Human Alliance Bumblebee

[BWprowl]

Back when the Indiana Jones toyline was coming out (remember that month?) I picked up a ‘Mutt Williams’ figure, mainly to have a Sam Witwicky to display with my Movie Autobot lineup. Sam’s an integral character to the film, and a likeable one, probably one of my favorites from the movie. So even though it was pretty woefully out of scale, I was quite pleased to have a Sam with my Movie Autobots (yeah, I know David Willis did the same thing, but I came up with the idea independent of him, and I don’t think Cybertron Red Alert’s transformation is ‘too complex’, so that makes me a better person).

And then we saw the first pics of Human Alliance Bumblebee with Sam, and I promptly kicked myself.

Vehicle Mode: One of the basic ideas of Human Alliance is to make Alternators-style, 1:24 scale versions of Movie characters. Or at least, the fact that they’re at 1:24 scale has led a lot of people to compare the Human Alliance toys to Alternators. Now, I’ve only got three Alternators (Smokescreen and Ravage), so I dug them out for comparison. Smokescreen and Bumblebee are about the same size in vehicle mode (I just had to transform both HA Bumblebee and Alternators Smokescreen back to vehicle mode for the purpose of this review. Oy.). I’m not much of an expert on scale between different car models, but Smokescreen’s a bit longer and ‘bigger’ than Bumblebee, but Bumblebee’s got bigger wheels, so make of that what you will. Bumblebee’s also a lot more solid than Smokescreen. His parts all align really well, and picking him up doesn’t dislodge anything, unlike on Smokescreen, whose midsection always wants to misalign when I mess with him in vehicle mode.

The larger scale also means a large amount of detail, and Bumblebee delivers. He’s got a molded and painted gas cap, head-and-tail-lights, exhaust pipes, door handles, chevy logos, and ‘Camaro’ words on him. The interior is also detailed, but it’s frankly not as good as the Alternators. He’s got seats and a steering wheel-in bright yellow, and with the seats looking pretty tech-greebly. The center section is just the spine of the robot, and it looks out of place too. And behind the seats is a giant, obvious mess of robot parts.

It’s also worth noting here that the lines of the Camaro seem ‘off’ compared to other renditions. The front seems significantly shorter, and the car seems thicker, giving off a bulkier vibe overall. It’s not a huge deal, it’s still a very nice car, but I though I’d mention it. One thing that’s really nice is that, expect for a little section down by the front wheels, some bits on the side of the windshield, and the rearview mirrors, all the yellow is molded plastic, so there’s no worry about paint-matching and the ugliness that usually ensues, especially since yellow is usually such a bad color for that.

The OTHER reason for the larger scale is so they can have half-decent action figures of the human characters to interact with these things. Bumblebee comes with Sam, naturally, who’d presumably 1:24 scale as well. I say ‘presumably’ because though he’s intended to work with Bumblebee, he seems a little too small. Seriously, the car just looks huge in comparison. Standing next to each other, Bumblebee’s wheels are over half as tall as Sam is! That can’t be right! The figure itself is nice enough for one of its size, having universal joints in its shoulders, hips, and knees, plus head and chest swivels. Elbow swivels woulda been nice, but it’s hardly a deal breaker. Sam’s got quite a look of Dull Surprise molded into his face, and you might want to paw through all the boxes on your retailer’s shelf to find one with decent paint on the face. One of the eyebrows on mine is raised slightly more than the other. This combines with his dazed expression to make it look like The Beef took acting lessons from Keanu Reeves. He’s about half the size of Indiana Jones Mutt Williams, who can totally carry him around, piggyback style.

Sam’s designed to be able to sit in Bumblebee’s ridiculously yellow driver’s seat and use his ridiculously yellow steering wheel. Wrestling him in there is a bit of a challenge (as is opening the car doors to do so), and you’ll probably have to pop open the passenger door to get Sam’s other hand wrapped around the steering wheel. A peg on the seat connects to Sam’s back to hold him in, not that he really needs it since it’s such a tight fit. The result looks pretty good, with Sam being less noticeably out of scale in this configuration. He can also fit inside and drive Smokescreen, though the fit is even tighter. His legs really have to cram together to fit.

I’d presume him to be about the right size to harass your Binaltech* girls, if you have any.

Transformation: Okay, he’s admittedly like Alternators in this respect. …Actually, while it seemed pretty insane the first time I did it, this time was much more smooth. He unfolds pretty naturally, especially once you get the order of operations down (the unfolding of the arms is particularly notorious in this. Flip up the abdomen panel, pull the wheels out, flip down the panels right above the wheels, rotate the arms inward on the shoulder joint, THEN pull them out). I also highly recommend detaching the missiles, since they get in the way and they’re likely gonna get popped off anyway. Both the front and back end have chunks that you pull out on springs and rotate into a different orientation. The ones in the back create some roughness in unfolding the legs, since the halves that are supposed to split kinda rub up against that part, as well as each other. You have to play with the central joint a bit to get them into the right spacing to unfold right. Getting his cannon clipped into position takes bit of the ol’ Excessive Force, and while the instructions want you to rotate the missile-holders up, that ends up looking bad and gets in the way, so I rotate them down. There’s a clip on the aforementioned abdomen panel that locks his chest section down, but you kinda have to rock that section back on its folding hinge to get it to line up properly, something I fully expect other reviews to miss. Don’t forget to click his door-wings up a notch for this mode! The panels that are supposed to fold forward on his thighs can actually inhibit hip articulation, so make your own call.

Robot mode: Nearly a head bigger than the Alternators in robot mode, he’s closer to some Ultra class toys in size and proportions (Movie toy size-changing syndrome is in full effect here), justifying the higher price point a bit more (but not much). He’s also a LOT more dynamic than the Alternators, which seemed to specialize in annoyingly limited hip joints. Bumblebee’s a lot more dynamic. Very nicely detailed and movie-accurate (from what I can tell) too; this is probably the best representation of his folded-in chest/grille section I’ve yet seen. It’s a little annoying that his right hand is stuck in cannon mode, but at least it looks nice/accurate (though a bit on the small side). He’s got articulation in spades, especially in the legs, which have universal hips, double jointed knees, and bonus joints in the calves, from the transformation. He could use a bit more range in his elbow joints, which stop at 90 degrees, and I wish his head could do more than swivel, though it can look down a bit thanks to a transformation joint. They also should’ve gone a different route with the hand. He’s got a universal wrist and a hinged thumb and finger-chunk, but the relaxed pose they’ve got the fingers in means that any pose expect for a neutral open hand looks just bit odd.

Another thing Bumblebee’s got that Alternators didn’t have is gimmicks. And hoo boy does he pack in a lot of them. The first and most obvious is the cannon: it fires a missile, woo hoo. One thing that bugs me about this particular launcher is the missiles. He comes with two of them, which store conspicuously on his arms when they aren’t loaded. Why in the world does he need two missiles? He only has one launcher, and it looks best (and movie-accurate) unloaded anyway. The missiles don’t form any extra detailing in vehicle mode, so why are they even there? The budget put towards making the cannon fire, and the struts for holding the missiles would have been WAY better spent making his right arm capable of actually transforming from hand to cannon (and back again!). And it’s not like he’s hurting for gimmicks. Along with the arm cannon, he’s got a blaster that folds out of the panel behind his head. It’s neat enough, but trying to point it forward pretty much means the firepower’s going to be grazing Bumblebee’s head, so it’s better positioned as an anti-air weapon, or something he leans forward to use. He’s also got his Battle Helmet, which actually slides down over his face, a first for Bumblebee toys. This was one of the big draws of the figure for me. It works well, looks good, and is something Bumblebee toys should’ve been able to do for ages. It feels a little flimsy at the connection point, but as long as you’re careful, I wouldn’t be too worried. It’s worth noting that he doesn’t have a single Automorph or Mech-Alive on him.

Bumblebee’s other gimmicks are all based around the line-centric human interaction. To this end, the car seats can rotate around to wind up on top of his arms, and Sam can sit in them. His left arm chair has a little bar that folds over Sam, kinda like on a roller coaster. The right arm chair doesn’t have anything; Sam just pegs his back into the seat and rides on top of Bumblebee’s cannon. I’m a little mystified by this interaction. I can’t think of a good reason for Bumblebee to strap Sam to his forearm of all places for transit, and the seat on the cannon doesn’t have any indication of Sam operating the gun, just his feet getting hot from being near the cannon-fire. Fortunately, the other gimmick is much more well implemented. You fold a little stand out inside of Bumblebee’s back, and flip out a missile pod on his shoulder. Then Sam stands on the stand and operates the missiles (there’s even little handles on it for Sam to hold onto!). This is cool, and if you’ve got Bumblebee’s overhead cannon deployed, the overall effect is really nice. It’s worth noting that Sam’s space is completely undisturbed by Bumblebee’s movements. You can pose Bumblebee around all you want, Sam’s not going to get knocked off by any stray bits colliding with him. Finally, a small, but nicely included bit of human interaction: Bumblebee’s got a peg in his left hand, which can be used to stand Sam up in it. This is one of my favorite bits of the toy; it lends some character to it, and looks pretty good.

So, overall? Despite some annoying/curious design choices (the cannon/missiles, the arbitrary Human Interaction seats) Bumblebee is a seriously nice toy. Much more dynamic and intuitive than any of the Alternators I have, and he captures the look of the Movie design pretty much as perfectly as I think we’re going to get. Plus, while some of the human interaction feels tacked on, the bits that work, REALLY work. And Sam’s a nice bonus. On the other hand, $30 is a pretty steep price for what’s essentially a slightly larger Alternator with some gimmicks tacked on. It all depends on your tastes. If you like toys of human Transformers characters (as I do), and are a fan of Movie Bumblebee (if so, this will likely be your favorite toy ever) or Alternators, give it a shot. But if any of those things, or some of the bigger issues I mentioned, turn you off, you might not want to bother, since you’ll likely be disappointed for $30. I really like him, personally, especially how much there is to DO with him, but I acknowledge that some people won’t be as forgiving of his various little flaws, especially given the price.

EDIT: Hey, turns out he's misassembled. The legs are on the wrong sides. Easy enough to fix though, just unscrew the crotch piece and swap 'em around.

[andersonh1]

Very thorough review. I'm a huge Alternators fan, but the $30 pricetag is keeping me from picking up this guy. Even with the human figure added in, I can't see the point of a $10 price jump. You've convinced me that it's a decent figure and worth owning, so hopefully I can find it discounted at some point.

[onslaught86]

Ooh, thanks, nice to have a good review to consider. This one's been high up the wantlist since it was unveiled, it's clearly the best MovieBee toy to date, and I do like the design. Alternators With Gimmicks is enough to sway me, I want the whole line. Despite my owning almost all the Alts (Missing two), I find them largely boring and limited in display options. Bring on Barricade, waaaant. Just gotta wait for 'Bee to come out here.

Points for the ToplessRobot review reference too!

[BWprowl]

Points for the ToplessRobot review reference too!

Wait, whut? I peruse TR irregularly, and I don't *think* I intentionally put a reference of any sort in that review. Then again, I'm known to be subliminally influenced in these sorts of cases, so who knows? What did I say that was A Reference?

I'll still totally take those points though.

The awesomness of this toy only makes me thirst for HA Barricade more. Do we have any pics of that thing yet?

[onslaught86]

Shia the Beef, heh.

Yeah, pic of Barricade showed up from the last convention set, just a shoddy camera pic of the stock images, but still pretty nifty-looking. He has the tyre weapon, whee.

[BWprowl]

Shia the Beef, heh.

Oh yeah. You were actually the first one I saw write it that way, but yeah, I remember seeing it on Bricken's page.

[onslaught86]

Soooo Human Alliance figures are FIFTY US DOLLARS EACH here.

Buh-bye, plans to buy the whole line.

[BWprowl]

Oof, yeah, that'd pretty much destroy the chances of me buying any except for Bumblebee and Barricade. I dunno, you know what it would cost to ship to your neck o' the woods from California? Mebbe I can help you save a few bucks.

Do we yet know if we're getting a Mudflap? That's what my purchase of Skids is hinging on.

EDIT: Okay, read about Hasbro's panel, there will be an HA Mudflap. Sold.

[138 Scourge]

It certainly appears so.

Never answering a question again without some kinda way of backing it up. Felt kinda dumb getting called out on the bike thing.

Also, Simmons. That's kinda neat.

[onslaught86]

Oof, yeah, that'd pretty much destroy the chances of me buying any except for Bumblebee and Barricade. I dunno, you know what it would cost to ship to your neck o' the woods from California? Mebbe I can help you save a few bucks.

Thanks for the offer! Unless he could be shipped for less than $10US or so it wouldn't be a huge saving though, probably cheaper to wait for a decent sale here. No way they're shifting at that price.