Age of the Primes Fugitive Waspinator

Prelude: Wasp hate Bumble-Bot! Bumble-Bot ruined Wasp’s life! Bumble-Bot got Wasp’s Animated Deluxe figure cancelled, too! It’s all Bumble-Bot’s fault! But Wasp will get revenge on Bumble-Bot! Wasp finally has Deluxe class figure now! Soon Wasp will replace ALL Bumble-Bot figures with Wasp figures! You’ll see! Wasp will now say go!

Robot Mode: Wasp, or rather Fugitive Waspinator (more on that below) is a retool of Legacy United Animated Bumblebee. The body remains the same apart from the colors, but the head was replaced with one strongly resembling the character from the Animated TV show. Can I just say, I love this new head. It looks great and is very screen-accurate, too. And the new colors, mostly dark green with some black, bright green, and purple highlights, looks fabulous as well. Can we have Wasp repaints of all Bumblebee figures, please?

Apart from the new head and changed colors, Wasp is the same excellent figure that Bumblebee is. Very nicely articulated, looking mostly Animated with only a touch of G1-inification, and despite his relatively small size he is pretty intricate. I am not one hundred percent down with his shoulder design, but it doesn’t hinder him any, either.

For weapons Wasp carries the same stingers Bumblebee does, just with purple stripes. He also comes with Bumblebee’s booster rockets – again recolored purple – which he can use on his back as a rocket pack or attach to his stinger to make them handguns. Still not the biggest fan of the way the stingers can only sit at an angle on his hands – in order to put them together into a single one in front of him – but it works pretty nicely.

So bottom line: awesome robot mode, looking so much better in green than in yellow.

Alternate Mode: Wasp transforms into the same mini car as Bumblebee, of course, and with the head hidden there is no difference between the two apart from the color. Both have the little red siren on top, both have a black stripe, both can attach their respective booster rockets to the sides. The car has actual rims on its tires, which I always prefer over some clip-on tires or something, and the headlights actually manage to look mean, somehow. Very nice.

Bottom line: it’s not a wasp, but it might be a beetle. Either way, a nice car mode.

Remarks: Wasp was originally an Autobot and attended the Elite Guard boot camp together with Bumblebee and Bulkhead. He was a bit of a dick, sure, but when Bumblebee discovered the existence of a spy in the Autobot ranks, he was certain it was Wasp and got him sent to prison for it. Turns out, though, it was actually Longarm who was the spy and Bee had sent an innocent bot to the stockade. Wasp later escaped and tried to take revenge on Bumblebee. Eventually he ran afoul of Blackarachnia and was transformed into the techno-organic monster known as Waspinator.

Side note: this figure is called Fugitive Waspinator, even though it should be Fugitive Wasp, as he didn’t adopt the “-inator” suffix (cue Dr. Doofenschmirtz wooing) until after his transformation. I assume copyright issues behind this, to avoid confusion with Marvel’s Wasp, and Waspinator has a much larger name recognition value, anyway, especially for Beast Wars fans.

Wasp wasn’t exactly the biggest character in Animated, but it was a great new take on the old Beast Wars characters and I cannot tell you how elated I am that we’re finally getting a new Animated figure. Really new, not just a new version of a figure we had before. We were supposed to get a Fugitive Waspinator way back in 2010 as a repaint of Animated Deluxe Bumblebee, but that figure never materialized, sadly. Now, though, 15 years later, it’s finally here. Which gives me fresh hope we might someday get an Animated Omega Supreme, too.

So to sum it up: buy this figure! Show Hasbro that we want more Animated! And even if you don’t give a damn about Animated, this is still a very nice figure, so buy it and help out some Animated fans in the process, too.

Rating: B+