I was skimming through a comic book from the 70s and came across an ad for a toyline called “The Imposters”. A transforming yellow Beetle, I chuckled. What’s up with this recurring theme in toys? I know that “Go-Bots” similarly had a transforming yellow Beetle named Bug-Bite. Rumor has it another toyline from the 80s called “The Transformers” also had a transforming yellow Beetle toy. Sadly, I could find no proof of this “Bumblebee” which, alas, has been lost to the annals of history.
Oooooh! 70's car culture. Those look very cool! Would probably be pretty easy to make custom versions of those. Looks like the entire front just slides out with everything hidden inside the car shell.... The Real Ghostbusters toyline had the Highway Haunter which is also a yellow transforming Beetle. I would say that @Purple Heart nailed the reason, though. It's an iconic car and yellow is a pretty iconic color for them as well as being eye-catching for the kiddies. I think the only color that might be more recongnizable for the Beetle is orange. I've seen a ton of those.
Actually might know what your talking about. I do recall way back when I was about 3 a red carded deluxe sized yellow Pretender BB inner robot on card. I remember it very distinctly because that red was about the right shade of red the old G1 packages were. Of course being 3 I haven't the foggiest idea what the name of the line was called. Dad said he would get it for me and something for my sis but of course that was classic dad BS and we instead left a store that is now loooong gone along with whatever we had in the shopping cart(yeah still have no idea why dad bothered to even fill the cart in the first place) and instead went to pick up our mom at the dentist. ~edit~ Also found this on ebay but I doubt it's from the 80's and just generic knock off shenanigans at work. Vintage In Package Knockoff Bootleg Transformer G1 Pretenders Bumblebee? w/ mini | eBay
