I finally opened up mine and messed around with it a bit. The LED module is super fiddly, but it looks fine now except the left eye looks blurry, due to the clear plastic being foggy. My copy doesn't seem clean, looks consistent with the first batch unless I'm wrong - in person the weathering is a lot more obvious, I think photos make the details a lot more subdued. Apologies for the camera quality, took this with my iPad, I'll take photos with my actual camera later. Man, this thing is absolutely lovely. My only complaint is that for the head, taking the top off to get the LEDs in is hard. I have no problems taking it off with the masked head but for the normal head it took a lot of force, I even had the head fly off (not the top) and it absolutely scared me. Luckily no damage was done and only my OCD is somewhat challenged with it landing on my floor.
I noticed that my iPad removes a lot of the dirt effect, as well. But judging by some of the earlier pics in this thread, mine seems cleaner in person than some of those pics. He still has dirt just not as much as this one (submitted by unmc2001):
I just got my bumblebee in today. does anyone know how to easily take apart the stand without breaking it?
Trying to figure that out myself too, doesn't seem like you can once it's been assembled. You probably have to use some tool to press in the tabs so you can pull out the stand from the base.
I opened mine today, this blew me away, in person the level of detail is so much more eyedropping, the articulation is amazing but I'm really scared of some of the smaller parts like the little bits around his elbow and the pieces on the thighs breaking. This guy is also really heavy which I like. I'm sorry toyworld but I'm thinking I'm more interested in 3a's op offering
It’s so cool to see all you 2nd batchers getting your Bees! I didn’t know there was such a difference between the decos. Mine definitely looks dirty af in person. I think I’d prefer it a little cleaner like batch 2 but I’m still happy with mine. This is making me want to mess with him again when I get home from work.
I didn’t realize there were two distinct deco patterns ... hmmm. I’ll take a closer look at mine when I’m home today. I’ll say that this figure is by far one of the most impressive we’ve ever gotten. Period. It is that good on the display shelf and in-hand when posing.
Agreed. I rather have something "cleaner" too. I've ordered the DLX Prime so I hope they go light on the dirt for him.
What do you all think is more accurate? The cleaner version or the dirtier version? I've tried looking at some screencaps from the film and cant really decide :/
IMO the cleaner one is more accurate, looking at screencaps Bee appears more clean than dirty. The newer deco seems more realistic when you consider the amount of dirt that was on Bee as a VW. There’s some harsh spots where it’s dirty, but most of Bee seems pretty clean. The dirtier one is a lot better for photos, since it’s more obvious. This is something I see with Gundams and other model kits, where the weathering is exaggerated so it appears better in photos and from certain distances. In the movie, the textures remain the same, but it’s on screen so those details aren’t really lost. In 3D space those details can easily be lost so I suppose that’s why they really went hard on the dirt for the first batch. Although even when considering that, the first batch seemed to have been too harsh on the weathering, when compared to this specific screen cap.
Both are incredible, but I would probably lean toward dirtier as a preference. I have a cleaner second batch and am really happy with it. It still has dirt, just not as much.
I really enjoy posing bee I wanted to recreate the metroid cover but I realized that bee's legs aren't that flexible but ended up creating my favorite pose for him so far though it does test his balance to the limit So now that I've handled him for day I guess these are my criticisms: I wish he had a storage system for his swappable parts outside his box kinda like the stand for the pg exia. Mentioning the stand, I wish it could go lower for some squatish poses. My last issue would be that I feel terrified trying to pose his thighs, there is so many tiny painted details that I'm scared of scraping. Anyway this was my closest solution to my fav pose's balance issue
I prefer the dirty look as I feel it gives the piece more character and is more interesting to look at. My only complaint would be the stand. Firstly, it makes Bee look like he's hovering because it doesn't allow the figure's feet to touch the base. Additionally, the same design was used for the other DLX figures. It would have been nice to have different bases to individualize the figures. Moreover, if the bases could interlock to create a piece of Cybertron diorama that would have been ideal. Then we could recreate the intro scene from the movie on our shelves.
Has anyone else who ordered their Bee directly from 3A not get theirs yet? Mine is still “pending” according to the site Can’t wait to get my hands on this guy!