Bumblebee
(Rally Rumble) [Activator; Autobot Alliance]
(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to the original Autobot Alliance Activator Bumblebee. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the original Autobot Alliance Activator Bumblebee here.)
Bumblebee's not going
to be anything but mainly black and yellow for some time, it would appear,
even when it comes to his many various redecoes. However, that said, this
is definitely one of the more interesting repaints that keeps Bumblebee's
same basic colors intact. The yellow is a much brighter shade this time
around-- it might be a bit noxiously bright to some, but I think it fits
on a "Rally" version of the car, and the black contrasts exceptionally
well with it. Thankfully, there's considerably more black on this version,
particularly in vehicle mode, so he has a lot of great contrasting. I also
quite like the red border the black on his hood has, as well as the black/red
mix on the "02" rally-esque numbering on his car doors and the creative
"honeycomb" patterning seen on the sides as well. They all really help
to make this toy stand out on the peg. Unfortunately, he's packaged in
robot mode, which isn't as big of a departure in terms of paint apps. Sure,
he has a miniature version of the black/red hood paint app on his chest--
which looks great-- but his main secondary colors in this mode remain a
light gray (even paler on this version than on the initial Autobot Alliance
Activator) with a bit of silver on the chest. Both of these colors are
too light to contrast with the already-bright yellow, and so don't really
fit in with the color scheme nearly as well as additional black or red
would have. The light sky blue on the eyes still works quite well there,
however.
No mold changes have
been made to Rally Rumble Bumblebee.
I like that Rally Rumble
Bumblebee has a bit more color & paint variations than the usual "slight
redeco" of Bumblebee, but it's still definitely Bumblebee. If you have
the original version of this mold, this version's close enough where anyone
but completists can probably pass it up. However, if you don't, this color
scheme looks mighty fine in vehicle mode (though not so much in robot mode--
too bright), and I'd recommend it over the original Autobot Alliance Activator.
Review by Beastbot