Around the same time, though, I caved in and decided that I did rather want a 'proper' version of the new yellow VW Beetle figure, and so ordered the Masterpiece version in the hope that it would serve as the definitive figure of the new CGI character, so I won't feel compelled to buy any others.
Vehicle Mode:
It's been a long road for Bumblebee, getting from his G1 alternate mode - a Super Deformed, Penny Racer/ChoroQ-style VW Beetle - back to this super-accurate, fully licensed model, via all kinds of compact cars with varying degrees of basis in reality. Volkswagen themselves were always reluctant to get involved in "war toys", particularly since the Beetle specificially was the much-lauded "People's Car" of Nazi Germany. While the car outlived its original reputation to become a popular classic the world over (I went to school with loads of people who aspired to owning an original Beetle, and the car had a starring role in Disney's Herbie movies), its creators denied Takara Tomy a license to create a Binaltech Bumblebee based on the newer (1998) model of the Beetle back in the early/mid 2000s. The cynical amongst us might find it interesting to note that they finally relented after some bad publicity surrounding their cheating on vehicle emmissions tests in the States a few years ago...
Strangely, the Beetle seems somewhat at odds with movie Bumblebee even now - having been portrayed as a somewhat cocky brawler who turned into various iterations of Chevrolet's Camaro muscle car, despite being persistently referred to as a 'scout' as well as being Sam Witwicky's 'guardian'. I wouldn't describe myself as a G1 purist, but I've always preferred Bumblebee as the underdog Espionage specialist - the smallest, weakest Autobot who's nevertheless one of the bravest, and stealthiest among their ranks, daring to go where others can't and won't, according to Bob Budiansky's character bio. Back then, he was never intended to be at the forefront of battles, and yet even the upcoming Bumblebee movie appears to cast him as a warrior, rendering the classic, innocuous Beetle disguise almost moot, less a conscious choice as a desperate last chance before some sort of critical system failure following an attack by one of the Decepticons. He's even been shown as initially having a military jeep alternate mode on Earth, and the holographic message from Optimus Prime urges him to protect the people of Earth... which would seem like a tall order if he's on his own.
Still, we're here, Bumblebee transforms into a yellow Volkswagen Beetle and, for the most part, I think it looks fantastic. It's a very accurate representation of the car with comparatively few terribly obvious panel breaks and plenty of paint applied where it's needed. Even the line of black trim running between the wheelwells has been reproduced, along with the metallic footplate below the side doors. The hubcaps are accurately molded with the VW badge in the middle, and the badge also appears, painted, on the bonnet. The rear indicator lights are translucent red plastic, while the headlights and front indicators are only painted. The windscreen wipers, door/bonnet handles and the silver line down the centre of the bonnet are all present and appropriately picked out with paintwork. Where applied, the yellow paint is nice and dense, making for a good match to the yellow plastic.
That's not to say there aren't any downsides. I was rather disappointed to see that the front and rear bumpers are unpainted grey plastic, as is the single rear view mirror on the driver's side (the left, per most Continental European cars). I'm also a little dubious about the translucent cyan windows, not least because the packaging depicts them as grey-tinted, to the point of being virtually opaque, which would have been a better choice given the robot parts visible within. There's also the small issue of the 'corrosion' spray applied to the lower edges of each side - it looks great on the packaging photo, but far too much has been applied to the final product, and possibly from the wrong angle going by the way it stops quite abruptly around the wheelwells. On the back half of both sides, there's a point where the gradient stops abruptly between two panels because it's been sprayed far too high.
Cosmetic issues aside, there are quite a few visible robot parts. The robot's faux-chest - including the two sections of faux-bumper - hangs down below the front bumper, transformation joints stick out below the side doors, and folded up chunks of the robot's shin stick out below the rear bumper. Less obvious, but still fairly apparent, the robot's hips poke out below the doors. None of this stops him rolling, but it significantly reduces his ground clearance.
Since this is a Masterpiece figure, he doesn't have any glaringly obvious ports for attaching his weapons to vehicle mode, but all his accessories can peg together and then attach to his exhaust pipes. It looks ridiculous - being charitable, one could say it looks like some kind of gardening or farming equipment - but rather that than mounting it on his roof or bonnet, since there's no space to properly conceal them on the underside.
Robot Mode:
The first thing that really struck me about Bumblebee's 'new' appearance in the 80s-set movie was that his overall style is basically what you'd get if you squeezed the 2007 movie's Camaro Bumblebee down into a Volkswagen Beetle shell - the front of the car is still split across his chest, the armour on his hip is still broadly supposed to represent the area of the rear wheelwell, the shins and ankles feature similar components, just with slightly different shapes. Obviously this is intended to provide a clear visual link between the Bumblebee who appears in this prequel/reboot to the older, burlier robot who appears in the Michael Bay portion of the franchise. It's also not entirely dissimlar to the proposed Binaltech Bumblebee, based on the newer version of the Beetle so, while it's certainly not 100% rooted in Generation 1 (contrary to many of the comments one can find online since the trailers appeared), it's close enough, while maintaining the more 'realistic' tack taken by the designers of the earlier movie 'bots.
He's also quite small - fitting, all told, but I was surprised to see that he stands not significantly taller than the likes of Studio Series Ironhide, and essentially shoulder-to-shoulder with Battle Blade Bumblebee. That's not to say this figure is a glorified Deluxe class toy - he's much bulkier and more complex than either of those figures, and made to an entirely different scale. His vehicle mode seems to be little larger than the Studio Series version, but robot mode is quite a bit bigger and far better proportioned.
Due to the conflicts inherent in making products based on unreleased movie CGI, this version of Bumblebee features the butterfly- (or bumblebee-)style wings on his back, and his front wheels end up protruding out behind his shoulders rather than sitting within them on his back. While this reduces the accuracy of the model, it actually increases his similarity to the Camaro versions of Bumblebee and, in all honesty, I'm pretty happy with that. There's already enough car shell - the whole bonnet, including the front bumper, the windscreen and most of roof - folded up on his back, along with the rear wheelwells folded round the insides of the car doors, adding more would have looked ridiculous, and at least they look like they're there for a reason in this configuration, even if they're actually not. It looks a little odd, but I actually like how the rear indicator lights end up poking up over his shoulders, even though this has led to fake lights being added to his hip armour.
There's actually quite a bit of strange fakery on this figure - while the car's actual headlight panels do end up on his chest, the sections of bumper on there are folded up onto the insides in vehicle mode. The small section of bonnet that forms the centre panel on his chest sits on the underside of the car in vehicle mode, while the actual bonnet ends up pegged onto his back. I can understand the treatment of the bonnet, as it would have been almost impossible to get the right section of bonnet to move onto his chest without compromising other parts of both the robot and the car (though the faux-chest panel is a little too flat for no obvious reason, and doesn't feature the VW badge, so it doesn't look quite right). What I don't understand is the fake bumper parts - they're not significantly smaller than the 'real' bumper sections that have to wrap around the front of the bonnet to stow properly on his back, so why not just split the bumper completely?
Paintwork is fairly minimal, with a lot of the colour variation actually coming from different colours of plastic. Much of the base robot's torso and legs is cast in black plastic, the usual choice when it comes to representing dark metal in a Deluxe class toy, so it's pretty disappointing to see so much of it here. Curiously, the grey plastic used for his inner thighs and most of each arm would have been ideal for the torso, so I'm baffled by the use of black plastic almost anywhere on this figure. A softer, more durable black plastic has been used for joints, such as the elbows, hips and various parts used for transformation, and a similar type of plastic, cast in a slightly lighter, cooler grey, has been used for his fingers and thumb, Naturally, yellow plastic has been used for most of the outer armour parts, with metallic paintwork appearing on the shoulder armour, the insides of the front wheel mountings, and miscellaneous details on the central torso block. Metallic paint is also used on the upper part of the shin, below the large yellow kneecap section, since the lower half of the silver shin block is actually unpainted die-cast metal, while the tops of the metal toe sections are painted yellow. In theory, part of the heel should also have been painted yellow, but I can understand why it was left as bare black plastic, since it's more involved in transformation, and so paint would probably chip. I do think the paintwork is a little miserly, particularly on a Masterpiece figure, but Bumblebee is comparatively cheap for a Masterpiece, and the MPM series seem to be made to a different set of standards - more the upper end of the Action Figure scale, rather than being true "Collectors' Pieces".
As with most of the other movie Bumblebees, this figure comes with a blaster attachment for either hand. It attaches via a tab on the inside of Bumblebee's wrist, with the fingers all passing through a slot into the interior of the weapon, while the thumb slots into a void in the rearmost section of the unit. I didn't notice immediately, but there are three replacement fingers sculpted into the top of the gun, with a thumb on the underside, to suggest that the weapon has grown out of the palm of Bumblebee's hand, which is more or less what appears to happen (albeit inconsistently) with all the guns wielded by the robots in the first few movies. To complement the gun, Bumblebee comes with an attachment which is referred to as a 'Stinger Sword'. This is much like the weapon on Power Charge Bumblebee, only as an external attachment to his forearm rather than something concealed within. It pegs on to either arm and both the blade and the faux-mechanical detail behind it are well sculpted and nicely painted, the idea being the armour panels on his forearm split aside to allow the blade to extend from the wrist over the back of his hand. Thing is, based on what I've seen in the trailers so far, the shape of the blade is wrong - it's been made as double-edged knife, where the blade he deploys in the trailer, to chop down a tree and attack one of the Decepticons, is more like a Stanley knife. This, again, is probably down to late changes in the CGI, and really isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. As well as these attachments, he has a couple of missile racks concealed behind his headlight pectorals. These are largely bare metal, with the caps on the missile pods painted red.
I have to admit I'm still not 100% sold on Bumblebee's 'new' face... it's a bit too much like a cutesified version of the slightly nightmarish, bug-eyed noggin from the previous movies. He looks younger, less intricate, but still bug-eyed and weirdly-proportioned. The new battlemask, however, is fantastic, and seems to be based on the head from the original G1 Bumblebee toy, albeit largely in yellow rather than silver... But that's something that could be changed with the application of a little paint. Switching between the two is a simple matter of lifting Bumblebee's central crest, pulling off the forehead section and fitting the battlemask in its place, over the face. One puzzling point is that the honeycombed visor eyes are colourless plastic, while his eyes are lightpiped translucent blue. The lightpiping is actually still effective behind the visor, and I suppose the idea is that it's his eyes providing the blue glow, not the visor but, to be honest, I'd have preferred the visor to be tinted as well. Personally, I think the battle mask could have used a black wash to bring out the details, as the sculpt is very good, but the plain yellow plastic hides a lot of the depth. It's also been noted by several reviewers that one of the honeycomb lenses tends to be a little foggy - on mine, it's the one on the left, and only very slight, at the inner corner. There's an Autobot insignia stamped on the raised portion of his central crest, but it's barely visible to the naked eye (and probably not particularly clear on my photos). Not quite sure why it wasn't sculpted but, even if it had been, it would likely have needed some paint to make it fully visible.
It almost feels as though Takara Tomy's designers and engineers have been taking lessons from the Third Parties, as Masterpiece Movie Series Bumblebee's transformation is very much in the 'Not Fun' category. Certain parts - such as the legs and the very front of the car - are simple and straightforward enough, but the central mass - particularly the arms and the number of small parts that have to be tabbed into very awkward spaces before the outer car shell can be moved into place - is a bit of a nightmare. The packaged instructions are essentially useless as they're just not detailed enough and, on my first transformation, there were several parts on either side that seemed to be in the right place, but weren't, because getting the side panels aligned correctly was virtually impossible, and he bulged out at the joints. For a clearer idea of how it's all supposed to work, and precisely what has to tab in where, I'd heartily recommend looking up Emgo316's 'Just Transform It!' video, or his full review - he's one of the few who can be relied upon to actually film things clearly, without moving the figure offscreen or obscuring important steps with his hands. Once you have a good understanding of the small-but-crucial steps, the process becomes more fluid, but not much less frustrating. One has to wonder why the designer(s) felt it was necessary to leave one chunk of car panel on the robot's forearms considering the rest of the side of the car then has to be pegged in around it in vehicle mode.
The upside to the tricky transformation is that it comes with excellent articulation, as befits a Masterpiece figure. The toe articulation isn't as useful as one might think considering it's used in transformation, but the ankle tilt is very welcome. The knee is double-jointed, though the (ratcheted) upper joint doesn't make a great deal of difference due to the extent of vehicle shell on his calves, and the primary knee joints are a little loose on mine, though this doesn't seem to affect his ability to hold a pose. His thighs have the usual range of forward and back movement (ratcheted), the latter barely affected by his compacted backpack, and outward motion (friction, and a touch loose on mine, particularly the right hip), along with a fairly stiff rotation joint just below the hip. He also has full waist rotation, hindered only by his backpack. All the arm joints are friction-only, but there's an excellent range at the shoulders (assisted by a hinge at the base of the shoulder armour, which allows the arms to raise further out to the sides), about 90° at the elbow, with a rotation joint just above. The wrists have a small range of tilt which facilitates a good range of rotation, and the hands feature separately articulated thumbs and forefingers, each with two joints, with the other two fingers fused together and articulated only at the main knuckle. The head is on a ball joint, but it doesn't offer a great deal of tilt, with or without the battlemask. Die-cast metal has been used for the toe sections of his feet and the concealed missile racks in his chest, along with a couple of other, smaller parts. They're all quite small pieces, so they don't add a great deal of heft to the figure, and the toe sections don't seem to be metal purely to increase his stability... they don't make a massive difference to his centre of gravity, as far as I can tell.
With a lot of TransFormers figures derived from the movies, there's a certain disparity between the on-screen CGI and the plastic representation of the character. Masterpiece Bumblebee was based on almost-final CGI featuring the door wings which have been a characteristic since the first live action movie back in 2007, but his look was 'tidied up' during later stages of production, and now his doors fold up and lay down his back rather than sticking out. This led to a bit of a cry of "foul" on the forums, where some folks opined that it couldn't be truly called a Masterpiece when it's so different from the on-screen character. Of course, the disparity arose because the figure - and even the smaller, simpler Studio Series toy - had to go into production early enough to be available ahead of the movie's release, and so were probably in production before the CGI changes were made. It's really no different from the toys based on the 2007 movie, which are actually largely terrible if you go back and look at them - barely any really resemble what we saw on screen but, back then, since the movie's aesthetic was so new, people seem to have been more forgiving. This figure resembles the character in the new movie, it's just that it has a far more prominent and expansive backpack. As such, it may not be quite Masterpiece in terms of accuracy - and, thereby, perhaps something of a premature release - but it's a fantastic figure, albeit with a frustratingly finicky transformation.
While the robot and car forms both feel quite durable, I do have concerns about the longevity of certain tabs - particularly on the car's side panels - considering how fiddly they are to get into their slots. The only real problems, for me, are the poor reproduction of the 'rust' effect in vehicle mode and the excess of black plastic in the robot mode. I'm also forced to wonder if the exposed metal parts will start to tarnish, like those on the original Masterpiece Megatron...
I said at the start that I chose to buy MPM-7 Bumblebee because I was hoping it would be the definitive solo-movie Bumblebee figure... and, for me, I sincerely hope that can be the case. I'm suffering from a bit of TransFormers fatigue at the moment, thanks to the continuing fixation on Generation 1 in the main toylines, and certainly a case of Bumblebee fatigue considering the sheer number of movie Bumblebee figures I already own (only a fraction of what's available, to be sure, but still far too many!). At this point, there's a slim chance the Studio Series/The Last Knight WWII Bumblebee might be of interest, but only if it's not as cheaty as it seems to be based on the few images I've seen... Now, as stated at the top, I've already got SS #20 Bumblebee, the Retro Pop Highway version, on order (and wish I hadn't bothered, as it was available from the Hasbro booth at the recent MCM London Comic Con!), so this isn't going to be my last Bumblebee figure... but it's feeling pretty penultimate right now.
Except maybe if I change my mind about MP-21 Bumblebee...
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