Takara Tomy MP-45 Bumblebee 2.0

HolyCulture · Oct 13, 2019

ambitron said: ↑

As some of you may have gleaned from recent images I’ve posted, I’ve had this guy in hand for nearly two weeks now. I’ve had a pretty rough year (no violins, don’t worry) and was looking forward to MP-45 coming in early October as the light at the end of the tunnel, so when it was delayed, I took to the Internet to see if I could find anyone selling one of the pre-production copies knocking around at a decent price. I got lucky, managing to snag one that is boxed and has all of the faces, accessories and instructions. (I hasten to add that Takara is still getting just as much money out of me as I’ve kept all of my preorders - I have more than one ordered - and will now get a final, hopefully more pristine, copy for Christmas.)

Anyway, I thought I’d share my thoughts on this little chap for what they’re worth. I wanted to wait until I’d had him in hand a bit so that I could give more than first impressions. This will be a bit long-winded with lots of pictures, because it’s a figure I’ve been looking forward to.

The TLDR Summary

In a nutshell: if, like me, you like the way this figure looks in pictures and can forgive the backpack, you’ll love it in hand. If you don’t like the way it looks in pictures, I don’t think having it in hand is going to change your mind.

Personally, I love this figure, but I recognise its flaws are very real and that some may not care enough about the character or cartoon design to get beyond them - and that’s fair enough. There is no denying the backpack is a mess. However, he really does capture G1 Bumblebee near-perfectly (from the front ), and he is a lot of fun to handle and transform.

More detailed thoughts, and pictures, below.

Accessories

Okay, let’s be honest, the accessories are pretty pathetic in terms of what you get, especially when you put the plastic tray against Ironhide’s or Ratchet’s. I love how we get multiple facial expressions these days, but beyond that, Takara really provided the bare minimum here. The lack of energon conductors seems a strange omission especially, but there were so many other accessories that were possible too. What about the jetpack from Dinobot Island? Or the lab coat, or a wrist communicator etc? At the very least, why not provide the season 2 gun (the one MP-21 used) as well as the season 1 gun? (MP-45 can sort of hold MP-21’s gun, but only very limply and loosely.)

View attachment 28419603

For the price they are asking, when you first open the box it does seem a little barren - a desert of clear plastic tray with a tiny oasis of Bumblebee and accessories bang splat in the middle. Ah well.

View attachment 28419605

I wish they’d included the same-sized Spike that is coming with Hound, as I think he is going to scale much better with Bumblebee in robot mode (obviously he won’t fit inside, but that gimmick is implemented a little awkwardly anyway - see below). I suppose they were saving that for Hound’s release, but they could have varied them by having one with the helmet and one without, just like they’ve done with the tiny Spikes for MP-44 and 45. All the same, it is nice to have Bumblebee and Spike together.

View attachment 28419602

Still, the “I heart NY” licence plate is fun (I haven’t noticed this causing scratching like BSF described, but I’ve only tried it once) and it’s nice to have a blast effect for the gun.

Just like with BSF’s copy, though, I cannot get the gun to fit under the vehicle in a way that allows the car to roll. There are two slots in the inner thighs into which you are supposed to insert tabs on the side of the gun handle, so that the gun can be stored under the car. But when you do this, it just pushes the wheels up off the ground like a jack. As I say, I have the instructions, so I’m not missing anything here (and BSF was trying to insert the gun correctly in his review). Hopefully this is just an issue on these early copies, as it would be pretty sloppy for this feature to be completely unusable in the final release.

Alt Mode

I *love* the alt mode. It just oozes character, beautifully capturing Bumblebee’s chibi Beetle mode in the cartoons, as based on his G1 toy. It’s just so damned cute. And tiny. Even though I knew it was going to be tiny from pictures and early reviews, I still wasn’t quite prepared for just how small it is.

View attachment 28419607

My only issue with the alt mode is that it is a little gappy. But then, mine is a pre-production model (or possibly even a factory reject, I don’t know), so it’s possible this is just an issue with mine - BSF’s copy seemed much tighter. Also, although mine rolls, one of the front wheels doesn’t quite touch the floor. No other reviewer seems to have this problem, though, so I think it’s just mine.

It took me a while to fit Spike in the car, until I double-checked the instructions and realised that the fronts of Bumbebee’s thighs are not supposed to sit up like seats as you might expect but instead fold back on themselves. It’s still a little awkward to get Spike in there, as you have to close the feet and roof around him without him falling out in the process (you can’t get him in through the doors but have to pull apart the front of the vehicle and lift up the roof), and he does look a little crushed inside, but it works, I suppose.

View attachment 28419608

Opening the doors is a bit awkward, too, because you have to pull them away from the frame before you can open them, which requires you to pull the hood apart to allow room for pulling out the door.

So, all in all, the gimmicks are a little sub-par - some might even say pointless - but the alt mode is just so fun to look at that I don’t really care. I rarely use the gimmicks anyway, and they do the job if you just want to pose him on the shelf with Spike standing by an open door.

Transformation

The transformation is a lot of fun, but as with many MPs, you need to give it a few run-throughs before it becomes fun. It seems a bit complicated and messy on first try (or at least it did to me), but after two or three goes it becomes hugely enjoyable and satisfying.

The only point of annoyance during the transformation is the arms. It’s easy enough - once you get the hang of it - to get them under the roof (which seems awkward at first), but I find it very difficult to get them to push down low enough, so that it becomes hard to push the roof down and so the arm flaps that form part of the roof always stick out a little. I know I have the arms transformed correctly, too, because it is clear in the instructions. They actually sit better if you rotate the shoulders the *opposite* way to the instructions, but then they rub agains the crotch too much and so you will get paint rubbing (when transformed the right way, there is a little cutout in the shoulders to avoid rubbing the crotch - there’s a lot of crotch rubbing in this paragraph, isn’t there?).

My only other issue with the transformation, at least on my first go, is just how unsatisfying it is to end up with that backpack. One of the joys of MPs is the ingenious and complex transformations that somehow end up with a fairly clean robot mode - sure, many others have backpacks, but they look tidy. Here you fold a lot of stuff up and it just continues to look like a lot of folded-up stuff on his back. That does detract from the fun a little, at least at first. I’m over it now though and can just enjoy the transformation for what it is.

That said, the foot and leg transformation is pure “Masterpiece Moment” (to use @Maz’s coinage, I believe).

Interesting fact: the instructions completely miss that you can move the front bumper down in robot mode, and show it pointing up in the fully-transformed drawing. (So @DeanML, you have to forgive those who miss this step! )

Robot Mode

Robot mode is just pure G1 Bumblebee (again, from the front ).

View attachment 28419600

The proportions are spot on (aside from the arms being a little short), the yellow is perfect (no more weird orange), and he looks great next to his other Autobots on the shelf, really bringing the team to life.

View attachment 28419597

Articulation is great, and he can even sit down despite the protruding rear of his feet.

View attachment 28419599

The only area that is a bit limited is his waist - it turns a little (not much), but if you try to turn it any further, the backpack gets in the way and the mushroom peg holding his torso and pelvis together pops out and you get a Bay Jazz/ MPM-09 torn-in-half moment, which is a moment I never want reminding of.

View attachment 28419601

I’m not generally a fan of fake parts (although I don’t mind when it’s subtle, like with MP-10’s grill or the way MP-44 uses the windows but just turns them around), so initially I did find the extent of the fake parts on this figure a little disappointing, even though I knew all along that’s just how it was. It almost feels as though you have a cartoon-accurate robot and car but that they have very little to do with each other except for the feet, whereas part of the joy of Transformers for me has always been the way the alt mode parts show up in robot mode. But you just have to accept that the design goals of this line is full toon accuracy, and I have long-wanted a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee so I soon got over these initial reservations.

View attachment 28419598

I don’t find the rear of the feet an issue, and the backpack is pretty small in-hand - but as I’ve already said, it is undeniably a mess, and probably the messiest part of any MP to date.

Ultimately, however, he’s the personification of G1 Bumblebee and a helluva lot of fun to handle, which for me trumps all of these little niggles.

Face Sculpt

The stoic face sculpt looks wildly different in many photos, sometimes seeming perfectly to capture Bumblebee’s likeness, at other times seeming weirdly off. In-hand, it’s much the same. It looks absolutely perfect in most lights, but not so good in others. I think the main issue is just that the white is quite reflective so in some lights, without enough shadow, the features of the nose get lost. The etched lines aren’t ideal - I’d rather it use planes like the LG Bumblebee - but I do understand why they went with this option, to avoid making the face too flat in profile.

These are nitpicks, though - over all the face sculpt is spot-on and really evokes the character. It’s easily the best G1 Bumblebee face sculpt we have, and MP-21’s face looks like a blobby horror next to it. The stoic face is easily my favourite of the three.

View attachment 28419591

View attachment 28419594

View attachment 28419595

The smiling face is a little odd: the eyes are, for some bizarre reason, significantly larger than on the other faces, and from a lot of angles it looks less like a grin and more like he has his mouth wide open. It also looks a bit like he’s gone crazy, because whose eyes get *wider* when they grin?

View attachment 28419604

View attachment 28419606

The open-mouthed face is pretty nice, great for reliving the many “Oh crap I’m captured again” moments of the cartoon, although I’ll mainly be using the stoic face.

View attachment 28419593

I did make a couple of minor adjustments to the faces on mine. I added a little paint to the mouth of the stoic face because out of the box it was only half-painted (again: sample/reject). I used a very fine brush and this minor change helped a lot. I also had to shave down the backs of two of the faces, because without that they protruded from the helmet too much, like we’ve seen in many of the toy show shots.

View attachment 28419592

Issues

Like BSF’s copy, mine has rather loose hips - a little like how one of Sunstreaker’s hips was loose on a lot of copies. This doesn’t affect anything, though - he stands and poses perfectly fine. But if you pick him up, the legs move a few millimetres.

Paint chips: although this is a preproduction sample, I can see this being an issue on final copies too. The two problem areas are the top of his chest and the front of his crotch. This is because the top of his chest forms the rear of the car and part of his backpack has to push down enclosing it. When trying to squeeze it all together, the top side edges of the chest can get rubbed and chipped. As for the crotch, the front of the crotch protrudes (ooer missus) and the shoulders press against it - again it’s a problem of pushing the rear of the car together. However, I did get the shoulders in the wrong place the first couple of times I transformed it, which may well have been the problem here. You probably just need to be careful.

At first the quality did feel a bit 3P to me - but then this is a pre-production sample or may even be a factory reject, and it may also be in comparison to Prime, which came just before and was so premium. But the yellow plastic felt a little sub-par, and folding in the wheel arches was a bit scary as there are all these hinges that rely on clear plastic, and the wheel arches don’t have enough clearance from the chest so you have to sort of pull them around (a bit like a BadCube design), and the clear plastic was creaking on one of them. The creaking has stopped with a bit of use and this has become easier, though, so this was really just a first impression and nothing more. I no longer feel the quality is lacking; he feels solid.

Over the course of a few transformations, the hinge attaching the circle piece to the backpack has loosened and so it tends to flop backwards.

View attachment 28419590

Over all, I just wish they had found a better way of doing the backpack. I don’t care that it’s large, I just wish it was less messy. There’s some incredible stuff going on, though, and you see the problem they faced in getting this alt mode to that robot - I mean, just look at how much robot is coming out of such a tiny car in this part-transformed shot:

View attachment 28419589

Jerry Springer’s Final Thoughts

I’m aware that a lot of the above seems quite critical for a figure I actually love! But I think it’s helpful going in knowing about the negative aspects of the figure, because then you’ll take him out of the box, realise these issues aren’t really a big deal at all, and so enjoy him all the more (I hope).

Along with Jazz, Bumblebee is my favourite G1 Transformer, and a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee has long been my Holy Grail. I loved MP-21, but he always felt off in so many ways. I don’t think MP-45 is quite the final word - maybe one day they will figure out a way of improving that backpack and really nail the face from all angles - but he’s pretty damn close. For me he beats MP-21 in every way - colour, face sculpt, proportions, articulation. Side-by-side, MP-21 now looks blocky and short-legged. MP-45 is so much fun that he has been sitting on my desk for the past two weeks and transformed dozens of times, and I think he’s going to be there for a long time to come.

View attachment 28419588

Over all, then, with the price point, lack of accessories and messy backpack it could be considered a little lacklustre when placed in the context of such a flagship character coming hot on the heels of the huge MP-44. Taken on its own terms, though, it’s a really fun figure with a cute alt mode which, even if it doesn’t hit *all* the right notes, definite hits the right notes of nostalgia. This is G1 Bumblebee.
Click to expand...

Wow. That was a superb write up! Excellent thoughts and I mostly agree on all aspects. I can’t wait for the retail ones to ship. Only 46 days 23 hours and 23 minutes to go

RKillian · Oct 13, 2019

Seconded. It's a good write-up. I wish I could like MP-45 but it's just too many poor decisions rolled into a single expensive figure. I much prefer MP-21G (G2 Bumblebee).

IwatchTV · Oct 13, 2019

ambitron said: ↑

As some of you may have gleaned from recent images I’ve posted, I’ve had this guy in hand for nearly two weeks now. I’ve had a pretty rough year (no violins, don’t worry) and was looking forward to MP-45 coming in early October as the light at the end of the tunnel, so when it was delayed, I took to the Internet to see if I could find anyone selling one of the pre-production copies knocking around at a decent price. I got lucky, managing to snag one that is boxed and has all of the faces, accessories and instructions. (I hasten to add that Takara is still getting just as much money out of me as I’ve kept all of my preorders - I have more than one ordered - and will now get a final, hopefully more pristine, copy for Christmas.)

Anyway, I thought I’d share my thoughts on this little chap for what they’re worth. I wanted to wait until I’d had him in hand a bit so that I could give more than first impressions. This will be a bit long-winded with lots of pictures, because it’s a figure I’ve been looking forward to.

The TLDR Summary

In a nutshell: if, like me, you like the way this figure looks in pictures and can forgive the backpack, you’ll love it in hand. If you don’t like the way it looks in pictures, I don’t think having it in hand is going to change your mind.

Personally, I love this figure, but I recognise its flaws are very real and that some may not care enough about the character or cartoon design to get beyond them - and that’s fair enough. There is no denying the backpack is a mess. However, he really does capture G1 Bumblebee near-perfectly (from the front ), and he is a lot of fun to handle and transform.

More detailed thoughts, and pictures, below.

Accessories

Okay, let’s be honest, the accessories are pretty pathetic in terms of what you get, especially when you put the plastic tray against Ironhide’s or Ratchet’s. I love how we get multiple facial expressions these days, but beyond that, Takara really provided the bare minimum here. The lack of energon conductors seems a strange omission especially, but there were so many other accessories that were possible too. What about the jetpack from Dinobot Island? Or the lab coat, or a wrist communicator etc? At the very least, why not provide the season 2 gun (the one MP-21 used) as well as the season 1 gun? (MP-45 can sort of hold MP-21’s gun, but only very limply and loosely.)

View attachment 28419603

For the price they are asking, when you first open the box it does seem a little barren - a desert of clear plastic tray with a tiny oasis of Bumblebee and accessories bang splat in the middle. Ah well.

View attachment 28419605

I wish they’d included the same-sized Spike that is coming with Hound, as I think he is going to scale much better with Bumblebee in robot mode (obviously he won’t fit inside, but that gimmick is implemented a little awkwardly anyway - see below). I suppose they were saving that for Hound’s release, but they could have varied them by having one with the helmet and one without, just like they’ve done with the tiny Spikes for MP-44 and 45. All the same, it is nice to have Bumblebee and Spike together.

View attachment 28419602

Still, the “I heart NY” licence plate is fun (I haven’t noticed this causing scratching like BSF described, but I’ve only tried it once) and it’s nice to have a blast effect for the gun.

Just like with BSF’s copy, though, I cannot get the gun to fit under the vehicle in a way that allows the car to roll. There are two slots in the inner thighs into which you are supposed to insert tabs on the side of the gun handle, so that the gun can be stored under the car. But when you do this, it just pushes the wheels up off the ground like a jack. As I say, I have the instructions, so I’m not missing anything here (and BSF was trying to insert the gun correctly in his review). Hopefully this is just an issue on these early copies, as it would be pretty sloppy for this feature to be completely unusable in the final release.

Alt Mode

I *love* the alt mode. It just oozes character, beautifully capturing Bumblebee’s chibi Beetle mode in the cartoons, as based on his G1 toy. It’s just so damned cute. And tiny. Even though I knew it was going to be tiny from pictures and early reviews, I still wasn’t quite prepared for just how small it is.

View attachment 28419607

My only issue with the alt mode is that it is a little gappy. But then, mine is a pre-production model (or possibly even a factory reject, I don’t know), so it’s possible this is just an issue with mine - BSF’s copy seemed much tighter. Also, although mine rolls, one of the front wheels doesn’t quite touch the floor. No other reviewer seems to have this problem, though, so I think it’s just mine.

It took me a while to fit Spike in the car, until I double-checked the instructions and realised that the fronts of Bumbebee’s thighs are not supposed to sit up like seats as you might expect but instead fold back on themselves. It’s still a little awkward to get Spike in there, as you have to close the feet and roof around him without him falling out in the process (you can’t get him in through the doors but have to pull apart the front of the vehicle and lift up the roof), and he does look a little crushed inside, but it works, I suppose.

View attachment 28419608

Opening the doors is a bit awkward, too, because you have to pull them away from the frame before you can open them, which requires you to pull the hood apart to allow room for pulling out the door.

So, all in all, the gimmicks are a little sub-par - some might even say pointless - but the alt mode is just so fun to look at that I don’t really care. I rarely use the gimmicks anyway, and they do the job if you just want to pose him on the shelf with Spike standing by an open door.

Transformation

The transformation is a lot of fun, but as with many MPs, you need to give it a few run-throughs before it becomes fun. It seems a bit complicated and messy on first try (or at least it did to me), but after two or three goes it becomes hugely enjoyable and satisfying.

The only point of annoyance during the transformation is the arms. It’s easy enough - once you get the hang of it - to get them under the roof (which seems awkward at first), but I find it very difficult to get them to push down low enough, so that it becomes hard to push the roof down and so the arm flaps that form part of the roof always stick out a little. I know I have the arms transformed correctly, too, because it is clear in the instructions. They actually sit better if you rotate the shoulders the *opposite* way to the instructions, but then they rub agains the crotch too much and so you will get paint rubbing (when transformed the right way, there is a little cutout in the shoulders to avoid rubbing the crotch - there’s a lot of crotch rubbing in this paragraph, isn’t there?).

My only other issue with the transformation, at least on my first go, is just how unsatisfying it is to end up with that backpack. One of the joys of MPs is the ingenious and complex transformations that somehow end up with a fairly clean robot mode - sure, many others have backpacks, but they look tidy. Here you fold a lot of stuff up and it just continues to look like a lot of folded-up stuff on his back. That does detract from the fun a little, at least at first. I’m over it now though and can just enjoy the transformation for what it is.

That said, the foot and leg transformation is pure “Masterpiece Moment” (to use @Maz’s coinage, I believe).

Interesting fact: the instructions completely miss that you can move the front bumper down in robot mode, and show it pointing up in the fully-transformed drawing. (So @DeanML, you have to forgive those who miss this step! )

Robot Mode

Robot mode is just pure G1 Bumblebee (again, from the front ).

View attachment 28419600

The proportions are spot on (aside from the arms being a little short), the yellow is perfect (no more weird orange), and he looks great next to his other Autobots on the shelf, really bringing the team to life.

View attachment 28419597

Articulation is great, and he can even sit down despite the protruding rear of his feet.

View attachment 28419599

The only area that is a bit limited is his waist - it turns a little (not much), but if you try to turn it any further, the backpack gets in the way and the mushroom peg holding his torso and pelvis together pops out and you get a Bay Jazz/ MPM-09 torn-in-half moment, which is a moment I never want reminding of.

View attachment 28419601

I’m not generally a fan of fake parts (although I don’t mind when it’s subtle, like with MP-10’s grill or the way MP-44 uses the windows but just turns them around), so initially I did find the extent of the fake parts on this figure a little disappointing, even though I knew all along that’s just how it was. It almost feels as though you have a cartoon-accurate robot and car but that they have very little to do with each other except for the feet, whereas part of the joy of Transformers for me has always been the way the alt mode parts show up in robot mode. But you just have to accept that the design goals of this line is full toon accuracy, and I have long-wanted a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee so I soon got over these initial reservations.

View attachment 28419598

I don’t find the rear of the feet an issue, and the backpack is pretty small in-hand - but as I’ve already said, it is undeniably a mess, and probably the messiest part of any MP to date.

Ultimately, however, he’s the personification of G1 Bumblebee and a helluva lot of fun to handle, which for me trumps all of these little niggles.

Face Sculpt

The stoic face sculpt looks wildly different in many photos, sometimes seeming perfectly to capture Bumblebee’s likeness, at other times seeming weirdly off. In-hand, it’s much the same. It looks absolutely perfect in most lights, but not so good in others. I think the main issue is just that the white is quite reflective so in some lights, without enough shadow, the features of the nose get lost. The etched lines aren’t ideal - I’d rather it use planes like the LG Bumblebee - but I do understand why they went with this option, to avoid making the face too flat in profile.

These are nitpicks, though - over all the face sculpt is spot-on and really evokes the character. It’s easily the best G1 Bumblebee face sculpt we have, and MP-21’s face looks like a blobby horror next to it. The stoic face is easily my favourite of the three.

View attachment 28419591

View attachment 28419594

View attachment 28419595

The smiling face is a little odd: the eyes are, for some bizarre reason, significantly larger than on the other faces, and from a lot of angles it looks less like a grin and more like he has his mouth wide open. It also looks a bit like he’s gone crazy, because whose eyes get *wider* when they grin?

View attachment 28419604

View attachment 28419606

The open-mouthed face is pretty nice, great for reliving the many “Oh crap I’m captured again” moments of the cartoon, although I’ll mainly be using the stoic face.

View attachment 28419593

I did make a couple of minor adjustments to the faces on mine. I added a little paint to the mouth of the stoic face because out of the box it was only half-painted (again: sample/reject). I used a very fine brush and this minor change helped a lot. I also had to shave down the backs of two of the faces, because without that they protruded from the helmet too much, like we’ve seen in many of the toy show shots.

View attachment 28419592

Issues

Like BSF’s copy, mine has rather loose hips - a little like how one of Sunstreaker’s hips was loose on a lot of copies. This doesn’t affect anything, though - he stands and poses perfectly fine. But if you pick him up, the legs move a few millimetres.

Paint chips: although this is a preproduction sample, I can see this being an issue on final copies too. The two problem areas are the top of his chest and the front of his crotch. This is because the top of his chest forms the rear of the car and part of his backpack has to push down enclosing it. When trying to squeeze it all together, the top side edges of the chest can get rubbed and chipped. As for the crotch, the front of the crotch protrudes (ooer missus) and the shoulders press against it - again it’s a problem of pushing the rear of the car together. However, I did get the shoulders in the wrong place the first couple of times I transformed it, which may well have been the problem here. You probably just need to be careful.

At first the quality did feel a bit 3P to me - but then this is a pre-production sample or may even be a factory reject, and it may also be in comparison to Prime, which came just before and was so premium. But the yellow plastic felt a little sub-par, and folding in the wheel arches was a bit scary as there are all these hinges that rely on clear plastic, and the wheel arches don’t have enough clearance from the chest so you have to sort of pull them around (a bit like a BadCube design), and the clear plastic was creaking on one of them. The creaking has stopped with a bit of use and this has become easier, though, so this was really just a first impression and nothing more. I no longer feel the quality is lacking; he feels solid.

Over the course of a few transformations, the hinge attaching the circle piece to the backpack has loosened and so it tends to flop backwards.

View attachment 28419590

Over all, I just wish they had found a better way of doing the backpack. I don’t care that it’s large, I just wish it was less messy. There’s some incredible stuff going on, though, and you see the problem they faced in getting this alt mode to that robot - I mean, just look at how much robot is coming out of such a tiny car in this part-transformed shot:

View attachment 28419589

Jerry Springer’s Final Thoughts

I’m aware that a lot of the above seems quite critical for a figure I actually love! But I think it’s helpful going in knowing about the negative aspects of the figure, because then you’ll take him out of the box, realise these issues aren’t really a big deal at all, and so enjoy him all the more (I hope).

Along with Jazz, Bumblebee is my favourite G1 Transformer, and a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee has long been my Holy Grail. I loved MP-21, but he always felt off in so many ways. I don’t think MP-45 is quite the final word - maybe one day they will figure out a way of improving that backpack and really nail the face from all angles - but he’s pretty damn close. For me he beats MP-21 in every way - colour, face sculpt, proportions, articulation. Side-by-side, MP-21 now looks blocky and short-legged. MP-45 is so much fun that he has been sitting on my desk for the past two weeks and transformed dozens of times, and I think he’s going to be there for a long time to come.

View attachment 28419588

Over all, then, with the price point, lack of accessories and messy backpack it could be considered a little lacklustre when placed in the context of such a flagship character coming hot on the heels of the huge MP-44. Taken on its own terms, though, it’s a really fun figure with a cute alt mode which, even if it doesn’t hit *all* the right notes, definite hits the right notes of nostalgia. This is G1 Bumblebee.
Click to expand...

Great review!

Out of all of the photos that I've seen on MP45, your have sold me on it the most. Thanks

Xaxis · Oct 13, 2019

ambitron said: ↑

As some of you may have gleaned from recent images I’ve posted, I’ve had this guy in hand for nearly two weeks now. I’ve had a pretty rough year (no violins, don’t worry) and was looking forward to MP-45 coming in early October as the light at the end of the tunnel, so when it was delayed, I took to the Internet to see if I could find anyone selling one of the pre-production copies knocking around at a decent price. I got lucky, managing to snag one that is boxed and has all of the faces, accessories and instructions. (I hasten to add that Takara is still getting just as much money out of me as I’ve kept all of my preorders - I have more than one ordered - and will now get a final, hopefully more pristine, copy for Christmas.)

Anyway, I thought I’d share my thoughts on this little chap for what they’re worth. I wanted to wait until I’d had him in hand a bit so that I could give more than first impressions. This will be a bit long-winded with lots of pictures, because it’s a figure I’ve been looking forward to.

The TLDR Summary

In a nutshell: if, like me, you like the way this figure looks in pictures and can forgive the backpack, you’ll love it in hand. If you don’t like the way it looks in pictures, I don’t think having it in hand is going to change your mind.

Personally, I love this figure, but I recognise its flaws are very real and that some may not care enough about the character or cartoon design to get beyond them - and that’s fair enough. There is no denying the backpack is a mess. However, he really does capture G1 Bumblebee near-perfectly (from the front ), and he is a lot of fun to handle and transform.

More detailed thoughts, and pictures, below.

Accessories

Okay, let’s be honest, the accessories are pretty pathetic in terms of what you get, especially when you put the plastic tray against Ironhide’s or Ratchet’s. I love how we get multiple facial expressions these days, but beyond that, Takara really provided the bare minimum here. The lack of energon conductors seems a strange omission especially, but there were so many other accessories that were possible too. What about the jetpack from Dinobot Island? Or the lab coat, or a wrist communicator etc? At the very least, why not provide the season 2 gun (the one MP-21 used) as well as the season 1 gun? (MP-45 can sort of hold MP-21’s gun, but only very limply and loosely.)

View attachment 28419603

For the price they are asking, when you first open the box it does seem a little barren - a desert of clear plastic tray with a tiny oasis of Bumblebee and accessories bang splat in the middle. Ah well.

View attachment 28419605

I wish they’d included the same-sized Spike that is coming with Hound, as I think he is going to scale much better with Bumblebee in robot mode (obviously he won’t fit inside, but that gimmick is implemented a little awkwardly anyway - see below). I suppose they were saving that for Hound’s release, but they could have varied them by having one with the helmet and one without, just like they’ve done with the tiny Spikes for MP-44 and 45. All the same, it is nice to have Bumblebee and Spike together.

View attachment 28419602

Still, the “I heart NY” licence plate is fun (I haven’t noticed this causing scratching like BSF described, but I’ve only tried it once) and it’s nice to have a blast effect for the gun.

Just like with BSF’s copy, though, I cannot get the gun to fit under the vehicle in a way that allows the car to roll. There are two slots in the inner thighs into which you are supposed to insert tabs on the side of the gun handle, so that the gun can be stored under the car. But when you do this, it just pushes the wheels up off the ground like a jack. As I say, I have the instructions, so I’m not missing anything here (and BSF was trying to insert the gun correctly in his review). Hopefully this is just an issue on these early copies, as it would be pretty sloppy for this feature to be completely unusable in the final release.

Alt Mode

I *love* the alt mode. It just oozes character, beautifully capturing Bumblebee’s chibi Beetle mode in the cartoons, as based on his G1 toy. It’s just so damned cute. And tiny. Even though I knew it was going to be tiny from pictures and early reviews, I still wasn’t quite prepared for just how small it is.

View attachment 28419607

My only issue with the alt mode is that it is a little gappy. But then, mine is a pre-production model (or possibly even a factory reject, I don’t know), so it’s possible this is just an issue with mine - BSF’s copy seemed much tighter. Also, although mine rolls, one of the front wheels doesn’t quite touch the floor. No other reviewer seems to have this problem, though, so I think it’s just mine.

It took me a while to fit Spike in the car, until I double-checked the instructions and realised that the fronts of Bumbebee’s thighs are not supposed to sit up like seats as you might expect but instead fold back on themselves. It’s still a little awkward to get Spike in there, as you have to close the feet and roof around him without him falling out in the process (you can’t get him in through the doors but have to pull apart the front of the vehicle and lift up the roof), and he does look a little crushed inside, but it works, I suppose.

View attachment 28419608

Opening the doors is a bit awkward, too, because you have to pull them away from the frame before you can open them, which requires you to pull the hood apart to allow room for pulling out the door.

So, all in all, the gimmicks are a little sub-par - some might even say pointless - but the alt mode is just so fun to look at that I don’t really care. I rarely use the gimmicks anyway, and they do the job if you just want to pose him on the shelf with Spike standing by an open door.

Transformation

The transformation is a lot of fun, but as with many MPs, you need to give it a few run-throughs before it becomes fun. It seems a bit complicated and messy on first try (or at least it did to me), but after two or three goes it becomes hugely enjoyable and satisfying.

The only point of annoyance during the transformation is the arms. It’s easy enough - once you get the hang of it - to get them under the roof (which seems awkward at first), but I find it very difficult to get them to push down low enough, so that it becomes hard to push the roof down and so the arm flaps that form part of the roof always stick out a little. I know I have the arms transformed correctly, too, because it is clear in the instructions. They actually sit better if you rotate the shoulders the *opposite* way to the instructions, but then they rub agains the crotch too much and so you will get paint rubbing (when transformed the right way, there is a little cutout in the shoulders to avoid rubbing the crotch - there’s a lot of crotch rubbing in this paragraph, isn’t there?).

My only other issue with the transformation, at least on my first go, is just how unsatisfying it is to end up with that backpack. One of the joys of MPs is the ingenious and complex transformations that somehow end up with a fairly clean robot mode - sure, many others have backpacks, but they look tidy. Here you fold a lot of stuff up and it just continues to look like a lot of folded-up stuff on his back. That does detract from the fun a little, at least at first. I’m over it now though and can just enjoy the transformation for what it is.

That said, the foot and leg transformation is pure “Masterpiece Moment” (to use @Maz’s coinage, I believe).

Interesting fact: the instructions completely miss that you can move the front bumper down in robot mode, and show it pointing up in the fully-transformed drawing. (So @DeanML, you have to forgive those who miss this step! )

Robot Mode

Robot mode is just pure G1 Bumblebee (again, from the front ).

View attachment 28419600

The proportions are spot on (aside from the arms being a little short), the yellow is perfect (no more weird orange), and he looks great next to his other Autobots on the shelf, really bringing the team to life.

View attachment 28419597

Articulation is great, and he can even sit down despite the protruding rear of his feet.

View attachment 28419599

The only area that is a bit limited is his waist - it turns a little (not much), but if you try to turn it any further, the backpack gets in the way and the mushroom peg holding his torso and pelvis together pops out and you get a Bay Jazz/ MPM-09 torn-in-half moment, which is a moment I never want reminding of.

View attachment 28419601

I’m not generally a fan of fake parts (although I don’t mind when it’s subtle, like with MP-10’s grill or the way MP-44 uses the windows but just turns them around), so initially I did find the extent of the fake parts on this figure a little disappointing, even though I knew all along that’s just how it was. It almost feels as though you have a cartoon-accurate robot and car but that they have very little to do with each other except for the feet, whereas part of the joy of Transformers for me has always been the way the alt mode parts show up in robot mode. But you just have to accept that the design goals of this line is full toon accuracy, and I have long-wanted a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee so I soon got over these initial reservations.

View attachment 28419598

I don’t find the rear of the feet an issue, and the backpack is pretty small in-hand - but as I’ve already said, it is undeniably a mess, and probably the messiest part of any MP to date.

Ultimately, however, he’s the personification of G1 Bumblebee and a helluva lot of fun to handle, which for me trumps all of these little niggles.

Face Sculpt

The stoic face sculpt looks wildly different in many photos, sometimes seeming perfectly to capture Bumblebee’s likeness, at other times seeming weirdly off. In-hand, it’s much the same. It looks absolutely perfect in most lights, but not so good in others. I think the main issue is just that the white is quite reflective so in some lights, without enough shadow, the features of the nose get lost. The etched lines aren’t ideal - I’d rather it use planes like the LG Bumblebee - but I do understand why they went with this option, to avoid making the face too flat in profile.

These are nitpicks, though - over all the face sculpt is spot-on and really evokes the character. It’s easily the best G1 Bumblebee face sculpt we have, and MP-21’s face looks like a blobby horror next to it. The stoic face is easily my favourite of the three.

View attachment 28419591

View attachment 28419594

View attachment 28419595

The smiling face is a little odd: the eyes are, for some bizarre reason, significantly larger than on the other faces, and from a lot of angles it looks less like a grin and more like he has his mouth wide open. It also looks a bit like he’s gone crazy, because whose eyes get *wider* when they grin?

View attachment 28419604

View attachment 28419606

The open-mouthed face is pretty nice, great for reliving the many “Oh crap I’m captured again” moments of the cartoon, although I’ll mainly be using the stoic face.

View attachment 28419593

I did make a couple of minor adjustments to the faces on mine. I added a little paint to the mouth of the stoic face because out of the box it was only half-painted (again: sample/reject). I used a very fine brush and this minor change helped a lot. I also had to shave down the backs of two of the faces, because without that they protruded from the helmet too much, like we’ve seen in many of the toy show shots.

View attachment 28419592

Issues

Like BSF’s copy, mine has rather loose hips - a little like how one of Sunstreaker’s hips was loose on a lot of copies. This doesn’t affect anything, though - he stands and poses perfectly fine. But if you pick him up, the legs move a few millimetres.

Paint chips: although this is a preproduction sample, I can see this being an issue on final copies too. The two problem areas are the top of his chest and the front of his crotch. This is because the top of his chest forms the rear of the car and part of his backpack has to push down enclosing it. When trying to squeeze it all together, the top side edges of the chest can get rubbed and chipped. As for the crotch, the front of the crotch protrudes (ooer missus) and the shoulders press against it - again it’s a problem of pushing the rear of the car together. However, I did get the shoulders in the wrong place the first couple of times I transformed it, which may well have been the problem here. You probably just need to be careful.

At first the quality did feel a bit 3P to me - but then this is a pre-production sample or may even be a factory reject, and it may also be in comparison to Prime, which came just before and was so premium. But the yellow plastic felt a little sub-par, and folding in the wheel arches was a bit scary as there are all these hinges that rely on clear plastic, and the wheel arches don’t have enough clearance from the chest so you have to sort of pull them around (a bit like a BadCube design), and the clear plastic was creaking on one of them. The creaking has stopped with a bit of use and this has become easier, though, so this was really just a first impression and nothing more. I no longer feel the quality is lacking; he feels solid.

Over the course of a few transformations, the hinge attaching the circle piece to the backpack has loosened and so it tends to flop backwards.

View attachment 28419590

Over all, I just wish they had found a better way of doing the backpack. I don’t care that it’s large, I just wish it was less messy. There’s some incredible stuff going on, though, and you see the problem they faced in getting this alt mode to that robot - I mean, just look at how much robot is coming out of such a tiny car in this part-transformed shot:

View attachment 28419589

Jerry Springer’s Final Thoughts

I’m aware that a lot of the above seems quite critical for a figure I actually love! But I think it’s helpful going in knowing about the negative aspects of the figure, because then you’ll take him out of the box, realise these issues aren’t really a big deal at all, and so enjoy him all the more (I hope).

Along with Jazz, Bumblebee is my favourite G1 Transformer, and a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee has long been my Holy Grail. I loved MP-21, but he always felt off in so many ways. I don’t think MP-45 is quite the final word - maybe one day they will figure out a way of improving that backpack and really nail the face from all angles - but he’s pretty damn close. For me he beats MP-21 in every way - colour, face sculpt, proportions, articulation. Side-by-side, MP-21 now looks blocky and short-legged. MP-45 is so much fun that he has been sitting on my desk for the past two weeks and transformed dozens of times, and I think he’s going to be there for a long time to come.

View attachment 28419588

Over all, then, with the price point, lack of accessories and messy backpack it could be considered a little lacklustre when placed in the context of such a flagship character coming hot on the heels of the huge MP-44. Taken on its own terms, though, it’s a really fun figure with a cute alt mode which, even if it doesn’t hit *all* the right notes, definite hits the right notes of nostalgia. This is G1 Bumblebee.
Click to expand...

Fantastic review, @ambitron! Thanks for taking the time to put that together, and for covering so many important points worth knowing before having 45 in hand.

I was just playing with my MP-21 yesterday and while I still find it to be a fun figure, I’m very excited to have a more accurate version of one of my favorite G1 characters on the way.

Hopefully the release was delayed so that some of the issues you described can be improved. If not, sounds like he’ll still be a very fun addition to a Masterpiece collection.

malware5 · Oct 13, 2019

ambitron said: ↑

MP-45 is so much fun that he has been sitting on my desk for the past two weeks and transformed dozens of times, and I think he’s going to be there for a long time to come.
Click to expand...

Frankly..I think he's going to be up somewhere else for even longer!? Joke!

Amazingly detailed review, Ambitron, I'm still not sold on this figure but hey....to each his own.

Shockwave81 · Oct 13, 2019

As others have said, great review @ambitron.

Booster Gold · Oct 13, 2019

An honest, balanced, critical(and I mean that the analytical way) and well written review! thanks @ambitron!

kshaps · Oct 13, 2019

ambitron said: ↑

As some of you may have gleaned from recent images I’ve posted, I’ve had this guy in hand for nearly two weeks now. I’ve had a pretty rough year (no violins, don’t worry) and was looking forward to MP-45 coming in early October as the light at the end of the tunnel, so when it was delayed, I took to the Internet to see if I could find anyone selling one of the pre-production copies knocking around at a decent price. I got lucky, managing to snag one that is boxed and has all of the faces, accessories and instructions. (I hasten to add that Takara is still getting just as much money out of me as I’ve kept all of my preorders - I have more than one ordered - and will now get a final, hopefully more pristine, copy for Christmas.)

Anyway, I thought I’d share my thoughts on this little chap for what they’re worth. I wanted to wait until I’d had him in hand a bit so that I could give more than first impressions. This will be a bit long-winded with lots of pictures, because it’s a figure I’ve been looking forward to.

The TLDR Summary

In a nutshell: if, like me, you like the way this figure looks in pictures and can forgive the backpack, you’ll love it in hand. If you don’t like the way it looks in pictures, I don’t think having it in hand is going to change your mind.

Personally, I love this figure, but I recognise its flaws are very real and that some may not care enough about the character or cartoon design to get beyond them - and that’s fair enough. There is no denying the backpack is a mess. However, he really does capture G1 Bumblebee near-perfectly (from the front ), and he is a lot of fun to handle and transform.

More detailed thoughts, and pictures, below.

Accessories

Okay, let’s be honest, the accessories are pretty pathetic in terms of what you get, especially when you put the plastic tray against Ironhide’s or Ratchet’s. I love how we get multiple facial expressions these days, but beyond that, Takara really provided the bare minimum here. The lack of energon conductors seems a strange omission especially, but there were so many other accessories that were possible too. What about the jetpack from Dinobot Island? Or the lab coat, or a wrist communicator etc? At the very least, why not provide the season 2 gun (the one MP-21 used) as well as the season 1 gun? (MP-45 can sort of hold MP-21’s gun, but only very limply and loosely.)

View attachment 28419603

For the price they are asking, when you first open the box it does seem a little barren - a desert of clear plastic tray with a tiny oasis of Bumblebee and accessories bang splat in the middle. Ah well.

View attachment 28419605

I wish they’d included the same-sized Spike that is coming with Hound, as I think he is going to scale much better with Bumblebee in robot mode (obviously he won’t fit inside, but that gimmick is implemented a little awkwardly anyway - see below). I suppose they were saving that for Hound’s release, but they could have varied them by having one with the helmet and one without, just like they’ve done with the tiny Spikes for MP-44 and 45. All the same, it is nice to have Bumblebee and Spike together.

View attachment 28419602

Still, the “I heart NY” licence plate is fun (I haven’t noticed this causing scratching like BSF described, but I’ve only tried it once) and it’s nice to have a blast effect for the gun.

Just like with BSF’s copy, though, I cannot get the gun to fit under the vehicle in a way that allows the car to roll. There are two slots in the inner thighs into which you are supposed to insert tabs on the side of the gun handle, so that the gun can be stored under the car. But when you do this, it just pushes the wheels up off the ground like a jack. As I say, I have the instructions, so I’m not missing anything here (and BSF was trying to insert the gun correctly in his review). Hopefully this is just an issue on these early copies, as it would be pretty sloppy for this feature to be completely unusable in the final release.

Alt Mode

I *love* the alt mode. It just oozes character, beautifully capturing Bumblebee’s chibi Beetle mode in the cartoons, as based on his G1 toy. It’s just so damned cute. And tiny. Even though I knew it was going to be tiny from pictures and early reviews, I still wasn’t quite prepared for just how small it is.

View attachment 28419607

My only issue with the alt mode is that it is a little gappy. But then, mine is a pre-production model (or possibly even a factory reject, I don’t know), so it’s possible this is just an issue with mine - BSF’s copy seemed much tighter. Also, although mine rolls, one of the front wheels doesn’t quite touch the floor. No other reviewer seems to have this problem, though, so I think it’s just mine.

It took me a while to fit Spike in the car, until I double-checked the instructions and realised that the fronts of Bumbebee’s thighs are not supposed to sit up like seats as you might expect but instead fold back on themselves. It’s still a little awkward to get Spike in there, as you have to close the feet and roof around him without him falling out in the process (you can’t get him in through the doors but have to pull apart the front of the vehicle and lift up the roof), and he does look a little crushed inside, but it works, I suppose.

View attachment 28419608

Opening the doors is a bit awkward, too, because you have to pull them away from the frame before you can open them, which requires you to pull the hood apart to allow room for pulling out the door.

So, all in all, the gimmicks are a little sub-par - some might even say pointless - but the alt mode is just so fun to look at that I don’t really care. I rarely use the gimmicks anyway, and they do the job if you just want to pose him on the shelf with Spike standing by an open door.

Transformation

The transformation is a lot of fun, but as with many MPs, you need to give it a few run-throughs before it becomes fun. It seems a bit complicated and messy on first try (or at least it did to me), but after two or three goes it becomes hugely enjoyable and satisfying.

The only point of annoyance during the transformation is the arms. It’s easy enough - once you get the hang of it - to get them under the roof (which seems awkward at first), but I find it very difficult to get them to push down low enough, so that it becomes hard to push the roof down and so the arm flaps that form part of the roof always stick out a little. I know I have the arms transformed correctly, too, because it is clear in the instructions. They actually sit better if you rotate the shoulders the *opposite* way to the instructions, but then they rub agains the crotch too much and so you will get paint rubbing (when transformed the right way, there is a little cutout in the shoulders to avoid rubbing the crotch - there’s a lot of crotch rubbing in this paragraph, isn’t there?).

My only other issue with the transformation, at least on my first go, is just how unsatisfying it is to end up with that backpack. One of the joys of MPs is the ingenious and complex transformations that somehow end up with a fairly clean robot mode - sure, many others have backpacks, but they look tidy. Here you fold a lot of stuff up and it just continues to look like a lot of folded-up stuff on his back. That does detract from the fun a little, at least at first. I’m over it now though and can just enjoy the transformation for what it is.

That said, the foot and leg transformation is pure “Masterpiece Moment” (to use @Maz’s coinage, I believe).

Interesting fact: the instructions completely miss that you can move the front bumper down in robot mode, and show it pointing up in the fully-transformed drawing. (So @DeanML, you have to forgive those who miss this step! )

Robot Mode

Robot mode is just pure G1 Bumblebee (again, from the front ).

View attachment 28419600

The proportions are spot on (aside from the arms being a little short), the yellow is perfect (no more weird orange), and he looks great next to his other Autobots on the shelf, really bringing the team to life.

View attachment 28419597

Articulation is great, and he can even sit down despite the protruding rear of his feet.

View attachment 28419599

The only area that is a bit limited is his waist - it turns a little (not much), but if you try to turn it any further, the backpack gets in the way and the mushroom peg holding his torso and pelvis together pops out and you get a Bay Jazz/ MPM-09 torn-in-half moment, which is a moment I never want reminding of.

View attachment 28419601

I’m not generally a fan of fake parts (although I don’t mind when it’s subtle, like with MP-10’s grill or the way MP-44 uses the windows but just turns them around), so initially I did find the extent of the fake parts on this figure a little disappointing, even though I knew all along that’s just how it was. It almost feels as though you have a cartoon-accurate robot and car but that they have very little to do with each other except for the feet, whereas part of the joy of Transformers for me has always been the way the alt mode parts show up in robot mode. But you just have to accept that the design goals of this line is full toon accuracy, and I have long-wanted a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee so I soon got over these initial reservations.

View attachment 28419598

I don’t find the rear of the feet an issue, and the backpack is pretty small in-hand - but as I’ve already said, it is undeniably a mess, and probably the messiest part of any MP to date.

Ultimately, however, he’s the personification of G1 Bumblebee and a helluva lot of fun to handle, which for me trumps all of these little niggles.

Face Sculpt

The stoic face sculpt looks wildly different in many photos, sometimes seeming perfectly to capture Bumblebee’s likeness, at other times seeming weirdly off. In-hand, it’s much the same. It looks absolutely perfect in most lights, but not so good in others. I think the main issue is just that the white is quite reflective so in some lights, without enough shadow, the features of the nose get lost. The etched lines aren’t ideal - I’d rather it use planes like the LG Bumblebee - but I do understand why they went with this option, to avoid making the face too flat in profile.

These are nitpicks, though - over all the face sculpt is spot-on and really evokes the character. It’s easily the best G1 Bumblebee face sculpt we have, and MP-21’s face looks like a blobby horror next to it. The stoic face is easily my favourite of the three.

View attachment 28419591

View attachment 28419594

View attachment 28419595

The smiling face is a little odd: the eyes are, for some bizarre reason, significantly larger than on the other faces, and from a lot of angles it looks less like a grin and more like he has his mouth wide open. It also looks a bit like he’s gone crazy, because whose eyes get *wider* when they grin?

View attachment 28419604

View attachment 28419606

The open-mouthed face is pretty nice, great for reliving the many “Oh crap I’m captured again” moments of the cartoon, although I’ll mainly be using the stoic face.

View attachment 28419593

I did make a couple of minor adjustments to the faces on mine. I added a little paint to the mouth of the stoic face because out of the box it was only half-painted (again: sample/reject). I used a very fine brush and this minor change helped a lot. I also had to shave down the backs of two of the faces, because without that they protruded from the helmet too much, like we’ve seen in many of the toy show shots.

View attachment 28419592

Issues

Like BSF’s copy, mine has rather loose hips - a little like how one of Sunstreaker’s hips was loose on a lot of copies. This doesn’t affect anything, though - he stands and poses perfectly fine. But if you pick him up, the legs move a few millimetres.

Paint chips: although this is a preproduction sample, I can see this being an issue on final copies too. The two problem areas are the top of his chest and the front of his crotch. This is because the top of his chest forms the rear of the car and part of his backpack has to push down enclosing it. When trying to squeeze it all together, the top side edges of the chest can get rubbed and chipped. As for the crotch, the front of the crotch protrudes (ooer missus) and the shoulders press against it - again it’s a problem of pushing the rear of the car together. However, I did get the shoulders in the wrong place the first couple of times I transformed it, which may well have been the problem here. You probably just need to be careful.

At first the quality did feel a bit 3P to me - but then this is a pre-production sample or may even be a factory reject, and it may also be in comparison to Prime, which came just before and was so premium. But the yellow plastic felt a little sub-par, and folding in the wheel arches was a bit scary as there are all these hinges that rely on clear plastic, and the wheel arches don’t have enough clearance from the chest so you have to sort of pull them around (a bit like a BadCube design), and the clear plastic was creaking on one of them. The creaking has stopped with a bit of use and this has become easier, though, so this was really just a first impression and nothing more. I no longer feel the quality is lacking; he feels solid.

Over the course of a few transformations, the hinge attaching the circle piece to the backpack has loosened and so it tends to flop backwards.

View attachment 28419590

Over all, I just wish they had found a better way of doing the backpack. I don’t care that it’s large, I just wish it was less messy. There’s some incredible stuff going on, though, and you see the problem they faced in getting this alt mode to that robot - I mean, just look at how much robot is coming out of such a tiny car in this part-transformed shot:

View attachment 28419589

Jerry Springer’s Final Thoughts

I’m aware that a lot of the above seems quite critical for a figure I actually love! But I think it’s helpful going in knowing about the negative aspects of the figure, because then you’ll take him out of the box, realise these issues aren’t really a big deal at all, and so enjoy him all the more (I hope).

Along with Jazz, Bumblebee is my favourite G1 Transformer, and a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee has long been my Holy Grail. I loved MP-21, but he always felt off in so many ways. I don’t think MP-45 is quite the final word - maybe one day they will figure out a way of improving that backpack and really nail the face from all angles - but he’s pretty damn close. For me he beats MP-21 in every way - colour, face sculpt, proportions, articulation. Side-by-side, MP-21 now looks blocky and short-legged. MP-45 is so much fun that he has been sitting on my desk for the past two weeks and transformed dozens of times, and I think he’s going to be there for a long time to come.

View attachment 28419588

Over all, then, with the price point, lack of accessories and messy backpack it could be considered a little lacklustre when placed in the context of such a flagship character coming hot on the heels of the huge MP-44. Taken on its own terms, though, it’s a really fun figure with a cute alt mode which, even if it doesn’t hit *all* the right notes, definite hits the right notes of nostalgia. This is G1 Bumblebee.
Click to expand...

Wonderful review! Makes the wait even harder for this guy.

Stryder Wolfe · Oct 13, 2019

Nice work @ambitron thanks for the great review! Glad to hear you are enjoying the figure!

MysteriousGray · Oct 13, 2019

Looking at MP-45's altmode makes me wonder: could a lot of the figure's transformation problems have been solved if they had made the transformation more like MP-21's? A lot of the altmode's proportions already match Bee's robot mode design (namely the windows/roof area and the front fenders/hood), so I feel like if they had gone with a simpler transformation that incorporated more of the vehicle mode, the end result would have been cleaner, if possibly a little too big.

jackisking · Oct 13, 2019

MysteriousGray said: ↑

Looking at MP-45's altmode makes me wonder: could a lot of the figure's transformation problems have been solved if they had made the transformation more like MP-21's? A lot of the altmode's proportions already match Bee's robot mode design (namely the windows/roof area and the front fenders/hood), so I feel like if they had gone with a simpler transformation that incorporated more of the vehicle mode, the end result would have been cleaner, if possibly a little too big.
Click to expand...

I dont think there was any compromising bee 2.0 being a much smaller chibi beetle. Dont think its much different than 44 where they knew the things they wanted to do different from last time and everything else worked around those things.

Robotmonkeys · Oct 13, 2019

ambitron said: ↑

As some of you may have gleaned from recent images I’ve posted, I’ve had this guy in hand for nearly two weeks now. I’ve had a pretty rough year (no violins, don’t worry) and was looking forward to MP-45 coming in early October as the light at the end of the tunnel, so when it was delayed, I took to the Internet to see if I could find anyone selling one of the pre-production copies knocking around at a decent price. I got lucky, managing to snag one that is boxed and has all of the faces, accessories and instructions. (I hasten to add that Takara is still getting just as much money out of me as I’ve kept all of my preorders - I have more than one ordered - and will now get a final, hopefully more pristine, copy for Christmas.)

Anyway, I thought I’d share my thoughts on this little chap for what they’re worth. I wanted to wait until I’d had him in hand a bit so that I could give more than first impressions. This will be a bit long-winded with lots of pictures, because it’s a figure I’ve been looking forward to.

The TLDR Summary

In a nutshell: if, like me, you like the way this figure looks in pictures and can forgive the backpack, you’ll love it in hand. If you don’t like the way it looks in pictures, I don’t think having it in hand is going to change your mind.

Personally, I love this figure, but I recognise its flaws are very real and that some may not care enough about the character or cartoon design to get beyond them - and that’s fair enough. There is no denying the backpack is a mess. However, he really does capture G1 Bumblebee near-perfectly (from the front ), and he is a lot of fun to handle and transform.

More detailed thoughts, and pictures, below.

Accessories

Okay, let’s be honest, the accessories are pretty pathetic in terms of what you get, especially when you put the plastic tray against Ironhide’s or Ratchet’s. I love how we get multiple facial expressions these days, but beyond that, Takara really provided the bare minimum here. The lack of energon conductors seems a strange omission especially, but there were so many other accessories that were possible too. What about the jetpack from Dinobot Island? Or the lab coat, or a wrist communicator etc? At the very least, why not provide the season 2 gun (the one MP-21 used) as well as the season 1 gun? (MP-45 can sort of hold MP-21’s gun, but only very limply and loosely.)

View attachment 28419603

For the price they are asking, when you first open the box it does seem a little barren - a desert of clear plastic tray with a tiny oasis of Bumblebee and accessories bang splat in the middle. Ah well.

View attachment 28419605

I wish they’d included the same-sized Spike that is coming with Hound, as I think he is going to scale much better with Bumblebee in robot mode (obviously he won’t fit inside, but that gimmick is implemented a little awkwardly anyway - see below). I suppose they were saving that for Hound’s release, but they could have varied them by having one with the helmet and one without, just like they’ve done with the tiny Spikes for MP-44 and 45. All the same, it is nice to have Bumblebee and Spike together.

View attachment 28419602

Still, the “I heart NY” licence plate is fun (I haven’t noticed this causing scratching like BSF described, but I’ve only tried it once) and it’s nice to have a blast effect for the gun.

Just like with BSF’s copy, though, I cannot get the gun to fit under the vehicle in a way that allows the car to roll. There are two slots in the inner thighs into which you are supposed to insert tabs on the side of the gun handle, so that the gun can be stored under the car. But when you do this, it just pushes the wheels up off the ground like a jack. As I say, I have the instructions, so I’m not missing anything here (and BSF was trying to insert the gun correctly in his review). Hopefully this is just an issue on these early copies, as it would be pretty sloppy for this feature to be completely unusable in the final release.

Alt Mode

I *love* the alt mode. It just oozes character, beautifully capturing Bumblebee’s chibi Beetle mode in the cartoons, as based on his G1 toy. It’s just so damned cute. And tiny. Even though I knew it was going to be tiny from pictures and early reviews, I still wasn’t quite prepared for just how small it is.

View attachment 28419607

My only issue with the alt mode is that it is a little gappy. But then, mine is a pre-production model (or possibly even a factory reject, I don’t know), so it’s possible this is just an issue with mine - BSF’s copy seemed much tighter. Also, although mine rolls, one of the front wheels doesn’t quite touch the floor. No other reviewer seems to have this problem, though, so I think it’s just mine.

It took me a while to fit Spike in the car, until I double-checked the instructions and realised that the fronts of Bumbebee’s thighs are not supposed to sit up like seats as you might expect but instead fold back on themselves. It’s still a little awkward to get Spike in there, as you have to close the feet and roof around him without him falling out in the process (you can’t get him in through the doors but have to pull apart the front of the vehicle and lift up the roof), and he does look a little crushed inside, but it works, I suppose.

View attachment 28419608

Opening the doors is a bit awkward, too, because you have to pull them away from the frame before you can open them, which requires you to pull the hood apart to allow room for pulling out the door.

So, all in all, the gimmicks are a little sub-par - some might even say pointless - but the alt mode is just so fun to look at that I don’t really care. I rarely use the gimmicks anyway, and they do the job if you just want to pose him on the shelf with Spike standing by an open door.

Transformation

The transformation is a lot of fun, but as with many MPs, you need to give it a few run-throughs before it becomes fun. It seems a bit complicated and messy on first try (or at least it did to me), but after two or three goes it becomes hugely enjoyable and satisfying.

The only point of annoyance during the transformation is the arms. It’s easy enough - once you get the hang of it - to get them under the roof (which seems awkward at first), but I find it very difficult to get them to push down low enough, so that it becomes hard to push the roof down and so the arm flaps that form part of the roof always stick out a little. I know I have the arms transformed correctly, too, because it is clear in the instructions. They actually sit better if you rotate the shoulders the *opposite* way to the instructions, but then they rub agains the crotch too much and so you will get paint rubbing (when transformed the right way, there is a little cutout in the shoulders to avoid rubbing the crotch - there’s a lot of crotch rubbing in this paragraph, isn’t there?).

My only other issue with the transformation, at least on my first go, is just how unsatisfying it is to end up with that backpack. One of the joys of MPs is the ingenious and complex transformations that somehow end up with a fairly clean robot mode - sure, many others have backpacks, but they look tidy. Here you fold a lot of stuff up and it just continues to look like a lot of folded-up stuff on his back. That does detract from the fun a little, at least at first. I’m over it now though and can just enjoy the transformation for what it is.

That said, the foot and leg transformation is pure “Masterpiece Moment” (to use @Maz’s coinage, I believe).

Interesting fact: the instructions completely miss that you can move the front bumper down in robot mode, and show it pointing up in the fully-transformed drawing. (So @DeanML, you have to forgive those who miss this step! )

Robot Mode

Robot mode is just pure G1 Bumblebee (again, from the front ).

View attachment 28419600

The proportions are spot on (aside from the arms being a little short), the yellow is perfect (no more weird orange), and he looks great next to his other Autobots on the shelf, really bringing the team to life.

View attachment 28419597

Articulation is great, and he can even sit down despite the protruding rear of his feet.

View attachment 28419599

The only area that is a bit limited is his waist - it turns a little (not much), but if you try to turn it any further, the backpack gets in the way and the mushroom peg holding his torso and pelvis together pops out and you get a Bay Jazz/ MPM-09 torn-in-half moment, which is a moment I never want reminding of.

View attachment 28419601

I’m not generally a fan of fake parts (although I don’t mind when it’s subtle, like with MP-10’s grill or the way MP-44 uses the windows but just turns them around), so initially I did find the extent of the fake parts on this figure a little disappointing, even though I knew all along that’s just how it was. It almost feels as though you have a cartoon-accurate robot and car but that they have very little to do with each other except for the feet, whereas part of the joy of Transformers for me has always been the way the alt mode parts show up in robot mode. But you just have to accept that the design goals of this line is full toon accuracy, and I have long-wanted a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee so I soon got over these initial reservations.

View attachment 28419598

I don’t find the rear of the feet an issue, and the backpack is pretty small in-hand - but as I’ve already said, it is undeniably a mess, and probably the messiest part of any MP to date.

Ultimately, however, he’s the personification of G1 Bumblebee and a helluva lot of fun to handle, which for me trumps all of these little niggles.

Face Sculpt

The stoic face sculpt looks wildly different in many photos, sometimes seeming perfectly to capture Bumblebee’s likeness, at other times seeming weirdly off. In-hand, it’s much the same. It looks absolutely perfect in most lights, but not so good in others. I think the main issue is just that the white is quite reflective so in some lights, without enough shadow, the features of the nose get lost. The etched lines aren’t ideal - I’d rather it use planes like the LG Bumblebee - but I do understand why they went with this option, to avoid making the face too flat in profile.

These are nitpicks, though - over all the face sculpt is spot-on and really evokes the character. It’s easily the best G1 Bumblebee face sculpt we have, and MP-21’s face looks like a blobby horror next to it. The stoic face is easily my favourite of the three.

View attachment 28419591

View attachment 28419594

View attachment 28419595

The smiling face is a little odd: the eyes are, for some bizarre reason, significantly larger than on the other faces, and from a lot of angles it looks less like a grin and more like he has his mouth wide open. It also looks a bit like he’s gone crazy, because whose eyes get *wider* when they grin?

View attachment 28419604

View attachment 28419606

The open-mouthed face is pretty nice, great for reliving the many “Oh crap I’m captured again” moments of the cartoon, although I’ll mainly be using the stoic face.

View attachment 28419593

I did make a couple of minor adjustments to the faces on mine. I added a little paint to the mouth of the stoic face because out of the box it was only half-painted (again: sample/reject). I used a very fine brush and this minor change helped a lot. I also had to shave down the backs of two of the faces, because without that they protruded from the helmet too much, like we’ve seen in many of the toy show shots.

View attachment 28419592

Issues

Like BSF’s copy, mine has rather loose hips - a little like how one of Sunstreaker’s hips was loose on a lot of copies. This doesn’t affect anything, though - he stands and poses perfectly fine. But if you pick him up, the legs move a few millimetres.

Paint chips: although this is a preproduction sample, I can see this being an issue on final copies too. The two problem areas are the top of his chest and the front of his crotch. This is because the top of his chest forms the rear of the car and part of his backpack has to push down enclosing it. When trying to squeeze it all together, the top side edges of the chest can get rubbed and chipped. As for the crotch, the front of the crotch protrudes (ooer missus) and the shoulders press against it - again it’s a problem of pushing the rear of the car together. However, I did get the shoulders in the wrong place the first couple of times I transformed it, which may well have been the problem here. You probably just need to be careful.

At first the quality did feel a bit 3P to me - but then this is a pre-production sample or may even be a factory reject, and it may also be in comparison to Prime, which came just before and was so premium. But the yellow plastic felt a little sub-par, and folding in the wheel arches was a bit scary as there are all these hinges that rely on clear plastic, and the wheel arches don’t have enough clearance from the chest so you have to sort of pull them around (a bit like a BadCube design), and the clear plastic was creaking on one of them. The creaking has stopped with a bit of use and this has become easier, though, so this was really just a first impression and nothing more. I no longer feel the quality is lacking; he feels solid.

Over the course of a few transformations, the hinge attaching the circle piece to the backpack has loosened and so it tends to flop backwards.

View attachment 28419590

Over all, I just wish they had found a better way of doing the backpack. I don’t care that it’s large, I just wish it was less messy. There’s some incredible stuff going on, though, and you see the problem they faced in getting this alt mode to that robot - I mean, just look at how much robot is coming out of such a tiny car in this part-transformed shot:

View attachment 28419589

Jerry Springer’s Final Thoughts

I’m aware that a lot of the above seems quite critical for a figure I actually love! But I think it’s helpful going in knowing about the negative aspects of the figure, because then you’ll take him out of the box, realise these issues aren’t really a big deal at all, and so enjoy him all the more (I hope).

Along with Jazz, Bumblebee is my favourite G1 Transformer, and a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee has long been my Holy Grail. I loved MP-21, but he always felt off in so many ways. I don’t think MP-45 is quite the final word - maybe one day they will figure out a way of improving that backpack and really nail the face from all angles - but he’s pretty damn close. For me he beats MP-21 in every way - colour, face sculpt, proportions, articulation. Side-by-side, MP-21 now looks blocky and short-legged. MP-45 is so much fun that he has been sitting on my desk for the past two weeks and transformed dozens of times, and I think he’s going to be there for a long time to come.

View attachment 28419588

Over all, then, with the price point, lack of accessories and messy backpack it could be considered a little lacklustre when placed in the context of such a flagship character coming hot on the heels of the huge MP-44. Taken on its own terms, though, it’s a really fun figure with a cute alt mode which, even if it doesn’t hit *all* the right notes, definite hits the right notes of nostalgia. This is G1 Bumblebee.
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Wow! Excellent review @ambitron. You’ve put into words quite eloquently what I’ve been feeling all along about this figure. From the negs to the positives. Thanks man!

Temp1 · Oct 13, 2019

Booster Gold said: ↑

I rather like Bobby Skullface, he's not the most comprehensive or 'proffessional' reviewer but he is unsponsored and will tell you what he thinks rather than what he's told to think or refuse to comment. Of course it helps that we often see eye to eye and have similar preferances when it comes to Transformers figures...and in this case it's no different. He sums it up how I feel really well as "A huge swing and a miss". TT have made a good effort at a more anime MP Bee(which isn't to my taste anyway), it succeeds in a lot of ways...but it fails in just as many elsewhere.Personally I think it's objectively no better than MP-21 and subjectively I find it worse. However like BSF also says, if you like it you win.....the same is also true of his content, no one's forcing you to watch it or agree with his conclusions least of all BSF
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I agree, his reviews are great.

Every time I look at the MP-45 I think ‘couldn’t they have done more work on the backpack and the feet? Surely they could have tidied it up?’ ...it just looks unfinished to me. I usually don’t mind a backpack at all but it’s just so messy that it puts me off.

Looks incredible from the front though.

4249david · Oct 13, 2019

Temp1 said: ↑

I agree, his reviews are great.

Every time I look at the MP-45 I think ‘couldn’t they have done more work on the backpack and the feet? Surely they could have tidied it up?’ ...it just looks unfinished to me. I usually don’t mind a backpack at all but it’s just so messy that it puts me off.

Looks incredible from the front though.
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Surely there's a 3P add on just waiting to clip over it? I got one for MP36, admittedly not for classic backpack, but still it's begging to be done for those who only have that particular gripe

chchchch · Oct 13, 2019

Chris C137 said: ↑

Really awesome work as always. You've even included that the forearm panels that become the roof would need to be yellow on one side and black on the other, with that bit of yellow just visible in robot mode. I love that attention to detail.
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Ah thank you sir!! Figuring out those little details that would make the transformation actually work (even if they are "compromises") are half the fun for me!

[Wing_Saber-X] said: ↑

Delicious.
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yvk2000 said: ↑

Maaan, that looks tight! And the crazy thing is, your digi makes the FEET look like a design element.

I wonder when Takara is gonna start doing more + repaints (although, as far as I can tell, this guy isn’t as likely as a chromed out Hound or V3 Prime).
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Thanks guys!! I am anxiously awaiting another toy + or Diaclone like Cordon to be announced (though my standard disclaimer applies: I won't buy them, but I love looking at them!). Maybe we could at least get a Sunstreaker+ reveal at the Tokyo Motor Show...?

Digger said: ↑

Yeah yeah yeah cool, but please! Could you make Gl...
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franpincho · Oct 13, 2019

ambitron said: ↑

As some of you may have gleaned from recent images I’ve posted, I’ve had this guy in hand for nearly two weeks now. I’ve had a pretty rough year (no violins, don’t worry) and was looking forward to MP-45 coming in early October as the light at the end of the tunnel, so when it was delayed, I took to the Internet to see if I could find anyone selling one of the pre-production copies knocking around at a decent price. I got lucky, managing to snag one that is boxed and has all of the faces, accessories and instructions. (I hasten to add that Takara is still getting just as much money out of me as I’ve kept all of my preorders - I have more than one ordered - and will now get a final, hopefully more pristine, copy for Christmas.)

Anyway, I thought I’d share my thoughts on this little chap for what they’re worth. I wanted to wait until I’d had him in hand a bit so that I could give more than first impressions. This will be a bit long-winded with lots of pictures, because it’s a figure I’ve been looking forward to.

The TLDR Summary

In a nutshell: if, like me, you like the way this figure looks in pictures and can forgive the backpack, you’ll love it in hand. If you don’t like the way it looks in pictures, I don’t think having it in hand is going to change your mind.

Personally, I love this figure, but I recognise its flaws are very real and that some may not care enough about the character or cartoon design to get beyond them - and that’s fair enough. There is no denying the backpack is a mess. However, he really does capture G1 Bumblebee near-perfectly (from the front ), and he is a lot of fun to handle and transform.

More detailed thoughts, and pictures, below.

Accessories

Okay, let’s be honest, the accessories are pretty pathetic in terms of what you get, especially when you put the plastic tray against Ironhide’s or Ratchet’s. I love how we get multiple facial expressions these days, but beyond that, Takara really provided the bare minimum here. The lack of energon conductors seems a strange omission especially, but there were so many other accessories that were possible too. What about the jetpack from Dinobot Island? Or the lab coat, or a wrist communicator etc? At the very least, why not provide the season 2 gun (the one MP-21 used) as well as the season 1 gun? (MP-45 can sort of hold MP-21’s gun, but only very limply and loosely.)

View attachment 28419603

For the price they are asking, when you first open the box it does seem a little barren - a desert of clear plastic tray with a tiny oasis of Bumblebee and accessories bang splat in the middle. Ah well.

View attachment 28419605

I wish they’d included the same-sized Spike that is coming with Hound, as I think he is going to scale much better with Bumblebee in robot mode (obviously he won’t fit inside, but that gimmick is implemented a little awkwardly anyway - see below). I suppose they were saving that for Hound’s release, but they could have varied them by having one with the helmet and one without, just like they’ve done with the tiny Spikes for MP-44 and 45. All the same, it is nice to have Bumblebee and Spike together.

View attachment 28419602

Still, the “I heart NY” licence plate is fun (I haven’t noticed this causing scratching like BSF described, but I’ve only tried it once) and it’s nice to have a blast effect for the gun.

Just like with BSF’s copy, though, I cannot get the gun to fit under the vehicle in a way that allows the car to roll. There are two slots in the inner thighs into which you are supposed to insert tabs on the side of the gun handle, so that the gun can be stored under the car. But when you do this, it just pushes the wheels up off the ground like a jack. As I say, I have the instructions, so I’m not missing anything here (and BSF was trying to insert the gun correctly in his review). Hopefully this is just an issue on these early copies, as it would be pretty sloppy for this feature to be completely unusable in the final release.

Alt Mode

I *love* the alt mode. It just oozes character, beautifully capturing Bumblebee’s chibi Beetle mode in the cartoons, as based on his G1 toy. It’s just so damned cute. And tiny. Even though I knew it was going to be tiny from pictures and early reviews, I still wasn’t quite prepared for just how small it is.

View attachment 28419607

My only issue with the alt mode is that it is a little gappy. But then, mine is a pre-production model (or possibly even a factory reject, I don’t know), so it’s possible this is just an issue with mine - BSF’s copy seemed much tighter. Also, although mine rolls, one of the front wheels doesn’t quite touch the floor. No other reviewer seems to have this problem, though, so I think it’s just mine.

It took me a while to fit Spike in the car, until I double-checked the instructions and realised that the fronts of Bumbebee’s thighs are not supposed to sit up like seats as you might expect but instead fold back on themselves. It’s still a little awkward to get Spike in there, as you have to close the feet and roof around him without him falling out in the process (you can’t get him in through the doors but have to pull apart the front of the vehicle and lift up the roof), and he does look a little crushed inside, but it works, I suppose.

View attachment 28419608

Opening the doors is a bit awkward, too, because you have to pull them away from the frame before you can open them, which requires you to pull the hood apart to allow room for pulling out the door.

So, all in all, the gimmicks are a little sub-par - some might even say pointless - but the alt mode is just so fun to look at that I don’t really care. I rarely use the gimmicks anyway, and they do the job if you just want to pose him on the shelf with Spike standing by an open door.

Transformation

The transformation is a lot of fun, but as with many MPs, you need to give it a few run-throughs before it becomes fun. It seems a bit complicated and messy on first try (or at least it did to me), but after two or three goes it becomes hugely enjoyable and satisfying.

The only point of annoyance during the transformation is the arms. It’s easy enough - once you get the hang of it - to get them under the roof (which seems awkward at first), but I find it very difficult to get them to push down low enough, so that it becomes hard to push the roof down and so the arm flaps that form part of the roof always stick out a little. I know I have the arms transformed correctly, too, because it is clear in the instructions. They actually sit better if you rotate the shoulders the *opposite* way to the instructions, but then they rub agains the crotch too much and so you will get paint rubbing (when transformed the right way, there is a little cutout in the shoulders to avoid rubbing the crotch - there’s a lot of crotch rubbing in this paragraph, isn’t there?).

My only other issue with the transformation, at least on my first go, is just how unsatisfying it is to end up with that backpack. One of the joys of MPs is the ingenious and complex transformations that somehow end up with a fairly clean robot mode - sure, many others have backpacks, but they look tidy. Here you fold a lot of stuff up and it just continues to look like a lot of folded-up stuff on his back. That does detract from the fun a little, at least at first. I’m over it now though and can just enjoy the transformation for what it is.

That said, the foot and leg transformation is pure “Masterpiece Moment” (to use @Maz’s coinage, I believe).

Interesting fact: the instructions completely miss that you can move the front bumper down in robot mode, and show it pointing up in the fully-transformed drawing. (So @DeanML, you have to forgive those who miss this step! )

Robot Mode

Robot mode is just pure G1 Bumblebee (again, from the front ).

View attachment 28419600

The proportions are spot on (aside from the arms being a little short), the yellow is perfect (no more weird orange), and he looks great next to his other Autobots on the shelf, really bringing the team to life.

View attachment 28419597

Articulation is great, and he can even sit down despite the protruding rear of his feet.

View attachment 28419599

The only area that is a bit limited is his waist - it turns a little (not much), but if you try to turn it any further, the backpack gets in the way and the mushroom peg holding his torso and pelvis together pops out and you get a Bay Jazz/ MPM-09 torn-in-half moment, which is a moment I never want reminding of.

View attachment 28419601

I’m not generally a fan of fake parts (although I don’t mind when it’s subtle, like with MP-10’s grill or the way MP-44 uses the windows but just turns them around), so initially I did find the extent of the fake parts on this figure a little disappointing, even though I knew all along that’s just how it was. It almost feels as though you have a cartoon-accurate robot and car but that they have very little to do with each other except for the feet, whereas part of the joy of Transformers for me has always been the way the alt mode parts show up in robot mode. But you just have to accept that the design goals of this line is full toon accuracy, and I have long-wanted a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee so I soon got over these initial reservations.

View attachment 28419598

I don’t find the rear of the feet an issue, and the backpack is pretty small in-hand - but as I’ve already said, it is undeniably a mess, and probably the messiest part of any MP to date.

Ultimately, however, he’s the personification of G1 Bumblebee and a helluva lot of fun to handle, which for me trumps all of these little niggles.

Face Sculpt

The stoic face sculpt looks wildly different in many photos, sometimes seeming perfectly to capture Bumblebee’s likeness, at other times seeming weirdly off. In-hand, it’s much the same. It looks absolutely perfect in most lights, but not so good in others. I think the main issue is just that the white is quite reflective so in some lights, without enough shadow, the features of the nose get lost. The etched lines aren’t ideal - I’d rather it use planes like the LG Bumblebee - but I do understand why they went with this option, to avoid making the face too flat in profile.

These are nitpicks, though - over all the face sculpt is spot-on and really evokes the character. It’s easily the best G1 Bumblebee face sculpt we have, and MP-21’s face looks like a blobby horror next to it. The stoic face is easily my favourite of the three.

View attachment 28419591

View attachment 28419594

View attachment 28419595

The smiling face is a little odd: the eyes are, for some bizarre reason, significantly larger than on the other faces, and from a lot of angles it looks less like a grin and more like he has his mouth wide open. It also looks a bit like he’s gone crazy, because whose eyes get *wider* when they grin?

View attachment 28419604

View attachment 28419606

The open-mouthed face is pretty nice, great for reliving the many “Oh crap I’m captured again” moments of the cartoon, although I’ll mainly be using the stoic face.

View attachment 28419593

I did make a couple of minor adjustments to the faces on mine. I added a little paint to the mouth of the stoic face because out of the box it was only half-painted (again: sample/reject). I used a very fine brush and this minor change helped a lot. I also had to shave down the backs of two of the faces, because without that they protruded from the helmet too much, like we’ve seen in many of the toy show shots.

View attachment 28419592

Issues

Like BSF’s copy, mine has rather loose hips - a little like how one of Sunstreaker’s hips was loose on a lot of copies. This doesn’t affect anything, though - he stands and poses perfectly fine. But if you pick him up, the legs move a few millimetres.

Paint chips: although this is a preproduction sample, I can see this being an issue on final copies too. The two problem areas are the top of his chest and the front of his crotch. This is because the top of his chest forms the rear of the car and part of his backpack has to push down enclosing it. When trying to squeeze it all together, the top side edges of the chest can get rubbed and chipped. As for the crotch, the front of the crotch protrudes (ooer missus) and the shoulders press against it - again it’s a problem of pushing the rear of the car together. However, I did get the shoulders in the wrong place the first couple of times I transformed it, which may well have been the problem here. You probably just need to be careful.

At first the quality did feel a bit 3P to me - but then this is a pre-production sample or may even be a factory reject, and it may also be in comparison to Prime, which came just before and was so premium. But the yellow plastic felt a little sub-par, and folding in the wheel arches was a bit scary as there are all these hinges that rely on clear plastic, and the wheel arches don’t have enough clearance from the chest so you have to sort of pull them around (a bit like a BadCube design), and the clear plastic was creaking on one of them. The creaking has stopped with a bit of use and this has become easier, though, so this was really just a first impression and nothing more. I no longer feel the quality is lacking; he feels solid.

Over the course of a few transformations, the hinge attaching the circle piece to the backpack has loosened and so it tends to flop backwards.

View attachment 28419590

Over all, I just wish they had found a better way of doing the backpack. I don’t care that it’s large, I just wish it was less messy. There’s some incredible stuff going on, though, and you see the problem they faced in getting this alt mode to that robot - I mean, just look at how much robot is coming out of such a tiny car in this part-transformed shot:

View attachment 28419589

Jerry Springer’s Final Thoughts

I’m aware that a lot of the above seems quite critical for a figure I actually love! But I think it’s helpful going in knowing about the negative aspects of the figure, because then you’ll take him out of the box, realise these issues aren’t really a big deal at all, and so enjoy him all the more (I hope).

Along with Jazz, Bumblebee is my favourite G1 Transformer, and a cartoon-accurate Bumblebee has long been my Holy Grail. I loved MP-21, but he always felt off in so many ways. I don’t think MP-45 is quite the final word - maybe one day they will figure out a way of improving that backpack and really nail the face from all angles - but he’s pretty damn close. For me he beats MP-21 in every way - colour, face sculpt, proportions, articulation. Side-by-side, MP-21 now looks blocky and short-legged. MP-45 is so much fun that he has been sitting on my desk for the past two weeks and transformed dozens of times, and I think he’s going to be there for a long time to come.

View attachment 28419588

Over all, then, with the price point, lack of accessories and messy backpack it could be considered a little lacklustre when placed in the context of such a flagship character coming hot on the heels of the huge MP-44. Taken on its own terms, though, it’s a really fun figure with a cute alt mode which, even if it doesn’t hit *all* the right notes, definite hits the right notes of nostalgia. This is G1 Bumblebee.
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And this is a fine example of reviews I actually give a damn about.

but bsf!

One of the best I’ve ever read. Thank you, kind sir.

jackisking · Oct 13, 2019

franpincho said: ↑

And this is a fine example of reviews I actually give a damn about.

but bsf!

One of the best I’ve ever read. Thank you, kind sir.
Click to expand...

Honestly, he's more of an internet personality than a reviewer to me. Thinks it why I don't take him seriously, he's like the Lord Jamar of tranformers.

oku · Oct 13, 2019

Temp1 said: ↑

I agree, his reviews are great.

Every time I look at the MP-45 I think ‘couldn’t they have done more work on the backpack and the feet? Surely they could have tidied it up?’ ...it just looks unfinished to me. I usually don’t mind a backpack at all but it’s just so messy that it puts me off.

Looks incredible from the front though.
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Feet could've looked better without the door gimmick.

Xaxis · Oct 13, 2019

oku said: ↑

Feet could've looked better without the door gimmick.
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I’m still under the impression that the door’s contribution to the appearance of the feet has more to do with the size of the doors in proportion to the rest of the alt mode, in combination with the rest of what needs to happen in the transformation, than the opening door gimmick.

If the doors didn’t need to open, would that significantly change where they could go in robot mode?

Since I haven’t watched any transformation videos and don’t have him on hand myself yet, I don’t know for sure what the answer to that question is. I suspect though that the door opening gimmick has little to do with how they’re integrated into the feet.

Temp1 · Oct 13, 2019

4249david said: ↑

Surely there's a 3P add on just waiting to clip over it? I got one for MP36, admittedly not for classic backpack, but still it's begging to be done for those who only have that particular gripe
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Maybe, but at the price TT is charging, you shouldn’t have to buy a 3P add on that ruins perfect transformation. Mp36 backpack (without add on) at least has some kind of form, where mp45 seems to have loose bit piled on top of each other, including the butt/waist ...so I’m not sure how easy it would be to have a clip on piece that wouldn’t hinder rotation completely.

I know it’s easy to sit here and say ‘they should do this and that’ but there must have been some potential design changes made to somehow smooth out the form of the backpack and feet. It’ll be interesting to see if any 4th party can improve on the design at some point.

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Takara Tomy MP-45 Bumblebee 2.0

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Robotmonkeys Sons of Cybertron

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4249david Click my avatar, you won't regret it...

chchchch Chunky Coherent

franpincho NOT a FT Only collector

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oku Chill.

Xaxis Multi-dimensional Traveler

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Log in or Sign up

Takara Tomy MP-45 Bumblebee 2.0

HolyCulture Well-Known Member

RKillian http://www.rktoyandhobby.com

IwatchTV Well-Known Member

Xaxis Multi-dimensional Traveler

malware5 Well-Known Member

Shockwave81 Protecting Cybertron from all hostile threats Moderator

Booster Gold Superhero?

kshaps Busting Deceptichops

Stryder Wolfe Is it...Safe???

MysteriousGray Nanoseconds Since Starscream's Last Betrayal: 12

jackisking Well-Known Member

Robotmonkeys Sons of Cybertron

Temp1 Well-Known Member

4249david Click my avatar, you won't regret it...

chchchch Chunky Coherent

franpincho NOT a FT Only collector

jackisking Well-Known Member

oku Chill.

Xaxis Multi-dimensional Traveler

Temp1 Well-Known Member

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