Bumblebee's vehicle mode is a yellow muscle/sports car-- as it's been for a while now, ever since the early movie days. It keeps the general "feel" of a Chevrolet Camaro, while making the lines a bit more slick and futuristic. The black lines across Bumblebee in this mode really help with this look-- instead of just one or two "straight" stripes, Bumblebee has three different sets of stripes (four, if you count the little short stripes in front of his exposed engine), and some of them go off at a diagonal angle (at more than one point, sometimes), making the usual Bumblebee deco considerably more visually interesting this time-- it's definitely the part of this new Bumblebee's vehicle mode I like the best. (That said, two little gray hinges right in the middle of his side stripes ruin the look there a little.) There's no robot mode extras at all in this mode, though you CAN see Bumblebee's arms fairly plainly inside the transparent blue plastic on his windows-- I wish they had tinted those windows darker to hide this. The mold detailing is minimal in this mode due to the sleekness of it and its general look in the cartoon, but there's plenty of paint apps-- besides the aforementioned stripes, both his red taillights and bright orange blinker-headlights are painted, along with his tire hubs, grill, and his exposed engine. This leaves no area on Bumblebee with TOO much yellow in this mode, which is definitely a good thing, and all of his colors help to contrast against the the yellow pretty well-- with the exception of the orange and light red, as they're so bright they don't look quite as good. Other than his tailpipes, pretty much everything's covered in this mode, paint-wise.
    Bumblebee's transformation is slightly more complex than you'd think-- I almost rated his transformation "hard", but except for the chest, everything is pretty straightforward. The way so many bits come together for his chest-- his head (which is on the bottom of his engine block piece; you flip it around), the sides of the front of his car, his robot waist, a small piece in the center with his Autobot insignia on it (that can easily be covered up by all the other pieces)-- it all has a nice, pseudo-movie "fragmented" look to it, but it all feels a bit too... touchy, I guess. His main chest pieces lock into place decently enough, but they can still move around on other joints fairly easily, and his waist and shoulders in particular have a tendency to not look "natural" in their default positions. I realize that Bumblebee has become more and more of "light warrior"-type character in recent years, but having Bumblebee's big, beefy wheel-shoulders stick out THIS much from the sides, and have his waist be this tiny in comparison to how wide his chest is, looks a bit weird. His shoulders also line up with the front of his chest, which looks off from a side view, like he's always leaning forwards and flexing. However, this aside, this mode is pretty good, with little kibble (the only pieces I would really call kibble are the chunks of car on the sides of his legs, and even then they stay out of the way and are minimal pieces of kibble, at best). His roof folds down onto his shoulder-wings, and his face is mostly round, with large eyes (with excellently-done light piping) and a faceplate. It's pretty obvious that Prime Bumblebee takes pretty much all of his major design cues from his movie incarnation as opposed to his G1 version, that's for sure. Bumblebee's mold detailing is still relatively sparse in this mode (except for a few spots like his waist), but it's done in a neat, stylized manner that is both very curvy at some parts like his shoulders and lower arms, and pointy at spots like his elbows and knees. His color distribution has more gray in it in this mode, though most of it's a dark, swirly, semi-metallic shade of the color, and thus actually works pretty well as a "neutral" color against all that yellow, and is not bland at all in the amounts that it's used. His paint apps mostly carry over from the car mode, but I particularly like how the black stripes on his various chest & waist pieces are painted so it all looks like they're just fragments of two stripes carried over from his vehicle mode-- nice attention to detail, there. For articulation, Bumblebee can move at the neck, shoulders (at two points), elbows (at two points), rotation at the waist, and movement at the hips (at two points), knees, and ankles. Thus, you can get some good poses out of him, though the awkward angle of his shoulders and waist make some poses look off. For a weapon, Bumblebee has a little two-barreled energy blaster that can plug into either of his lower arms, though unfortunately it can't store anywhere in vehicle mode, which irks me a little.
    Prime First Edition Bumblebee is-- like many toys released in this early subline for the show-- the best overall (and also most complex) toy of the character you'll find, who is also the most show-accurate. However, that said, though his car mode is largely flawless, his robot mode does suffer from some proportional awkwardness, particularly at the waist and shoulders. Still, if you want a version of Prime Bumblebee and don't mind a fiddly chest-- this is the version you want.

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Review by Beastbot

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