Dave's Transformers Earthrise Netflix/Walgreens Deluxe Rant Bumblebee (heavy retool of Cliffjumper) Elita-1 (retool of Arcee) Bluestreak (retool of Smokescreen/Prowl) Permalink: https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeNet2 Not reviewed: Impactor, Red Alert, Wheeljack (all just redecos). Impactor and Red Alert are the Siege molds, not updated for Earthrise. Red Alert and Wheeljack are scuffed and dirtied, Impactor is just slightly different shades of purple and yellow than used in the previous two versions. https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeE1 - Cliffjumper mold https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeE2 - Arcee and Smokescreen It's kinda weird having Bluestreak as the store exclusive "redeco" given that he's the most "stock" version of the mold...no police bits, no racing airdam. Of course, just having Smokescreen as the lone non-exclusive was also pretty weird, since Prowl is kinda the Big Trademark of the Not-sun family. CAPSULES $20 price point. Bumblebee: Original mold was recommended, this is an extensive retool with VW licensing, and it looks quite good in vehicle mode. Recommneded, but scalper-bait. Elita-1: Original mold was mildly recommended. This isn't really any better, and there were some odd late-game color changes likely forced on them by budget issues. The only good point is that it's finally a kind of show-accurate version of the character. Mildly recommended. Bluestreak: "Original" mold was recommended. This is based on the original knees/roof tooling, rather than the revised tooling found on Prowl, but otherwise has the Prowl head and chest. Same boot panel problem as with Prowl, annoyingly, but otherwise good. Recommended. RANTS Packaging: Bumblebee and Elita-1 are in standard Netflix Deluxe boxes (with the Siege "movie poster" art replaced by Earthrise, in similarly black and white and red), although interestingly Bumblebee has no sigil. Maybe this indicates how he's not really a full member of the Autobots in-story, or maybe it's just a licensing issue limiting how many competing logos can appear on the package alongside the VW logo. Smokescreen is in standard Earthrise packaging with nothing to indicate it's any sort of exclusive. No techspecs or other information on the Netflix instructions. And while he otherwise looks like a regular Earthrise release, Bluestreak's instructions also lack techspecs. AUTOBOT: BUMBLEBEE Assortment: F0702 Altmode: VW Beetle (classic, licensed) Transformation Difficulty: 20 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: Gen:ER Weapon: Modular Bazooka Function: Scavenger Division: None Unit: None Rank: None This is likely to be the only version of this specific mold, unless it gets folded into the Buzzworthy line (which seems unlikely, as none of the ones revealed so far are Beetles). Even Bug Bite uses a different body shell rather than being White Bumblebee. Packaging: Four ties on the robot mode. The weapon is split into five pieces and held into the blister without ties or tape. The instructions show the bazooka, the aquatic mods configuration, and how to use the pieces to give Bumblebee two hand cannons or a shoulder cannon and shield. The instructions front cover art shows the two hand cannons configuration, but the box back only has bazooka-and-shield in robot mode and no weapons at all on the vehicle mode. The Teletraan-1 diorama piece is the left-most wall, with slots A on the right edge and tab N on the bottom edge. Color Swaps: Black stays black, clear light blue stays clear light blue, red becomes bright golden yellow. The new roof and rear end are mostly yellow plastic with inset clear blue plastic, rather than the roof being solid clear plastic with a lot of paint and the rear window being painted on. Paint Apps: The face is painted silver with very light blue eyes. There's no chest Autobot symbol, instead it's on the left boot. The front of the pelvis and the bottom of the abdomen are painted yellow, an indifferent match to the plastic. The weapon pieces have paint in the same places as on Cliffjumper, but it's a slightly bluish silver. In vehicle mode, it's more obvious that the yellow paint is not a great match to the plastic, but it's really only used on the window borders thanks to the extra mold pieces. There's silver on the wheel hubs, the VW logo on the hood, the headlights, the windshield wipers, and the door handles. There's red on the taillights, and the red Autobot symbol from the left toe is now on the front left of the hood. Mold Changes: New head, new wheels (complete with VW logos on the hubs), and all the parts that are car body shell are new, including a new hood center with the distinctive VW pattern and logo on it. So, basically just arms, legs (but not feet) and some of the internal torso bits are the same. Weapons are the same, too. Note, the front and rear bumpers are separate pieces of rubbery black plastic rather than being molded into the body shell and painted black. There's no 5mm socket in the outer face of the new shield, so the bazooka can't be mounted in vehicle mode unless you lift up the back end as shown in the instructions (this can be done without removing the shield, just fold the arms up into a new position and take advantage the complementary slots in the shield peg and tabs in the socket on the back end of the bazooka). Additionally, there's no way to store the accessory pack pistol in vehicle mode, I even tried finding a gap to just shove it inside during transformation, no go. (If all you want to do is keep all the pieces together, it can be jammed into one of the cannon sockets or just into the underside socket, but it looks bad.) Other Notes: Getting it transformed from vehicle to robot requires a knife or stronger fingernails than mine to get the rear end piece out. It's really solidly in place. There's a thin tab on the all-black back third of the bazooka that goes into the stress slot of the shoulder for the official storage of it. It'll also go into slots on each thigh. The bazooka bipod legs can sort of go on the insteps of the feet. I'm inclined to just give the bazooka to someone else and leave Bumblebee with the accessory pack pistol. I might also very carefully drill a 5mm socket in the roof, but the roof is pretty thin compared to Cliffjumper's, so it might not be a worthwhile effort. [Update: I got a second one to try adding a roof socket to, and the backpack peg fits better, plus the bicep swivels work better. Turns out the first one I got has serious flash inside the bicep swivels, which led to a bad fit in car mode unless I flipped the arms around and bent the elbows backwards. Here's pics of the one I modded: http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/NetflixBB1.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/NetflixBB2.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/NetflixBB3.JPG ] Overall: They put a fair amount of effort into making this one look good, no doubt in part because of the licensing. Was it worth what ended up being an afternoon hitting every Walmart in town after giving up on my online order ever being delivered? Eh, more or less. At the time you read this, it may or may not be easy to find, but it's definitely worth the money. AUTOBOT: ELITA-1 Assortment: F0703 Altmode: Cybertronian car Transformation Difficulty: 15 steps Previous Name Use: RotF, DotM, Studio, Gen:PotP (note, some are One, some are 1, but in this case I won't quibble) Previous Mold Use: Gen:ER Weapon: Pistol Function: Resistance Leader Division: Ground Command Unit: Infantry Rank: Major Packaging: Three ties hold the robot into the tray, her clear pistol is just held in by blister shape. The figure does not match the package renders, with her shins and forearms swapping plastic colors. The renders do match the animation model reasonably well, though. The included Teletraan-1 piece is the one that goes right next to Bumblebee's (A tabs, B slots, I tab on bottom). Color Swaps: Pink becomes darkish red, cloudy clear light blue becomes proper clear blue plastic, and most of the white becomes a sort of taupe. However, the head and thighs become red instead. Since the face is painted taupe, it makes it looks like she has bare biceps, bare midriff with a belt and a very low-cut waistline, bicycle shorts, and bare lower legs and hands. Paint Apps: In robot mode, coral paint is used on the front of the helmet, her lips, the front of the upper chest, and a border pattern around the pelvis. Taupe paint is used on the face and bands around her abdomen and upper pelvis. There's a white band around her waist, a white sternum block, and a whole lotta white paint on the thighs (to the point that paintlock is a bit of an issue when trying to transform her). Her eyes are blue, and a red Autobot symbol is printed on the white sternum block. Vehicle mode has cool gray on the seats, white on the supercharger bump and the headlight areas, but no separate color on the headlight slits themselves. There's a white Autobot symbol printed on the hood ahead of the supercharger intake. No other paints, and it matches the renders. Mold Changes: New parts in robot mode are the head (with the proper antennae/horns on top, but a little narrower than most depictions in order to fit into the space available), the torso front, the pelvis front, and the shoulders. The hood is also remolded, giving it a differently shaped center and headlights. Other Notes: Mine has a lot of flash inside joints, making them hard to turn even on top of the paint issues. The head can't stay looking straight ahead due to the internal flash issues in the neck socket. The head is glued together so I can't easily take it apart to fix that. Getting the backpack peg thing into the small of the back for car mode required a LOT of force, even compared to Arcee. Overall: Well, it looks more like Elita-1 should than the Starscream retool from Power of the Primes. But it's an unsatisfying shellformer that feels like it's going to break during transformation pretty much every time. She got a lot of screen time in the "Earthrise" season of Siege (which, face it, had nothing to do with the Earthrise toy line other than a couple of characters) at least. She does seem to be easier to find than Bumblebee, at least. AUTOBOT: BLUESTREAK Assortment: WFC-E33 Altmode: Sportscar Transformation Difficulty: 15 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: Gen:ER Weapons: Rifle, Shoulder Cannons Function: Gunner Division: Ground Command Unit: Artillery Rank: Private Packaging: Five ties hold the robot into the blister, the rifle and shoulder cannons are held in at the bottom of the blister without tape or ties. The instructions show the combined triple gun I mentioned in Smokescreen's review. The map piece is just empty space, but a few planets have tiny bits at the edges, which should help in placing it. Oddly, the renders on the back are just recolors of the Smokescreen design, complete with his distinctive head and car front. I guess it was cheaper to digibash it than run a fresh one? Color Swaps: White becomes bright red, gunmetal becomes darker red, black stays black, clear smoky becomes clear light blue (with the same "see-through shins" problem Prowl had). Turns out there's several blue sprues that split up differently. The head is red, but it's a new piece compared to Smokescreen and probably on a different sprue anyway. The shoulders, biceps, fists, and weapons become a light silvery gray. The body shell parts become a slightly darker and warmer silvery gray. Paint Apps: The head is almost completely covered in gunmetal paint that is probably not meant to match the darker of the light gray plastics since they match it pretty well on the feet, with a silver face, blue eyes, and red "horns". There's no other paint on the robot-only parts, just on the vehicle shell parts. Note, a little bit of black hood paint ends up on the tops of the shoulder wings. Almost the entire hood and roof are matte black, rather than the narrower middle stripe of Siege Bluestreak, but the black stripe doesn't continue onto the rear windows, which have light gray paint on their borders. The back center not-grille is painted matte black, with red taillights. The actual intake slit in the front is matte black, while the "chin" of the front end is more of a metallic black. The wheel hubs are painted silver, and there's a fairly big (1cm tall) red with white outline Autobot symbol on the hood. Mold Changes: The mold is identical to Prowl's, having the same modifications he does (https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/AutobotAllianceE for those details)...except for the knees/roof bit, which are the smooth version my Smokescreen has. So, even aside from having the shoulder cannons and lacking the lightbar, this is a distinct mold from Prowl, if only by a little. Other Notes: He has the same badly-installed boot panel problem that my Prowl does, but on the opposite foot. Unlike Prowl, this actually made it to store shelves, so if you don't feel like trying to fix the panel, you can roll the dice again on an exchange. Overall: Boot panel problem aside, it's a good Bluestreak update. My only real quibble would be the black band only going most of the way in vehicle mode...either commit to it all the way like in Siege, or ditch it and go purely silver like the G1 toy. (Yeah, I know, they were trying to get the robot to match the animation model.) Dave Van Domelen, finished this review in the waning minutes of 2020.