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Series: Animated
Allegiance: Autobot
Categories: Deluxe
Year: 2008
I'm so hot it hurts!
After getting up close to members of the Autobot Elite Guard, Bumblebee wants more than ever to be one of them. It is his personal opinion that the one thing the Elite Guard needs to be perfect is to lighten up a bit, and he's just the guy to put the "lite" back in "Elite". His first step to fitting in with the Elite Guard is to look the part, so he had Sari borrow some of her dad's auto-painting robots to help him achieve his new look.
Remarks: Oh, look! It's Shattered Glass Goldbug, reformatted for the Animated series. Well no, not quite. It's actually Animated Bumblebee with a new coat of paint. So look for the full review there, as I will just highlight the differences here.
First of all, the new paint is mostly black and gold, though some yellow parts are left-over from the previous colour-scheme, all of them visible in robot mode only (except for the inner tires). It somewhat fits, as you can imagine Bumblebee having Sari give him a new paintjob in vehicle mode, leaving those parts that only appear in robot mode unchanged (though I think it would have looked better if all the yellow had turned gold). What doesn't fit with this is his head, though. On the figure it's black, while on the back of the package it's still yellow. The pic on the back of the card also misses the Elite Guard Autobot symbol on BB's chest. Strange. Also, it's somewhat unfortunate that they painted over Bumblebee's siren in car mode.
Elite Guard Bumblebee is not just a simple repaint, though. A small, but significant change has been made to the mold itself. Bumblebee's stingers now fold away properly into his forearms instead of sticking out halfway like they did in the original version. Nicely done. The stingers can even remain inside (mostly) when the hands are folded in, too. Like I said a small, but very nicely done and effective remold.
Finally you can add some speculation here. Will this new colour scheme ever appear in the cartoon series? Does it mean Bumblebee will actually join the Elite Guard one day? Or is it just wishful thinking and another repaint scheme? We'll find out sooner or later. But as someone who wasn't one hundred percent down with the original Bumblebee, I very much appreciate this newer version of him. I like the colours better, I very much appreciate the small remold for the forearms, and overall I like this figure quite a bit. Still don't like the character it represents, but you can't have everything. So a clear recommendation to everyone who wasn't completely satisfied with the 1st Bumblebee.
Rating: B+
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