Those head profiles bring back so many memories. Why the ever loving hell did Hasbro get rid of them  

 

So, next week sometime I'm going to visit my sister and see my Nephew for the first time. Who should I leave in charge?
Blackout, Shockwave, Overload: ME!!!!!!!
























Dino, you're in charge.
Blackout, Shockwave, Overload: WHAT!?!?!?!
Dino: You heard him.

 

Seems like a great tip, but unfortunately I don't have to tools or courage to try this.

 

Agree.

 

Im down for the repaints...i know there is a cgi image of Roadbuster in red/orange.

 

Alrighty let's try this again and hopefully my as we'll word it correctly this time. What's everyone's favorite toy version of Bumblebee? Which one do you think had the best vehicle mode and which one did you feel had the best robot mode?

My favorite version: 07 Stealth Bumblebee

Best vehicle mode: Dotm deluxe Bee

Best robot mode: Human Alliance Bee

 

With the announcement of a Studio Series DOTM Bumblebee next year (my favorite design for Bumblebee!), I wanted to break down the mold changes to get from ROTF Bee (SS-74) to the updates in the DOTM design. Not sure exactly why I wanted to do this, but I'm really excited for that figure so here we go! There's going to be a fair number of these pics so I'll put them at thumbnail size.

First off - alt mode!

Green: Removal of the hood scoop, addition of the vents at the end of the stripes (Green and red are the same piece, but I wanted to highlight changes to both portions)
Blue: Primary change is the new lower lights (foglights?), along with very minor changes to the grill design
Red: Fairly minor, the internal grill portions are slightly different, with less prominent vertical lines on the upper portion, and a solid piece on the upper border of the lower grill.

Green: New side vent pieces with a single opening instead of 3. Interestingly, however, Bee retains the 07/ROTF styled pieces when in robot mode.
Blue: Removal of the small stripe meant to represent the "Camaro" text, replacing with a small Autobot logo.
Red: I'm a little iffy on whether the tires need to be remolded, the design is a little different but I would be ok if they just reused the same tire pieces and didn't add the silver paint.

Green: The rear pieces of alt mode have 4 exhaust pipes compared to the prior 2, and of course the spoiler. The actual attachment style of the spoiler wouldn't work with transformation since it needs to split in half, so I think keeping the spoiler a little lower to the body of the car like the original DOTM deluxe would work here.

Green: Starting off easy with robot mode, Bee has new collar pieces in DOTM.

Blue: Bee has a redesigned chest in DOTM, which I think will be the trickiest part of this remold. My plan for how this could work involves just the central portion being remolded from the core chest piece.
Green: This is the tricky part. Bee has these large yellow rib pieces that sit underneath the grill and connect to the main chest. I think this could be done by remolding the abdomen piece to be larger. It would have to be very flat to store in alt mode, but using the hinge the piece is attached to, you can angle the piece forwards to line up better with the rest of the chest.

Blue: This is one that I don't really see how they could get to work. In DOTM, Bumblebee's lower wings are formed by the spoiler. While there is no way to get this to work with the real parts at the deluxe price point, I tried to see if you could do it with faux parts. You could easily have faux spoiler pieces that fold out from the doors, but the issue is where to allocate the small window pieces. I tried to see if you could leave them attached to the alt mode roof piece, but there isn't enough room for them the way the backpack folds up. The lower wings aren't super visible anyway, so I think I'd be ok with letting this one slide.

In terms of other stuff, I think we're all hoping for a new unmasked head sculpt (please Hasbro do not reuse the TLK/SS-01 head sculpt), hopefully we'll get something with a similar face sculpt to WWII Bee.

In terms of weapons, Bumblebee's shoulder rocket launchers have been notably absent from SS so far, but DOTM is the only movie of the OT where Bee doesn't use the rocket launchers in robot mode. They do appear in his stealth force mode though, so maybe.


Anyway, hope you guys found this interesting, and I'm excited to see what the actual figure looks like!

 

Jolt looking SEXY and DANGEROUS! I bent both whips and I do not regret it in the least! I'm actually going to post a tutorial reel on my instagram later this week. I've also started adding painted details to him. I'm done for now but we'll see if I feel the need to add more detailing later.

OK so far I think the SS rotf figure is the best so far. It's not even my favorite bumblebee design but it has all of the strengths of SS49 plus a better yellow color and some stuff tabs better (mostly the feet). I had to repaint the grey though.

Cool breakdown! Unfortunately I doubt they'll bother with more than half of these changes. The hardest seems to be the chest area, since it goes up and over the pecs. I'm interested to see how it turns out tho!

 

It would be a nice change of pace to give him his shoulder cannons and non battle mask head I’m curious to see how they’ll engineer the spoiler onto his legs

 

Awesome breakdown. I will have to agrre with @Shmoptimus Prime here that they may not bother with the other details. I do hope they can design something that can come from the bottom/behind the bumper cover to swing out to evoke the elaborate chest piece of dotm prime. And of course give us an unmasked head!

@Shmoptimus Prime dude those whips are looking nice! Excellent paint apps as well.

 

Thank you! I'm not sure if I'm going to do as extensive a repaint as you did for this figure, but you never know! I really like the way yours came out a lot. Those two electricity effect pieces have officially been given to Jolt, too. Thor still has several for himself though.

 

Thanks guys! I agree that they probably won't remold all of those things, but they did go all out with ROTF Bee, even adding the small line for the Camaro text on the side in addition to all the changes to the front for alt mode. We also have cases like 07 Megatron having the ROTF chest though, so you never know.

 

@Shmoptimus Prime yea I definitely agree with ya. I think SS74 is the strongest to date. I was hesitant at first but after handling he's pretty neat.

 

I love this Megatron  

 

How naughty of him lmfao  

Seriously though he looks amazing with proper looking whips, and some nice paint!!

One thing that does bother me is... why the hell are the blades on the whips facing in?? I'm considering cutting the whips at the base, where they plug into the hands, and gluing them back on with all the details, along with the blades, facing out.

 

Check out who just arrived!


Bee is pretty great, that pin makes life SO much easier and the weathering is actually really nicely done!

Barricade doesn’t appear to have changed from the original release besides the removed “punish and enslave”, it’s still pretty tricky to get him into alt mode. I’m trying to think what I’ll do with it since I have the original, maybe a Recon Barricade repaint at some point in the future?

Overall I’m really happy to have this set, especially Bee!

 

This has always bothered the crap out of me. Like, they have such good attention to detail on so many other things, but they missed this fairly obvious thing. Even his TLK bot mode has them, despite the car no longer even having those.

I doubt they'll bother to change that, especially since the TLK mold just used the lower windows as well, even though it had the spoiler in the movie.

 

"We were brothers once!"

 

This figure kinda sucks ass in robot mode but that didn’t stop me from trying to take some nice pics!

It would have been much better had they been on the outward facing fingers. I was even hoping the hands would be easy to remove and switch (like jazz) but they’re actually pinned. I was even wondering if I could add wrist swivel but I don’t wanna risk it right now. It’s probably a detail from the film that no one would have cared if they’d changed to make the figure better.

Yeah well WWII Bee has kibble from an entirely different alt mode…

Dude my jaw dropped. Awesome photo!