Name: Bumblebee
Series: Classics
Allegiance: Autobot
Alternate Mode: Sports Car
CAR MODE
Height: 2.5cm Length: 7.5cm Width: 3.5cm
A yellow sports car with black tyres and windows, Bumblebee also sports a black front bumper and silver headlights. The colours match the simple colour scheme of the original Bumblebee, although this racing sports car model doesn't especially suit the character. He's a repaint of Cybertron Legends Hot Shot with a reduced cast of colours, to suit the Minibot's colours. There's a stamped Autobot logo on the roof. While the model of vehicle might not suit the character, the colours certainly do - even if the yellow is a little brighter than it should be.
The moulded detail here is relatively good - Bumblebee has streamlining on his doors, a rear mounted engine block, moulded headlights and a rear spoiler. For a legends toy, this detailing is respectable, and the bright yellow brings the sculpt out well. Unlike Gobot Bumblebee, he lacks axles and doesn't roll well at all. There are black winglets that can deploy from either side just above the rear wheels, although you need to partly transform the toy to deploy them.
Fit For Natalie informs me that Bumblebee is based on the Chrysler ME Four-Twelve concept car, although I'm not sure how close that concept car is to a real car mode - or how close Bumblebee is to the concept car itself.
Bumblebee's car mode is convincing enough - it _looks_ like it could be a real car model, and while it's not quite the style we expect of G1 Bumblebee, it's closer to the original concept than the gold Gobot. The moulded detail is great at this size and while the paint job is minimal, it works.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Extend the rear to form his legs, split the front, pull the halves out to the sides to form shoulderpads and pull out the doors to form arms. Rotate the backplate, deploy the wings as a sort of cape. There are shades of Hot Rod here.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 9cm Width: 5.5cm
Again mainly yellow, Bumblebee has black thighs and fists, black shoulders and a black waist. There's some mid blue and red on his torso while his face is silver. There are no allegiance symbols here. The black winglets sit on his backplate which towers behind the head and shoulders. The doors form forearm covers and on the inside there are three black cannons (another similarity to Hot Rod). The colours again match the character quite well, but the head is very much Not Bumblebee, so the tribute only vaguely works here.
The facial sculpt is great for a toy this size and the torso is also quite detailed, even if neither do much to convince us that this is Bumblebee. The arms are long, dangling, things that don't quite look right - they sit a long way out from his torso and the upper arms are very thin. The backplate doesn't clip into position and has an annoying tendency to swing to one side or the other. To be honest I'm not a big fan of the backplate anyway, since it looks kibbly sticking up as high as it does.
Poseability is a little erratic, but the articulation is admirable at this size. The shoulders are ball joint, although the backplate gets in the way of his shoulderpads if you lift the arms - they'll happily lift out to the sides though. The hips are ball joints (again restricted by the backplate, to a far lesser extent), but without knee joints this is of limited value. The legs separate, allowing for a few relaxed straight-leg poses. Cool action poses are out but there's enough movement in his limbs for Bumblebee to stand in a natural, relaxed pose, rather than to attention like so many Transformers.
The backplate causes most of the problems here, and I don't think the winglets are cool enough to compensate. Still, the detail and articulation are great at this scale. The repaint feels forced here - the relatively generic head just doesn't cut it as Bumblebee.
VARIATIONS
A repaint of Cybertron Legends Hot Shot, as mentioned. No actual variants that I'm aware of. Universe Legends Red Alert shares the mould.
OVERALL
A decent mould with good detailing and good poseability at this scale in robot mode, but the backplate in robot mode really drags it down. The colours do a decent job of selling this mould as Bumblebee in vehicle mode, but can't save the random repaint's attempted tribute in robot mode. One of the lazier repaints in the Classics Legends - 4.5/10
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