Bumblebee's sportscar alt mode is replicated quite well for his Legion-class mold, with pretty much spot-on proportions and basically no robot mode extras whatsoever. (On the back end, you can see just a BIT of the lower portion of his head/neck piece below the fender, but this is a minor issue at best.) Even though RID2015 toys generally have minimal mold detailing, at this scale even that mold detailing looks pretty good, with all of the necessary details molded in, like the stripes on the sides, the stripes with "vents" on the front hood, the front grill, and the rear headlights, all molded in a rather angular fashion, as befits his design. In addition to the base yellow plastic, he also has black paint on ALL of his windows (including the rear ones), red on the taillights, and a nice shade of blue on the headlights. However, he's BumbleBEE, and that means that particularly for his modern incarnations he needs stripes-- particularly the main two stripes on his hood, which are not painted on at all and thus make him look slightly more plain than he should in this mode. Still, given the black windows and wheels contrasting well enough with the yellow he's still not bad. There's a peg on each side of this mode in front of the rear tire that can hold a Cyberverse-scaled weapon, but sadly he doesn't come with any. The RID2015 "scan insignia" is on the front of his right car door, a rather awkward place for it-- though to be fair, given his transformation, it couldn't have been put in a less obnoxious place like on his hood or anything.
    Although it's hardly difficult, Bumblebee's transformation is a bit more complex than usual for a Legion-class toy; there's a couple of extra odd flips you have to do with the head and chest to get everything in place for the robot mode. The end result is a bit less than satisfactory, to be honest. The head and chest look very awkward; for one, the head is far too small, and actually sticks out above the chest a little too far. As for the chest itself, it's too long and at a very odd angle compared to the rest of the toy. I appreciate that they were trying to use the front window of the car mode to actually be the black stripe on 'Bee's chest, but it just doesn't work here. The arms are too long proportionally as well, made up of both the back bumper AND the entire side of the car mode, and because of the angle of the chest the pivot point for them at the shoulders is a bit too far back. Even for a Legion they're also a little too 2-D, with only the hands (which can hold Cyberverse-scale weapons) juuust poking out from the car shells the arms are molded into. The legs, on the plus side, are pretty solid, with pretty decent proportions, nice flip-down toes, and they just look much more show-accurate than the rest of this mode. As for paint apps exclusively for this mode, there's some silver on the face and upper legs, blue on the eyes, and black on the toes. It's not much, but the rest of 'Bee's yellow is broken up enough by his black plastic and vehicle mode paint where monotony isn't an issue. For articulation, Bumblebee can move at the shoulders (at two points), hips, and slightly forward at the ankles-- roughly average for a Legion figure.
    RID2015 legion-class Bumblebee is one of the weakest toys of this character, at least that isn't a 1-step or a combiner component. The vehicle mode looks quite nice (albeit lacks his signature stripes), but his robot mode body is incredibly awkward, with a chest that is far too long and angled, a tiny head, and arms that are too long and 2-D. If you want a simple-to-transform 'Bee, I'd recommend one of the many 3-step versions of him instead.
 

Review by Beastbot

Back to Robots in Disguise (2015) Index