Bumblebee

Status: Released

Release Date: June 2008 (June 2008)

Wave: Animated Deluxe Wave 1

MSRP: $9.99

Size Class: Deluxe

Suggested Age: 5+

Assortment Number: 83462

Product Number: 83467

UPC/Barcode Number: 653569292364

DPCI Number: 087-06-0024

Recolors/Reuses: Elite Guard Bumblebee , Legacy of Bumblebee Animated Bumblebee , Animated Fugitive Waspinator

Toy Variants: Later versions sport additional red paint applications on the turbo booster rockets.

Bumblebee

VEHICLE MODE

In his Animated incarnation, Bumblebee is (shockingly enough) a sporty little yellow car. He looks good in this mode, with the black stripes and red siren. All of his windows are a translucent blue, which is a nice change from the usual half translucent-half painted windows. He also has the two little rocket packs from the show (in translucent blue rather than black and yellow), which can attach to the rear windows for all your rocket-powered car needs. Unfortunately, this mode suffers from one glaring flaw: the yellow paint on the translucent parts doesn’t match the yellow plastic at all. It’s a relatively minor thing, but it still detracts from the figure’s appearance. It makes it look cheap, like a knock-off or something. If it weren’t for the color issues I’d have no problems with this mode, but as it is, I give the vehicle mode a 7.5/10.

ROBOT MODE

Transformation is interesting, and almost dead-on to the show. However, there is one issue. When transforming him from robot to car, you need to push his lower legs together. Unfortunately, the peg that snaps them into place has a mushroom head on it, meaning it takes more force than most would be comfortable exerting to get it to fit. Thus far my Bumble has shown no negative side effects from the peg being forced in, but I’d keep an eye on the area.
In robot mode, Bumblebee looks fairly close to his animation model, though not as much as some other Animated figures. This mainly because his paint apps are rather sparse; he’s missing part of the stripe running up his leg, and the lines that wrap around the back of his head aren’t painted black, just left yellow. It’s not too bad, but still an annoyance. Posability is alright, but really doesn’t compare to most other Animated figures. His shoulders are severely restricted, and he lacks a bicep or forearm swivel. His legs move well enough, with ball joints at the hip, but his leg only swivels below the knee, a la Armada Unicron, meaning that some poses either look awkward and unnatural or can’t be achieved at all. He can pull off some fun poses, but not as many as I’d like.
The one big problem, however, lies with his “stingers”. Quite simply, they can’t fold up all the way into his arms. This doesn’t bother me too much, but can be really annoying. It is possible to shave down the plastic inside his arms that gets in the way, but you shouldn’t have to.
On the plus side, Bumblebee has a great head sculpt, and looks very, er, animated. His posability isn’t all, bad, it just needs improvement. All things considered, I give Bumblebee’s Robot mode a 6/10.

Bumblebee is a fun figure. Personally, I love it. However, that is due in no small part to my love of the character, as opposed to the actual toy. While I may like it, it still has a number of flaws that take a good deal away from the figure. If the only thing holding you back are the stingers, then his repaint, “Elite Guard Bumblebee”, has them fixed. Unfortunately, there just aren’t many alternatives to this mold. There’s the Activators version, and while I don’t really like it, it does provide a nice, better scaled version of the yellow hero. I’d say that if you really want an Animated Bumblebee, he’s not too bad, and at $10 USD, hardly a waste of cash if he disappoints. Bumblebee gets an overall score of 6.5/10.

Voice Actor: Bumper Robinson

Cartoon Overview
Bumblebee's hyperactive, he simply cannot sit still! His attitude is a polar opposite to Prowl's, leading to the two of them rubbing each other the wrong way on more than one occasion. He's prone to doing things without thinking them through, like attaching turbo boosters to himself without proper testing and no way to properly control them. He also tends to showboat a lot sometimes leading to trouble that could have been avoided. But after his encounter with Nanosec, he's learning that sometimes speed is not the most important thing there is. That said, Bumblebee simply cannot stand it if there is someone on the road who is faster than he is - as demonstrated in both the episode Nanosec, and also when Blurr shows up in Velocity.

Bumblebee has issues with following orders he does not agree with, and thinks that Optimus and the other Autobots should do more to look after their friends. When Optimus took Sari's Key away from her, Bumblebee did not agree with the decision and took off after the upset Sari. He also called Optimus a bad leader to his face. Hot headed, he continued to refuse to follow Optimus' orders, which ended with him engaging Starscream in a very one-sided battle. Bumblebee would have been destroyed very easily by Starscream, if not for Megatron giving him some "help" (or rather, Megatron didn't care what happened to Bumblebee but wanted revenge on Starscream and was using Bumblebee to accomplish it).
During Part 2 of Megatron Rising, Bumblebee took on Blitzwing alongside Prowl and Ratchet. He played a major role in the fight, with his Stingers combining with Ratchet's magnetic powers to create an EMP that knocked the Decepticon out of the sky long enough for Prowl to work out the Blitzwing's weakness was his multiple personalities being tied to his different modes. Bumblebee, possessing "an obnoxious personality" as Prowl put it, managed to put this into action, goading Blitzwing into becoming angry enough for his hot-blooded personality to take over and make him transform into tank mode in midair, defeating him for the time being.

In The Elite Guard, Bumblebee's friendship with Sari again comes to the fore, when he acts as Sari's personal assistant for the short period that she is running her father's company. He also manages to talk Jazz into letting the Autobots out to come to Sari's aid, showing both his devotion to helping his friend, and also his ability to read between the lines (as he creatively interprets Ultra Magnus' orders). During the battle with the rampaging Police Drones, Bumblebee demonstrates how much his skill in battle has improved, taking out several opponents in quick succession.
When Sari moved in with the Autobots in Return of the Headmaster, Bumblebee did his best with Bulkhead to help Sari settle in, but he ended up making things worse since he didn't totally understand what Sari was going through.

Bumblebee was assigned to teach Ratchet some better bedside manner in Garbage In, Garbage Out, although he met with limited success since little he did changed Ratchet. It took a crazy junkion voiced by Weird Al nearly destroying the city to get Ratchet to realise the error of his gruff ways.

Bumblebee likes to bend the rules. A lot. In fact, in Velocity, Bumblebee was willing to do anything - even ignore orders not to use his turbo boosters - to get one over on a blue racecar (Blurr) who had outpaced Bumblebee. Bumblebee could not stand the thought of there being anything on wheels that was faster than him, and irrationally assumed that the car had to be doing something to be that fast, arriving at the conclusion that it had to be a Decepticon. When the car later rescued Bumblebee from Blitzwing, though, Bumblebee let his jealousy go and even thanked the car when it drove near to the Autobot's base. The whole experience also made Bumblebee consider trying to be a better role model for Sari.

Bumblebee considers himself to be the "star player" of the Autobot team, and he sometimes sees himself as being far more important than he really is. In S.U.V. he went off on his own to try to capture the Society of Ultimate Villainy, while in Autoboot Camp Bumblebee (in a flashback) saw himself as "perfect Elite Guard material", even though he would have been ejected from the boot camp, had he not "caught" the "traitor" Wasp. Even though neither occasion ended well - in S.U.V., Bumblebee learned the value of teamwork, while in Autoboot Camp Bumblebee sacrificed his career for his friend Bulkhead - Bumblebee did not learn his lesson.

Bumblebee's ongoing rivalry with Prowl continued in Black Friday, where Prowl made a bet with the Autobot that he could not go ten cycles without talking. Bumblebee won the bet on a technicality - he spent nearly two megacycles unconscious thanks to being caught off guard by Blackarachnia and injected with her cybervenom.

Bumblebee came to terms with a few things in A Bridge Too Close - he finally accepted that he was not the fastest thing on wheels, after meeting Blurr a second time. He also realized that he was wrong about Wasp all those cycles ago, when the true traitor - his "friend" Longarm Prime aka Shockwave - was exposed.

In "Transwarped" Bumblebee ended up taking a quick tour of the galaxy, thanks to a malfunctioning Spacebridge component that caused him to transwarp to random parts of the galaxy in the wake of Omega Supreme's own transwarping. One of these trips took Bumblebee into the heart of a asteroid field populated by living asteroid monsters. One of them swallowed Bumblebee and was inadvertently brought back to Earth when Bulkhead managed to pick up on Bumblebee's transwarp signature and reel him in. Fortunately Bumblebee was not stuck inside the monster for long, as it was quickly ground into dust by the new and improved Sari.

However, this happy event did not last long. When Sari's new powers went out of control, Bumblebee tried to help his friend and was nearly killed in the process when the out of control Sari stabbed Bumblebee with her new swords then blew him away. With Sari's key drained of energy and rendered unusable, it was only Ratchet's careful attention that kept Bumblebee from going offline permanently.

During the battle that followed with Megatron (who had now gained control of Omega Supreme) Bumblebee received an upgrade to his Stingers from Ratchet, powering them up to military specifications. Bumblebee used this new power to distract Omega Megatron while Optimus and Prowl broke into the giant to shut him down.

During "Three's a Crowd", Bumblebee demonstrated his improving skills by fighting one on one with Scrapper, and damaging Lugnut with a blast from his upgraded Stingers (though to Lugnut, this was still totally ineffective).

"Where is Thy Sting?" showed Bumblebee's past catch up to him when Wasp tracked him down and switched places with him, by swapping his helmet, voice synthesizer and paintjob. Bumblebee fled in desperation, with both Optimus' team and also Sentinel Prime's Elite Guard taskforce tracking him, assuming that he was in fact Wasp. However Bumblebee was able to prove his identity to Bulkhead by reminding Bulkhead of how, in "Autoboot Camp", Bumblebee had taken the fall for Bulkhead. With Bulkhead's help, Bumblebee was able to prove that he was the real Bumblebee and not Wasp, although Wasp was still able to escaped.

Bumblebee, along with Optimus Prime, spends a large part of "Predacons Rising" trying to convince Wasp to give himself up, but Bumblebee's constant excuses make Wasp lash out and seemingly proves Sentinel Prime's point of capturing Wasp by any means necessary. Following Wasp's transformation into Waspinator, Bumblebee takes Optimus Prime's advice to stop making excuses and make an apology instead. Bumblebee apologises to Waspinator, who says that "Wasp forgives him, but Waspinator will never forgive!" However, luckily for Bumblebee (if nobody else), Waspinator begins to malfunction before he is able to crush Bumblebee. Bumblebee helps Optimus carry a wounded Sentinel Prime out of the area before Waspinator's malfunctioning Transwarp mutation causes an explosion that takes out a large part of Dinobot Island, where the battle was taking place.

Bumblebee and the other Autobots gained an insight into what it meant to be human in "Human Error". One Christmas morning, after drinking some bad “oil nog” tainted by Soundwave, Bumblebee and the other Autobots awakened to find that they had become 100% human. Even as a human, Bumblebee still ended up as the shortest of the Autobots... er, Automen. But this did not diminish his heroism in the face of a Decepticon attack. Realizing that they were actually in a virtual reality crafted by Soundwave, the Autobots defeated a Decepticon attack - Bumblebee ran straight up Blitzwing and punched him square in the face, sending his faces spinning and knocking him out. He then briefly regained his Transformer body, before Soundwave reasserted his control and turned all the Autobots back into Automen. Pursuing Soundwave's VR avatar, Bumblebee borrowed VR Captain Fanzone's car. However, this was an elaborate trap aimed at further brainwashing the Autobots. Fully under Soundwave's control, Bumblebee and the other Autobots were turned against Sari and her rag tag band of substitute Autobots - Wreck Gar, Scrapper and Snarl. Bumblebee was eventually defeated by Wreck Gar and returned to his senses once Soundwave was defeated. The whole experience taught Bumblebee and the other Autobots about what it was to be human, and indeed, about what Christmas truly means.

In "Endgame", Bumblebee transwarps to the moon to plant a tracker at the Decepticon base. After the tracker is destroyed by accident, Bumblebee improvises by activating Arcee's comlink. He also promises to go back and save Arcee. He keeps good on this promise in Part 2, where along with Bulkhead, Ratchet and Sari, he heads back to the moon. On the moon he fights Shockwave with Bulkhead, and they finally defeat Shockwave.

Along with the other Autobots, Bumblebee returns to Cybertron a hero for his part in defeating Megatron and his generals.

Powers and Abilities

Bumblebee's main abilities are his Stingers, energy weapons built into both of his arms. Bumblebee can use these weapons to deliver a small charge to an enemy, or combine them into a single more powerful burst. In "Transwarped" Ratchet upgrades the Stingers to full military level firepower, giving Bumblebee increased firepower (This firepower was alluded to in "Autoboot Camp" where Bumblebee accidentally blew up a building with a poorly aimed shot, which at the time was uncharacteristically powerful. After being kicked out of the Elite Guard academy, Bumblebee's power must have been sealed).

Bumblebee's other main ability is his speed and agility - he is easily the fastest of the Autobots and among the most agile after Prowl. When Bumblebee needs even more speed, he can attach turbo boosters to his vehicle mode - these boosters can also act as rockets to propel him through the air, should he have a decent boost first (such as being thrown by Bulkhead).

On occasion, Bumblebee can use his wheels - located in his feet - to race along at high speed in robot mode. He can even lie on his back to use the wheels in his shoulders as well for even more speed, without having to transform!

Bumblebee is also adept at scouting missions, believe it or not.

According to Prowl, Bumblebee's greatest weapon is his obnoxious personality.

Vehicle Mode Appearance: Compact Police Detective’s Car.

Appearances
30 - Transwarped Part 1
31 - Transwarped Part 2
32 - Transwarped Part 3
33 - Three's a Crowd
34 - Where is Thy Sting?
36 - Predacons Rising
37 - Human Error Part 1
38 - Human Error Part 2
41 - Endgame Part 1
42 - Endgame Part 2

IDW Overview In Animated: The Arrival Issue 2 Bumblebee, as the most media friendly of the Autobot team in New Detroit, bears the brunt of The Wraith's growing anger toward the Autobots. Bumblebee just can't help humiliating The Wraith at every turn - arresting the Angry Archer when The Wraith could not touch him as he was just a hologram, saving him from Colossus Rhodes after the tricks of his trade had been laid bear and taking his place at the University of Michigan Homecoming game as half time guest of honor. This led to Bumblebee becoming the victim of The Wraith's plan for revenge. Tricked by The Wraith into teaming up, Bumblebee was trapped in vehicle mode by a wheel clamp while The Wraith created a hologram Bumblebee to wreck havoc at the stadium. Fortunately, Bumblebee was able to break free and stop The Wraith with the help of the other Autobots before anyone was seriously hurt. In the end, Bumblebee felt bad for The Wraith, who really only wanted the attention that he was used to. In The Arrival #3, Bumblebee's rash actions caused a lot of trouble for the Autobots during a fight with Stiletto when he fired his stingers without thinking, blowing up a fuel tanker. He later got his tires slashed by Stiletto before she tried to make her getaway. The poor little 'bot was having a bad day! In The Arrival #4 Bumblebee decides to get a new color scheme, complete with pictures of his head on his doors.

IDW Appearances Animated The Arrival Part 1 Animated The Arrival Part 2 Animated The Arrival Part 3 Animated The Arrival Part 4

Notes
Bumblebee installs a custom horn in episode 07. Thrill of the Hunt, which plays the "More than Meets the Eye" jingle. Other car accessories he sports in that episode include fluffy dice, a hula girl, and a pine air freshener (which he comments he has no idea what it does).


Official Cartoon Network Press Release Bio

The “kid” of the team, easily the youngest and the least mature of the AUTOBOTS. He’s over-eager, over-confident and constantly overcompensating for his diminutive stature. Fast-talking, wise-cracking, scheming and hyperactive, BUMBLEBEE is not nearly as cool as he imagines himself to be. Then again, nobody could possibly be as cool as BUMBLEBEE imagines himself to be. He’s a total showoff, always acting on impulse and rarely considering the consequences. And he’s always getting in way over his head, although most things are way over his head. But don’t mention that to BUMBLEBEE; he’s very sensitive about his height.

Robot Mode Power: BUMBLEBEE can create electric force “stings,” allowing him to stun enemies or blast his way through whatever’s in his path. He’s also the fastest of the AUTOBOTS, in both vehicle and robot mode.


Original Bio Posted on the official website, Transformers.com


BUMBLEBEE is the "kid" of the team, easily the youngest, and most immature of the AUTOBOTS. He’s a showoff and acts solely on impulse; he behaves like a rebellious teenager with a sarcastic, wise-cracking, attitude and disdain for authority. As far as his superhero status goes, BUMBLEBEE naturally digs the spotlight and will do anything to have it shinning brightly, and exclusively on him. His big mouth, brash tone, and "bring it on" attitude sometimes get him in over his head.

ROBOT MODE POWER: "Stingers"
Two sparkplug- looking cannons allow BUMBLEBEE to send electric force blasts that stun his enemies or blast away through whatever’s in his path. BUMBLEBEE not only has super-electric stingers, but he is the fastest AUTOBOT in both robot and vehicle mode.

Other Comic Information

Titan UK

Bumblebee as always is a key member of the Autobot team. In Transformers #17, he is with the other Autobots when they are captured by Starscream and his clone army.

In the UK Animated Comic Issue 1, Bumblebee and Sari exchange quips with the human villain Quake-Maker. Once Afterburn arrives on the scene, Bumblebee is the first Autobot to join in the fight, followed swiftly by Bulkhead and Ratchet.

In spite of being impressed by Afterburn in that story, Bumblebee is still not totally convinced. In Transformers Animated #2, he is apprehensive about taking on the rampaging Swoop and Snarl with only Ratchet, Sari and Afterburn for backup initially wishing that Bulkhead, Prowl or Optimus was there. During the fight with Snarl and Swoop, Swoop drops Bumblebee in a mud puddle, annoying Bumblebee who comments he'd just had his monthly wash. Later, Bumblebee uses his speed to distract the rampaging Snarl and recover one of Ratchet's components from him, then working with Afterburn, uses Sari's Key to cure Snarl of the rage virus that was making him rampage. After this, Bumblebee starts to accept Afterburn more.

Appearances

Titan UK Transformers #17
Titan UK Transformers Animated Comic #1 - Burnout
Titan UK Transformers Animated Comic #2 - Ratchet & Grimlock are dead?!

Contributors: Tony_Bacala, Tim Formas, Sol Fury, chaosbringer_00

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