Retro G1 Brawn

After struggling through my write-up to Retro G1 Gears toward the end of last year, I intended to fast-track this one, to get it out of the way and - with any luck - prevent any ruminating. Thing being, Brawn was always one of my favourites, partly because of the early Marvel UK strip, The Enemy Within, in which he basically gets a blow to the head and goes nuts, then has to prove his loyalty in a battle to the death with Starscream, who's on Megatron's naughty list due to his scheming. The fact that his G1 toy was, let's face it, a little on the goofy side - lanky, with short arms featuring tool-like claws rather than hands, and little 'wings' on his shoulders - just added to his appeal.

The one glimmer of hope I've had for my continued collection of Hasbro's output was kicked off by the last two War for Cybertron chapters, Earthrise and Kingdom, which brought back some of the original, first year Mini Autobots in Deluxe class form. It hasn't all been great - Cliffjumper was a partsformer, and Huffer had the animation-style head - but the most recent bone Hasbro have thrown their GenX audience has been the Retro G1 line as an alternative (and presumably the eventual Retro G1 Huffer will use the toy-accurate sculpt which made its debut as the Go-Bot Road Ranger in a Generations Selects 2-pack).

Their failure to create a new toy-accurate head for Bumblebee meant I had no reason to acquire that one, but Gears got a decent update to the G1 toy's head sculpt, though the toy as a whole was somewhat disappointing (leading Courtney to name him "Gears Starmer"). I've been keeping my eye out for new Retro G1 releases since then, and the second pair came out in the late Autumn/early Winter of 2025, coupling Brawn with... Seaspray, a wholly new take on a figure from 1985, just as we're getting a new Deluxe class Windcharger, the last of the 1984 Mini Autobot set, as part of Studio Series '86.

Brawn is, for better or worse, a retooling of the Studio Series '86 toy which, despite being leagues better than the Titans Return toy, didn't interest me in the slightest due to it having another ugly, animation-style head sculpt. Once again, the question here is whether or not the new, toy-inspired head sculpt is enough of an improvement on this mold... so, let's find out.

Unique Toys R-09 Red Destroyer

The moment I learned that Unique Toys were planning to develop Stinger for their line of Masterpiece-analogues, my curiosity was piqued. After all, this was a nonentity who dissolved into a flying cloud of metal cubes rather than transforming. When the first grey prototype images appeared, I was instantly hooked. My experience with Unique Toys products thusfar has been uniformly positive: their engineering has always been clever without being overly complex and their QC has yet to disappoint. However, in terms of screen-accuracy, particularly on their head sculpts, they've never been 100% on the mark, which resulted in some of their more recent figures later being 'fixed' by cheaper knockoffs.

Their strategy for this figure was to cut down on paint applications to reduce the retail price as far as they could, in the hope that people would buy the original rather than wait for a KO, and they teased the release of a Camaro Bumblebee with much the same robot mode as additional motivation - the suggestion being that the reception of Red Destroyer will determine whether the yellow Camaro goes into production. Their paintwork has almost always been considered lacking by fans and, coupled with the eyewatering prices of some figures and inaccuracies in their sculpts, they've given the KO merchants ample room to make improvements in the past. Dialling things back even further seems like the worst decision to me. As it turned out, they revealed images of the Camaro remix within a month of Red Destroyer shipping.

But let's see how Red Destroyer stands as his own product, before anyone has the opportunity to reverse engineer it and produce a cheaper option.

Studio Series #117 Hatchet

It's at least somewhat rare these days that I buy a figure knowing it's going to be shit. Particularly over the last couple of years, as Hasbro's QC is consistently found to be going down the toilet. When they take seven years to complete a set of characters from a movie that came out fourteen years ago, and balls it up not once (SS Crankcase using the SS Crowbar mold rather than TLK Berserker, despite having identical vehicle modes) but twice (as we're about to find out), one has to wonder if the delayed Hatchet precisely because they knew it was shit.

And, in all honesty, I wasn't really intending to buy Hatchet. As far as I'm concerned, Studio Series has devolved in exactly the same way as every other TransFormers line from Hasbro: its core idea - the most screen-accurate 'bots created using final CGI models as the basis - is no longer the foundation of the line, QC and material quality have taken a nosedive, and paintwork has been reduced significantly.

But... As with the Seekers, I felt a compulsion to complete the Dreads at the same scale and so picked him up at the MCM London Comic Con last month. The basis for the compulsion was largely that, while the original 'Commander class' DotM Hatchet toy was very cool for its size, the jet mode really made no sense. So, let's take a look at Studio Series Hatchet. It can't be that bad, surely?

TransFormers Legacy: Evolution Deadeye Duel 2-pack - Kaskade vs. Javelin

(Femme-Bot Friday #87)

It struck me in the afternoon of January 1st that, as of this year - and, more specifically, yesterday - Femme-Bot Friday has been a feature of this blog for ten years. That being the case, I thought it appropriate to try to post something special... which might have been easier if the franchise had offered a greater quantity of worthwhile Femme-Bots. It would have been wonderful to hit FBF#100 for this anniversary, but that could only be achieved by re-posting Femme-Bots that I'd posted about before FBF became a thing.

And, while it would have been ideal to celebrate 10 years since I kicked off this feature with a post about Flame Toys' Arcee model kit, I haven't yet taken sufficient photos for that figure (lack of time, motivation and daylight over the last few months being largely responsible), so we're just going to have to make do with a Legacy: Evolution versus set that - miraculously - pits two unique Femme-Bots against each other. Little did I know, before I started writing all this, but this set actually refers to a specific story in the IDW comics, though the two featured characters don't exactly face off.

Is this unprecedented boxed set worth the investment? Well... That's an especially astute question, given my opinion of Hasbro's current output...

Unique Toys R-06 Red Dasher

Given his mostly insignificant role in Dark of the Moon and his subsequent off-screen death before Age of Extinction, it might seem strange that I have such a soft spot for a 'character' like Dino/Mirage. Part of it, I suspect, is just that his vehicle mode - a red Ferrari 458 - evokes a certain kind of gamers' nostalgia for me, various Ferraris being staples of many popular arcade and home console games during the 80s and 90s, perhaps the most famous being the Testarossa in Sega's Out Run (or the F40 from Turbo Out Run). While I'm certainly not a 'Car Guy', I will admit to a long-time appreciation of certain sports cars - notably those from Lamborghini and Ferrari - either because they've appeared frequently in videogames or the TransFormers franchise in one form or another.

...And yet, when Hasbro finally released their Studio Series Dino/Mirage back in 2021 (a whole ten years after the film was in cinemas), I didn't bother picking it up. Not because it wasn't a licensed Ferrari - that particular license being owned by another toy manufacturer - nor even because I already have both the Takara Tomy Movie Advanced version and the Alien Attack figure, Firage, but because the whole thing was lacklustre. Typical Hasbro dull red plastic and significant transformation cheats, yet most of the vehicle mode still ended up folded onto the robot's back.

Facing facts, though, the Movie Advanced figure simply isn't a screen-accurate rendition of Dino/Mirage, and the Alien Attack version is a fussy, fragile-feeling little thing whose approximately Deluxe class vehicle mode transforms into a robot mode in a scale that somehow fails to match pretty much anything else, either from Hasbro or other Third Parties...

So, when Unique Toys revealed their take on a (roughly) Masterpiece-scale Dino/Mirage, I was very much on board. Their pattern of basically turning a car inside out - introduced with Peru Kill, refined with DX9's La Hire - made for simple, enjoyable and sturdy transformations and, while their robots have sometimes been accused of lacking the movie CGI's intricate detail, early photos of their Red Dasher looked impressive. Of course, the real question is whether it's as impressive in-hand... So, let's take a look.

MetaGate G-05 Red Fantasy

(Femme-Bot Friday #85)

The Bumblebee movie didn't just bring a new, unprecedented coherence to storytelling in live action TransFormers movies, but a whole new aesthetic. Gone were the overcomplicated, oddly-proportioned Autobots and the insectoid Decepticons seemingly made of needles, knives and random metal shavings; the overabundance of grey and bare metal. The framing of each shot gave characters breathing room, allowing for physical characteristics to shine through, and individual robots were easily distinguishable at a glance, even in the thick of the action. No longer were we, for example, stuck looking at Optimus Prime's armpit as he cut a swathe through legions of Decepticons in the middle of a city, or watching Starscream gob up some lubricant in hyper-sharp, ILM-crafted detail.

Sure, the movie only really featured two Decepticons for the bulk of the story, but what Decepticons they were! Shatter and Dropkick were the ideal - not to say archetypal - pairing of brains and brawn, with the former even convincing the proto-Sector 7 team to work with them, despite representing themselves as "Decepticon Peacekeepers", a flagrantly oxymoronic description if ever there was one. Silver-tongued Shatter was the standout villain, exhibiting intelligence, cunning and a keen mind for strategy, with the dulcet tones of Angela Bassett breathing life into her. To cap it all, both she and Dropkick became Triple Changers, which naturally made it difficult for Hasbro to make toys of them.

To make them viable, Hasbro essentially made two versions of each in as many size classes as possible... The Deluxe class Studio Series car mode Shatter was a clumsy, flimsy mess, but the jet mode toy was excellent, if a little overburdened with vehicle mode parts on its backpack. However, it wasn't long till Third Parties started teasing their plans to make (loosely) Masterpiece scale figures that would actually feature both car and jet modes all in one. Toyworld announced theirs first, back in 2019, but relative newcomers MetaGate - creators of the stunning, triple-changing movieverse Drift, Haiku - were the first to actually ship theirs and, even at first glance, it looked substantially better.

But let's have a closer look and see exactly what kind of dark magic had been brought to bear on this character...

Human Alliance Skids & Arcee

OK, by this point, I am reasonably certain that this is actually the last - the very last - Revenge of the Fallen figure in my collection, at least until Studio Series adds something worthwhile from that film. As with Mudflap, this toy had been languishing, largely forgotten, in a box for years. The photos I had taken have been awaiting upload from my computer for more than ten years.

Skids and Mudflap were referred to in RotF as 'the twins', but their Deluxe Class toys were surprisingly different, given the limitations of the size class. They had broadly similar Mech Alive gimmicks, but the specifics of their operation were quite different. Their transformations had similar aspects, but their weapon features were wholly unique. The craziest thing about the Human Alliance versions is that they're even more similar in terms of their underlying engineering, despite the (marginally) larger size versus the Deluxe class toys.

So, let's take a look at this much-maligned character, and see how he fares in this underutilised format.

Studio Series #93 Hot Rod

I still haven't watched The Last Knight (and still don't intend to), but I have watched enough clips to know two things: that Hasbro's first attempt at a Hot Rod figure back in 2017 was hopelessly inaccurate, and that the writers couldn't decide whether he was supposed to be French, or just somehow 'stuck' with the accent, considering he frequently uses French idioms in his dialogue (consistently addressing Vivian Wembly as "mademoiselle", introducing himself with "Je m'apelle Hot Rod", etc.).

His design was pretty good, though, carrying just enough of the Diaclone DNA exhibited by the likes of Bumblebee and Jazz in the first film - even more surprising considering how quickly Bay's movies distanced themselves from that aesthetic - while fitting in with the sleeker, increasingly humanoid styling of the later films.

Given that I bought DX9's excellent La Hire more than three years ago, one could be forgiven for wondering why I'd bother with Hasbro's Studio Series update of their figure from The Last Knight's toyline... And, granted, it does seem strange to spend £26 on a Deluxe class figure that I know isn't going to hold a candle to a larger, more intricate, elaborate and accurate Third Party Masterpiece-analogue, that I already own, and for which I paid just £77. SS Hot Rod may be just one third the price, but can a Deluxe class toy, as produced by Hasbro in the 2020s, possibly be even one third as good as La Hire?

Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?

Human Alliance Barricade & Frenzy

Here's another fine example of me forgetting about a perfectly good toy for far too long... So long, in fact, that I acquired and wrote about the Masterpiece version of the figure more than three years ago, and that was ten years after this toy was released! Worse still, this blog was already in full swing when this toy came out, so I really have no excuses... I wish I knew why I neglected the last three Human Alliance figures in my collection... But, other than the blog getting off to a very slow start, I can't imagine what stopped me.

But let's not dwell on old mistakes and, instead, enjoy the process of revisiting a toy that had been stuck in storage for far too long. I was a massive fan of the Human Alliance concept... still am, in fact, and it's something I hope Hasbro will eventually revisit at some point in the future. Barricade was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting aspects of the first live action movie, being a Decepticon who transformed into a vehicle which, in an ideal world, is intended to reassure people, make them feel safe and protected. Barricade is, of course, the antithesis of that idea... but I don't think they really played into it as much as they could have, and then he disappeared until the third film, then again until his refit in the fifth.

The original Deluxe class toy was very much a product of its time, with all the shortcomings that implies. Let's see how this version of Barricade fares, being not only a product of a different time, but a different and much more advanced toyline.

Buzzworthy Bumblebee: Creatures Collide 4-pack

By and large, the Buzzworthy Bumblebee line has been filled with products I have been perfectly content to live without: regardless of which line the toys are derived from, they have been mostly superfluous repaints. When it comes to the boxed sets, there have been far more misses than hits. When the Worlds Collide set came along, I ended up buying the Blackarachnia figure purely because she's a Femme-Bot and it was a decent reference to the original Beast Wars toy's box art, while the other figures were reportedly a mess of loose joints.

This second 'Collides' set was, at first, marginally more interesting. I wasn't overly fussed by the scarcity of the Netflix-branded Earthrise Bumblebee toy because, having already bought Cliffjumper, I knew it wouldn't be a patch on the Classics toy from 2006... But Goldbug was another matter, because I'm quite fond of the G1 Throttlebot, and he's sufficiently distinct from Bumblebee. Similarly, I'd passed on the TV show-inspired Kingdom Scorponok figure because I was disappointed by the look of it but, now I own a reissue of the original toy in show-accurate colours, a toy-coloured repaint of the Kingdom figure was potentially a fun comparison. Skywasp was a stupid/amazing pun, and so instantly interesting, in spite of the new mold's obvious inferiority to Generations Waspinator... Which left Ransack: a repaint of the Legacy Kickback figure that's barely an improvement on the G1 original, representing one of the 'Deluxe Insecticons' which, back in the day, had a wholly unique mold that was never made available in the UK.

So, when presented with this set at a RRP of £93, I turned my nose up and avoided it, even though that breaks down as four figures for slightly less than the price of four individual Deluxes. However, seeing it cut down to £45 at GAME, it seemed like a sweeter deal... But let's see how I feel about it with the figures in-hand...

Big Firebird Build EX Series EX-01 Plus Mooka (AKA Mocha)

(Femme-Bot Friday #81)

I know.

I originally said I wasn't going to write about this figure here, but on my oft-neglected, more general toy blog... However, sometime between Mocha/Mooka's announcement and actually receiving the toy in the post last year, I realised that was the wrong decision. While it still doesn't fit here in the sense that it's not a Third Party take on a TransFormers character, it doesn't fit there in that it's clearly an adult collectable rather than a toy. In many ways, posting about the Cyclion there was somewhat mistaken.

However, I've covered Go-Bots and myriad other Third Party figures, so the TransForm-A-Blog is clearly not wholly about TransFormers. Plus, Mooka is derived from a figure that was originally conceived as a stylised take on Arcee, so I've decided to post this here, and henceforth try to keep Toys, HEXcetera... focussed on things that are more general action figure material.

So, prepare yourselves for another controversial and divisive Third Party Femme-Bot, this one seemingly deliberately reworked to play into some of the complaints made about Nicee when she first emerged.

MetaGate G-01 Haiku

I have quite a few excellent Third Party figures in my collection now, with an increasing number based on movie characters, and in a loosely Masterpiece-adjacent scale. Considering the couple of Hasbro-produced, Deluxe class figures of Age of Extinction Drift that I own are less than stellar, the announcement of a Third Party MP-analogue version certainly piqued my interest... And the fact that it was to be a triple-changer, taking both his Bugatti Veyron and futuristic helicopter modes into account, seemed like a tall order.

Add to that, the creators, MetaGate, were previously unheard of, and suddenly launching themselves toward an eager - and frequently highly critical - fandom with such an ambitious debut project. There have been rumours - as there were with DX9's La Hire - that Unique Toys have had a hand in this figure's creation but, so far, there appears to be little or no concrete evidence of that.

However, it quickly became a figure I was intent on acquiring, and the recent sale of my Game Boy Color game collection gave me just enough breathing room in my finances to risk taking a punt on a stunning-looking figure from an untested company. I preordered from Iacon.Store at the start of September, and it arrived a little over three weeks later... so, let's take a look at MetaGate's inaugural offering, and see how it compares to the output of some of the more established Third Party figures.

Jurassic Park X TransFormers Tyrannocon Rex (& Autobot JP93)

(Femme-Bot Friday #80)

By and large, the very concept of TransFormers crossovers with other properties is not one that interests me. The pair of Street Fighter II sets won me over because I'm also a Capcom fan, and because it used the Generations Arcee mold - which I was quite keen on - for Chun Li. The movie crossovers - Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Top Gun and Universal Monsters - all looked low-effort and poor-quality.

And, to be perfectly honest, when the Jurassic Park crossover was revealed, I planned on skipping it. Sure, the new paint job for the Kingdom Megatron mold and its new head sculpt looked great, but the transforming Ford Explorer looked like the kind of knockoff toy sold in the London Zoo gift shops. With a price tag in excess of £120, I felt it was more overpriced garbage that I could happily live without, even though the absurdly-named Tyrannocon Rex was billed as a Femme-Bot. If Kingdom Megatron was overpriced at £52, and the equally absurdly-named 'Autobot JP93' (whom I shall henceforth refer to as 'Dickie Attenbot', per my girlfriend's suggestion) is very clearly not Leader class in terms of size or engineering, this boxed set was clearly a rip off, and not worth investing in.

But then I saw an announcement on Reddit that Zavvi had cut over £70 from the price tag, bringing it down to about £51 for the pair... and then saw that Amazon had followed suit... meaning that the cost of the boxed set of two figures was below Kingdom Megatron's RRP. That changed everything...

Studio Series #88 Sideways

The funny thing about the original Revenge of the Fallen Sideways toy was that, in spite of its inaccuracy - both in robot mode and vehicle mode - I enjoyed it so much that I ended up buying its two repaints - Dead End and Movie Advanced Dino - both of which I enjoyed every bit as much as the original.

However, it can't be argued that Sideways wasn't in serious need of a do-over, so the announcement of a Studio Series version was great news. What wasn't so great was that, once again, Audi had declined to grant Hasbro the licence to reproduce their car (one has to wonder why they ever agreed to have one of their vehicles appear in the movie franchise in the first place - what did they think they were getting themselves into?), so he's still not an authetic Audi R8.

Still, with expectations suitably adjusted and allowances made, let's see how the new version of Sideways compares to the version from 2009's Revenge of the Fallen toyline.

Studio Series #85 Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #79)

Arcee doesn't have the greatest of histories in the live action movie series. Unceremoniously pulled from the first movie, she was pushed back in for the second - albeit in such a way that it wasn't clear whether she was a single consciousness split across three bodies or one of a team of three independent robots with superficially similar designs - only to be (presumably) killed off in the final battle. Fans seem to have been reasonably positive toward the original, unused movie design, but overwhelmingly unfavourable toward the so-called 'wheelsnakes' of Revenge of the Fallen.

She was then absent from subsequent movies, only turning up in the tentative reboot that was the Bumblebee movie, in the all-too-brief opening scene set on Cybertron. Even here, the reception to her design was not consistently positive, with many feeling that, while the overall design looked good enough, the uncanny appearance of her face was off-putting... And, of course, that brief CGI sequence only featured the movie protagonist's vehicle mode, so many were inclined to feel pessimistic about any toys that might come along.

But, when the toy was finally revealed, it looked surprisingly good... from most angles, at least. Let's give it the once-over, and see what we make of it.

Studio Series #84 Ironhide

The funny thing about Ratchet and Ironhide, these days, is that development of one will always lead to the appearance of the other, even if only one of them is actually present in whatever media might be associated with a given toyline.

The less funny thing is that, like the Seekers, it's becoming increasingly common for the pair to be released according to different strategies - witness the US release of both War for Cybertron Ratchet figures as Walgreens exclusives.

Thankfully, no such problems with the Studio Series interpretations of Cybertronian Ratchet and Ironhide from the 2018 Bumblebee solo movie. Not only did both appear on screen (if only for a couple of seconds apiece), but both have received distributions seemingly unrestrained by any retailer-exclusivity marketing deals. As mentioned in my write-up of Ratchet, my expectations were low, but the toy turned out to be both technically impressive and a more satisfying Cybertronian form than those offered by the War for Cybertron line... So let's take a look at Ironhide and see how much of that carries over to the mold's inevitable second use.

Studio Series #82 Ratchet

Of all the figures to come from the Bumblebee movie section of the Studio Series toyline, the one for which my expectations were lowest was the Ratchet/Ironhide mold. This was largely because of the absolute travesty of simplistic and outdated engineering that was the Siege version and its hopelessly lazy Earthrise retool.

Because, let's fact it, if Hasbro were going to get lazy about an established vehicle mode, and leave the robot's blocky Cybertronian feet hanging off the back of an ostensibly terrestrial van, what hope was there for a transforming toy of a character that never had a vehicle mode designed for him, as he only appears very briefly in the movie, and then only in his robot mode?

And yet, sometimes, just sometimes, Hasbro can surprise a jaded old fan like me, and make me believe that perhaps there is some hope for originality of thinking within the brand. Could it be that the Studio Series figure of Ratchet from the Bumblebee movie is one such surprise? Let's take a look...

Cybertron Crumplezone

Much like Ransack/Gasket, Crumplezone/Landbullet was a toy I decided I didn't want or need - on import, at least - until I experienced the figure as pre-Beast Wars Optimus Primal in the Dawn of Future's Past boxed set from BotCon 2006. As its own figure, This toy looked ugly and poorly-proportioned, with a hideous pairing of muted, military green and eye-searingly bright acidic green, and the vehicle mode wasn't particularly exciting.

However, DoFP Optimus Primal worked really well, and showed me what a fun toy he was, so I ended up buying the Hasbro version on the cheap. Being one of the larger Cybertron/Galaxy Force figures, he features some electronics, but is that enough to redeem such a terrible colourscheme on so ugly a toy?

Studio Series #81 Wheeljack

It is my strongly-held conviction that the War for Cybertron Trilogy was a poorly-conceived, poorly-executed mess of a toyline that nevertheless produced a handful of great toys. Part of its problem was that it didn't keep to its own brief - Siege was supposed to represent the early days of the war, yet each figure came with extensive battle-damage paint apps. The most egregious problems, though, were that there were some critical omissions from the Siege portion, the Earthrise toyline was rendered pointless by it's own Netflix tie-in show, and the best toys in Kingdom were Hasbro's perfunctory acknowledgements that Beast Wars was a popular thing back in the 1990s, though clearly not popular enough to warrant its own, specific branch of the franchise rather than insertion into yet another of their interminable attempts to perpetuate their golden age of G1.

The omissions, while not obvious, became clearly problematic in the opening moments of the Netflix show, which paralleled the pilot of the G1 cartoon, showing Bumblebee and Wheeljack on an Energon scavenger hunt. This would have been a great idea, but for the fact that Bumblebee's Siege toy only got released under the Buzzworthy banner, while Wheeljack did not get a Siege toy at all. That said, neither of them actually transformed in the TV show, so perhaps their absence from the Siege line is not important to some people.

Surprisingly, it fell to the Studio Series line to present a Cybertronian Wheeljack figure - based on the CGI sequence at the start of the Bumblebee movie - and, based on the average quality of War for Cybertron toys, I'd have to concede that this was probably for the best. So, let's take a look at what is - in my opinion - one of the best War for Cybertron toys not to appear in the War for Cybertron lines, and try to get to the bottom of what makes it so good.

Studio Series #80 Brawn

I have to confess a certain favouritism when it comes to Brawn. The original G1 toy was likely my fourth purchase in the TransFormers line, and I've always loved its blocky awkwardness, long legs, short arms, and utilitarian claw/hook 'hands'. To this day, one of my favourite stories in the 1980s Marvel Comics series is The Enemy Within, in which Brawn goes bonkers after an electric shock, and ends up in a trial by combat with Starscream.

To say that I dislike his animation model from the cartoon would be an understatement, since he became too generic among the other blocky, poorly drawn robots. While the approximate shape of his head remained, its simplistic, almost featureless mask was replaced by a more expressive, humanoid face, even though he was never a particularly prominent character in the show.

I wasn't at all surprised that he didn't appear in any of the first five live action movies - if anything, I was surprised that he did appear - albeit briefly - in the Cybertron sequence in the Bumblebee solo movie... There was a toy named Brawn in the extended Revenge of the Fallen toyline (and which was repainted into a rather more mold-appropriate Outback analogue) but, much as I liked it, it wasn't quite the update to the G1 character I was hoping for. I quite liked what I saw in the Bumblebee movie, though, and so was excited when he was announced as being part of the first wave of Hasbro's 2022 selection in the Studio Series line. Was this excitement justified..?