's the usual Bumblebee colors, with clear blue windows. The doors open, although they're a bit tricky to get all the way closed, and the steering wheel turns. No hood or trunk. Amusingly, one of the secondary weapons for the robot mode seems to take the place of the passenger airbag, a six-barrel launcher that can rotate up to shoot the passenger if they get feisty. Folded down, it doesn't look like a part of the dash, although I suppose you could call it a cupholder. Looking inside the rear window just shows robot bits, but the front interior is decent. The windows are, as mentioned, clear blue plastic, but there's no other clear plastic (such as on headlights or taillights). The wheels are black plastic, and the side mirrors are medium gray plastic painted entirely yellow. The rest of the outer shell is golden yellow plastic. Inside, the steering wheel is a lighter yellow plastic, although the lightness may just be a result of using a thinner piece. The seats are golden yellow plastic while the insides of the doors, the dashboard and the section between the seats are medium gray. The center of the dash is a more silvery gray plastic. The main paint used is gloss black, for the rally stripes. The front grille, airscoop, foglamp pits and the underside of the rear bumper are matte black. Silver is used on the headlights, foglamps, wheel hubs, molded "Camaro" logos on the sides, door handles, gas cap, exhaust pipes and the rear molded Chevy logo. The side mirrors are not painted silver. The molded front grille Chevy logo has a red outline and the taillights are bright red. The license plate is white with black "4NZZZ454" and a red bar across the top rather than "California". Ground clearance is a little iffy, you need to get all the underside stuff pressed up into place properly in order for the car to roll smoothly. The missiles are clipped under the doors, but aren't a problem. From the side, the missiles are visible, as are the robot toes sticking out the back. Transformation: The instructions say to pull the front end pieces forward and rotate them down first, but they tend to pop back easily so you might as well wait for last to do them. It's otherwise not too hard to transform this without instructions. Open the doors and undo the pegs between the bits under the doors and the rear fenders, pop up the rear window, and you can pull the legs out of the way. You should probably remove the missiles first, they don't really get in the way but they'll pop off easily as bits flex. There's several optional weapons you can fold out or leave hidden, including that "cupholder" which becomes a missile rack over his right shoulder and a gun that flips out of the middle of his hood piece behind his head. Oddly, the instructions don't show the last bit of transforming the kneecaps until the end of the "various ways to place Sam on the robot mode" instructions, as if Bumblebee only gets proper kneecaps when Sam is riding in his backpack. For all the various panels and pegs in getting the vehicle mode back together, I'll give it this: there's such a thing as "close enough". A lot of movie designs suffer from the problem that if you get close but not exact, you often have to undo several steps before you can make the tiny adjustments necessary (i.e. Stratosphere's arms), or the quality control may ensure that your particular copy of the toy can NEVER get close enough (i.e. my Mudflap). But with Bumblebee, as long as you get it more or less in the right places, all the panels and pegs can be gotten into place without having to back up and realign something that's gotten hidden inside. Everything fits snugly when you're done (it's impressive how the abdomen and shoulder pieces mesh, for instance), but there's enough play in all the parts that it's merely involved, not frustrating. [Later note: the front wheels fold out for transformation, but have chain drives molded onto them, so they can be driven when angled out.] Robot Mode: Well, it's Bumblebee with right arm ending in blaster... and chairs on his forearms. They swivel back to be a bit more out of the way, but they don't really look like the proper armor details. I am impressed that they got the thigh armor out of actual vehicle panels, though, rather than faked up extra pieces. While about the size of an Alternator in vehicle mode, he stands 7.5" (19cm) tall at the head, a head taller than even Mirage, the tallest of the Alternators. If you count the highest point on the toy (the behind-the-head cannon when deployed) he's just shy of 8" (20cm). The top of his helmet is a separate slide-able piece that comes down as his battle mask, but it's kinda floppy when deployed and hard to get moving without completely popping it off. The results aren't really worth the bother, although it's nice to see them trying to integrate the feature. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say there's no silver plastic on this toy. There's a few bits that are lighter and more silvery than the other gray plastic (such as the middle of the dash, the interior of the shins and a piece on the inside of the chest that seems to act as a structural buttress), but all the actual silver is very thoroughly painted yellow or gray plastic. The ones I can be sure of are all yellow plastic, although it'd make sense for the pelvis to be gray. Dark-to-medium gray plastic is used for the head, missiles, most of the launcher, the "cupholder" weapon, the thumbs, the thighs, the feet, the "skeleton" of the lower legs, and most of the interior of the torso. The battle mask is yellow plastic, and pretty much all the other robot parts are one shade or another (again, could be just a thickness issue) of yellow plastic. Blue lightpiping. The pelvis may or may not be the silvery gray plastic, it's hard to tell without scraping away with a knife. The helmet part of the head is painted yellow with a red Autobot symbol on the crest. Gunmetal is used on the battle mask vents with silver on the outer layers of the face. The license plate is printed on the pelvis and matches the car mode's with the usual bending. Pretty much every bit of other paint unique to the robot mode is either silver (pelvis, abdomen, much of the left forearm and the left ringers, about 2/3 of the right arm cannon, all of the over-the-head cannon) and gunmetal (upper arm details, kneecaps and shins). The head is on a ball joint but mostly just turns, and the waist is a smooth swivel. The shoulders are universal joints, with the armor and the transformation kibble blocking motion a little. Both arms have upper arm swivels and hinge elbows intended to bend both ways, since the arms flip over in order to let the vehicle seats be used. They bend farther in the "non chair" direction, though. The cannon arm has no other articulation (the front barrel itself swings aside for transformation, but this isn't useful articulation), but the left wrist is a universal joint, plus the thumb and finger-chunk are each hinged. The under-the-door missile holders are hinged if you need to move them a bit out of the way. The hips are smooth universal joints, there's swivels just above each hinge knee. There's a bunch of transformation hinges inside each shin that can be used for fine adjustment. The ankles are hinged, and the feet have two heel spurs (the overall shape of the foot is like a Y with the single point forward), one of which has a transformation hinge that gives you a little side to side adjustment for getting the full foot length on the table. The doors have single-click hinges that are intended to raise them up into position, but you can also click them down for "sad Bumblebee" poses. Human Attachment: There's four places to attach Sam or another human, three of which are in the instructions. The seats are on the forearms, as mentioned earlier, so you simply rotate the arms so that the seats are up rather than down and sit the human in them. The left arm seat has a pair of guns that flip up and over to flank the human's head, or they can fold down further to act as a harness. A little platform attached to the inside of the roof has two peg holes for the human's feet, letting the figure stand over the right shoulder, behind the cupholder weapon. There's even little handles on the cupholder weapon for the human to grip. It's rather hard to get both feet on the pegs unless you have tiny fingers. Finally, there's a peg on the left hand, on the final joint of the middle finger, so the human can either be cupped in the hand using the back peghole, or stand on the hand using one of the foot holes. Sam Witwicky: Shia LeBeouf is 5'10" tall, give or take half an inch, depending on what website you believe. The figure is 60mm (a little under 2.5") tall, making it about 1:30 scale, closer to the Deluxe cars. For reference, to be properly in scale with Bumblebee, Sam would need to be 66mm tall. But since you can't make wall thicknesses to scale without having an eggshell of a toy, compromises must be made. For a small figure, it's pretty well made, and the look of Dull Surprise on the face perfectly captures Sam. The two torso pieces are made of rigid black plastic, the joints (shoulder, hip, knee) are made of denim-colored plastic, and the head and limbs are all rubbery caucasian fleshtone plastic with extensive painting. The sleeved parts of the arms are dipped in black, the legs are mostly painted denim with black shoes that have gray stripes and soles. You have to look inside the peg holes of the feet to even see the original plastic color. The pelvis is also painted denim. The shoulders, hips and knees are all universal joints, with the swivel at the top and the hinge below. The head is pegged on and swivels. The connection between chest and abdomen is either another universal joint or a ball joint, mostly turning but able to wiggle forward and back some. The hands are a little small for it, but they can hold Lego or Mega Blok weapons with a little stretching. There are 2mm peg holes in the feet and on the back, to fit onto corresponding pegs on various parts of Bumblebee (chairs on arms and stand inside the back as shown in the instructions, plus his left hand as not shown in the instructions). Additionally, Sam's hands can sort of grip the windshield wipers in car mode to let him do a T.J. Hooker and ride the hood. If you're reasonably careful, you can get both hands to grip the steering wheel when he's pegged into the driver's seat. As an amusing side note, Mega Blok minifigs (like the Spartan from Halo Wars) can be crammed into the seat, just barely. They're significantly shorter than Sam, but all the loss is in the legs. UNSC's jackin' his ride! Overall: Oh, there's some negatives here. The arm-chairs are a bit obvious, the battle mask doesn't work that well, and there's the usual problems with trying to match yellow paint (on the head) to yellow plastic. But even without making "first try" allowances, it's a good toy, and a worthy successor to the Alternators line. As an aside, I've seen a fair amount of complaining that we're paying $30 for a $20 Alternators toy with a dinky Sam figure. Well, there's a couple of things to keep in mind here: if Alternators were still around now they'd probably be $25, Bumblebee is a lot less frustrating than the average Alternator, and the dinky figure is pretty good for its size. So I don't feel ripped off at all. Dave Van Domelen, Marvel Crossovers Iron Man/Spider-Man combiner is next on the docket.