Aside from his more limited waist twist, all articulation is vastly improved over MP-21: neck, shoulders, elbows, hands, thighs, knees, and ankles.

The backpack may be made of more pieces, but it's roughly the same size as MP-21's and looks less like he's wearing a turtle shell to my eye.

 

It the gaps in it that I think are an eyesore. I actually like my transformers to have a but of a backpack, as long as it is clean. This though, just looks gappy and horrible.

Also can confirm the looseness of the joints, as shown in the Bobby Skullface review?

 

I think it its still a shame he doesn't come with a stoic normal face, and maybe a yelling face. The half-open-mouth face is weird.

 

It looks like the kind of face you might expect to see on a plush toy or something

 

Its like Teddy Rupxin when the battery dies in the middle of a sentence...

 

He does come with a stoic normal face - for some reason BSF didn’t have it.

 

This. These boards are a nightmare each time he posts a review. "Anti-Takara bias!" No, Takara just doesn't float his boat as much as it does mine and yours. In the same way I tend to enjoy FansToys less than he does. All of which is entirely fine. BSF is easily one of the best reviewers out there. That his tastes often don't align with mine doesn't change that - I'll still learn 100x more from one of his vids than most other people's.

As for New Bee, I personally think he looks pretty great but for some reason I haven't pulled the pre-order trigger on him. Having not yet gone for V3 Prime (in that case due to price) that could end up being two G1 MPs in a row I've skipped. I feel like I'm malfunctioning.

 

Yeah, the reason accessories are missing etc. is because these are preproduction samples (and already quite used preproduction samples from the looks of it.)

I don't mind anyone's reviews, personally. I just watch all reviews because I find it enjoyable to see different people with wildly different tastes and lighting setups handle a figure I'm excited for. (Which I have always been and remain for this Bee.) Though, in this instance, I do also feel people are jumping the gun in terms of final verdict at least as QC goes since, again, these aren't the final retail release of the product. That won't change the look or nature of the figure though, of course.

That said, I still maintain this is the best look we've gotten of him so far:

The lighting and clarity there really show off his paint and they properly transform the backpack and feet. And the transformation is well represented in the video as a whole.

 

Just watched the BSF review and I had no idea he was this small (not complaining, just surprised). I’ve never been huge fan of Takara going down this slavishly G1-cartoon accurate road that they are, but that’s a personal thing. I know they’re not show accurate, but MP10 and MP21 still look so much more appealing to me than their newer counterparts.

But man, and I don’t know why, but there is something that is just SO fascinating about this Mama June-looking Bumblebee.

 

Now that is an interesting contrast of opinions.

 

I think the criticisms are fair

Thank you. Agree 100%. I don't come to these boards looking for a TT cool-aid echo chamber to validate my views. I welcome criticisms of figures so that I can decide whether or not said criticisms matter to me. I would rather people call out issues so that I know what I'd be getting into and i couldn't care less whether another person likes or dislikes a figure.

 

Yikes, the hostility of the thread hasn't changed since it started. I'll try to be as clear and simple as I can be here, remember, just an opinion/critique from a fellow TF fan.

My two cents on bee are that he looks good from the front, nice to see all the paint, but it would be nice to have seen a cleaner bot mode. The issue is less that he has a backpack/feet kibble, but rather that its not that clean. A cleaner backpack would have made this a lot more tolerable for me. Sunstreaker seems to be a good example where it's a nice compact clean backpack, while this is a bunch of stacked panels that don't sit flush. If you like the figure, more power to you, but that's my stance on em.

 

I would go so far as to say that it's not even a backpack. It's really just kibble..

 

Nope, sorry but Bumblebee still looks happy and cheerful as ever. You just can’t keep this little bot down.

 

I love this list. I may come back to this post in the future for reference. However, I’m going to need a cheat sheet ‘cause I can’t for the live of me, remember what MP-number is which character. How the hell do you guys do that? I remember maybe couple only,(MP10 is OPv.2, MP04 is Megs v.1, that’s it) I can’t keep 46 MPs in my head.

 

I don’t remember the 30’s well, my 20’s are even worse. I know a lot and I could probably figure it out if I really tried.

 

I don't have Bumblebee yet but I think from the videos and photos available so far, I already have a fairly good understanding of the size, complexity and design restrictions of this figure. Maybe because I come from a mechanical engineering background, I tend to be more realistic and forging when it comes to Transformers design.

imho TT have done a great job on this toon accurate Bumblebee. If you really think about, this is a very difficult design to pull off, at such a small size no less. The car mode is chibified and smaller in volume than ver 1.0.

In saying all that, I wouldn't mind seeing a 3p company tackling the same design, based on the same aesthetics. I don't get much 3P stuff as I want to support official products as much as I can, but I'm also a bit of engineering nerd myself so fantastic designs like Unique Toys' TLK Optimus Prime were absolute must-haves for me (which imho TT would have a hard time matching up when it came time for them to put out an MPM). I really don't think with similar design parameters, any 3p capacity would do better than TT on this toon Bumblebee, but I'd gladly be proven wrong.

 

Even more interesting, some of the 3P minibots will be too short in bot mode and too large in altmode to scale with him.

 

I've started, stopped, and redone this MP-45+ digibash more times than I can count, time to just let it go! Prepare to have a different recolor unleashed upon you every few days  

 

This is porn. Love it.

Now Glyph and Bugbite? And Evangelion and Bape and Sleep Mode just for the hell of it? Hahaha