Dave's Buzzworthy Studio Series Rant: #74BB Bumblebee (Camaro Concept) http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/DeluxeBB74 The rest of the Buzzworthy wave of Studio Series was repackages, although one of them (#15 Bumblebee) came with a Charlie minifigure. This is a retool of #49 to better match how he looked in RotF. I didn't actually get that one, and despite my rather large backlog of reviews I decided on impulse to get this. So, while it's technically a retool, I'll be reviewing it as a new mold, since it's my first exposure to the mold. Technically, #15 is also "new" to me in that it was the Charlie's Garage customizable one with swappable parts and stickers, but this release doesn't have any of those extras (so it has LESS stuff than the original), and that mold itself was a tweak of #01 which sucked. I wasn't about to buy it again. The other two were #26 WWII Bumblebee and #40 Shatter. Of the four in the wave, only this one even got a new number, and it wasn't that different from #49 in any case. CAPSULE $20 price point. Bumblebee: It's slightly different from #49, if you already have that one this is skippable (the Sam figure is not very good). Even if you don't have #49, this isn't all that good...sure, it's a new variation on the Bumblebee to Camaro transformation, but the engineering relies too much on tolerances that Hasbro just can't deliver. Very mildly recommended. RANT Packaging: While it has the same basic shape as other Deluxe Studio Series boxes, it has the Buzzworthy trade dress including a bunch of images along the left side of the front and wrapping around to the side of various Bumblebees that aren't this one. The correct one is on the right side panel, though, and it has the usual window for just the Autobot symbol that's printed on the inner tray. Very yellow and black box. The back has the GM licensing stickers seen recently on other Studio Series toys, including the QR code. The instructions have the same apricot orange-yellow color as other Buzzworthy toys' instructions. AUTOBOT: BUMBLEBEE Assortment: #74BB Altmode: 2008 Camaro Concept Transformation Difficulty: 40 steps (that bodes ill) Previous Name Use: Hell Yes Previous Mold Use: Studio #49 Movie: Revenge of the Fallen Scene: Pyramid Desert Battle BUMBLEBEE takes on both CONSTRUCTICON RAMPAGE and RAVAGE to protect SAM WITWICKY. Packaging: Five ties on the robot (including an unusual "over the shoulders meeting under the crotch V" rig, one on tunning Sam, none on the arm cannon piece. Nothing actually fell off while freeing it from the blister, but a bunch of stuff did pop loose. The chest front is only loosely connected, as is the backpack. The backdrop is of the temple complex ruins that got more ruined during the fight, the location where BB gave Ravage a spine-ectomy. The box render is mostly a match for the toy, but the toy's knee joints are yellow plastic (gray in the render) and the front bumper black paint applications are slightly different (the car mode render matches the toy, but the robot mode render adds extra black). Robot Mode: This is another Battlemasked version, and like many of the recent designs has the rear side windows folding down to form a lower pair of wings on the back...an effect somewhat marred by the front wheels also folding out and being in front of the wings. The figure has a slightly bowlegged appearance due to how the lower legs are set up and how the knees are hinged. As often happens with car designs, a lot of the car shell is folded up on the back and part of the chest is fake vehicle parts, but in this case at least the pecs are actual front fender/bumper pieces. The middle third of the chest is fake vehicle bits, and not painted to match the real vehicle parts. 4.5" (11.5cm) tall at the head, the wings rise up a little above that depending on how you have them posed. The colors are mostly golden yellow and light gray/silver with some bits fo black. A lot of the kibble on the back is clear smoky plastic, I'll cover that in more detail in vehicle mode. Golden yellow plastic is used for the rest of the backpack and wings, the head, the upper arms, the forearm armor pieces, the chest pieces, a couple of struts inside the torso that hold the shoulders, the thigh armor plates, the shin armor and really most of each lower leg except for the inner surfaces which are smoky clear plastic. The core of each knee joint is also golden yellow plastic. The wheels, pelvis, feet, and hand cannon are black plastic. Light gray plastic is used for most of the torso core, the forearms, the thighs, the tops of the lower legs, and some posts on the heels. The parts of the upper arms that aren't armor panels are painted silver, and some parts that probably should have been left yellow are silver too. Silver's also found ont he pelvis front and on the wheel hubs. A dark silver fills in the detailing on the forearm and shin armor plates. Gloss black is used for the real car details on the chest and various other placs, some bits of fake car detailing (but the rally stripes on the center chest don't even come close to matching the car's hood), plus gloss black stripes on the helmet and covering the eyeslots of the helmet. A small red Autobot symbol is printed on the forehead. Articulation is a little dicey simply because it's so easy to make parts pop out of place. The chest looks like it should snap into place, but on mine the tab part is narrower than the slot, so it merely rests there on hinge friction. The neck is a ball joint, the waist is a fairly stiff swivel, and the wings have swivels to let them tilt up and down a bit. Ball joint shoulders and elbows, no wrist joints (the armor bits are attached to the wrists by hinges so that they can move a little to accomodate transformation. Ball joint hips, and the knees have swivels on top and hinges on bottom. The ankles have transformation hinges way back at the heel spurs, but in robot mode they're supposed to be slid outwards to snap into position and not move. The hands can hold 5mm pegs, and there's a 3mm socket on a hinge in the backpack, but none on the pelvis. The 3mm socket is mostly for storing the gun, but can also be used for an action stand. BB's cannon is a single piece of black plastic with a main barrel, a secondary barrel, and what might be a laser sight or something (and can hold a 3mm socket Fire Blast but doesn't seem designed to do so). It only covers part of the hand, and the uncovered part is pretty blatant thanks to the plastic color difference. Probably should have made this out of light gray plastic so it would blend in. It's 3cm long and has no paint on it at all. The 5mm grip peg ends in a 3mm stud so that it can be stored on the robot's back. It is the same design used on #49, but that version of the mold used darker gray on the hands so it blended a little better. It's hard to be sure from pictures, but it looks like #49 had darker gray plastic (that's definite), brighter yellows (that might be an artifact of the photography) and more vehicle-accurate paint on the robot chest. It has no silver on the pelvis, and more of a gunmetal on the shoulders. Transformation: Well, it's definitely a Studio Series Deluxe. 40 steps, and everything has to be exactly right to the tenth of a millimeter or you get popped panels at the end. No matter how I adjust and massage bits, I can't get all the door seams to close at the same time, even though it looks like all the parts are in their intended orientation. It's generally the usual transformation, with the legs becoming the back end, the chest becoming the hood, the arms going under the front end, etc. But lots of little extra folding and swiveling bits that seem intended to pack the robot into the smallest and densest possible volume in car mode. For instance, the shin guards are on ball joints so that they can rotate to be between the lower legs and not drag on the ground. The gun hand attaches to the rear bumper via two nonstandard tabs. Vehicle Mode: As often happens with a frustrating and unstable transformation, I'm reviewing the vehicle mode before the robot mode, because I don't really want to ever transform this toy again, so it'll stay in robot mode indefinitely. Even if I'd gotten all the panels flush, it looks somewhat patchwork due to the mix of yellow plastic and two different shades of yellow paint (the bits flanking the rear window are much lighter than the paint around the rear side windows, and the yellow plastic is in between the two paints). 4.75" (12cm) long if you don't count the arm cannon stuck onto the rear bumper, in the usual Bumblebee colors. Clear smoky plastic is used on the doors, rear window, rear side windows, windshield and more than half of the roof. The remaining body shell pieces are golden yellow plastic, and the tires are black plastic. Darker golden yellow paint is on the clear plastic pieces other than the rear window borders, which have a lighter golden yellow paint. The wheel hubs are painted silver, the taillights are metallic red, and the headlights are light blue. The rally stripes on hood and tail end are gloss black, which is alsoused for much of the grill as well as the bottom edge of the front end. The molded Chevy logo on the grill is just painted over gloss black along with the rest of the section, no separate paint to pick it out. Despite the alignment issues, it rolls decently. There's no 3mm or 5mm connection points, just the two slots in the rear bumper for attaching the arm cannon. Sam Witwicky: This is a single chunk of black plastic, Sam in a running pose as he tries to get his sock full of Matrix dust to Prime. The only paint is pasty whiteboy fleshtone on the face and hands...and there's so much blobbed onto the face it looks like he borrowed Vic Sage's mask. The scale is roughly 1:40 (if standing straight, the figure would be about 44mm tall), the figure is on a "racetrack oval" base, and other than the globbed over face has a decent level of sculpted detail. Overall: The usual Studio Series problem of design that isn't supported by the budget. It's not much different from the #49 release aside from the inclusion of the Sam figure, so if you got #49 you can pretty easily skip this. Dave Van Domelen, had a couple of slow times at work waiting for students to finish things so that they could be graded, and worked on this review during those times, hence finishing it before the Cyberverse Deluxes review worked on at about the same time.