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...

Generations (30th Anniversary) Waspinator

Second on the agenda for this week is the so-called '30th Anniversary' Generations take on Beast Wars Waspinator, not least because I've already written up the only other version of this character I have, the 2007 Reissue with its mostly show-accurate colourscheme.

Of course, that reminds me that I have yet to write up the TransFormers: Animated version... but there's so little of TFA that I have written up, that's sort of forgivable.

It's slightly puzzling of Hasbro to include Beast Wars in it's 'Thrilling 30' anniversary lineup because Beast Wars will celebrate its own 30th anniversary in 2026... but with Rhinox already out and looking awesome, Hasbro seems to be trying to make up for its early mistakes with the hideous Classics Cheetor and Dinobot.

...But which end of the reboot spectrum does Waspinator fall into?

Beast Wars Telemocha Series Waspinator

In all the years of TransFormers, across all the Generations and continuities, there has never been a character that attracted gunfire like Waspinator. He came across as the little guy with big dreams... and yet was blown up by his comrades as often as by his enemies.

Maybe it was the irritating voice (think Peter Lorre, but with a tendency to buzz any 's' sound)... or the delusion that he was far more powerful and competent than he really was... maybe it was just the annoying buzzing around in (giant green) wasp mode. Waspinator escaped very few episodes of Beast Wars unscathed, and frequently ended up strewn across the prehistoric landscape.

I actually skipped on most of Beast Wars the first time round, because I just didn't see the point of TransFormers - alien robots, let's not forget - that turned into animals. Leave it to Mainframe, the company behind the awesome ReBoot, to create one of the most finely judged stories for one of the most outlandish toylines in TransFormers history. When I finally got round to seeing Beast Wars - sporadically on UK kids TV, then via a website that carried decent resolution video files - I was utterly hooked. Each character in the initially small cast was well developed, and carried their own part of the story - a far cry from the random selection of two-dimensional characters that filled out the G1 cartoon. It was the TV series that got me interested in owning more than just Optimus Primal and Megatron, but original Beast Wars toys are hard to find, frequently expensive beyond all reason, and generally poorly decorated.

So when Takara decided to reissue a group of Beast Wars toys, with hugely improved paint jobs, Waspinator was quite high on my 'want' list.