Shiny!

Bumblebee.  A few words that come to mind to describe Bumblebee: yellow, kid-friendly, small  (also accepted: runty, shrimpy, or any variations thereof).  But the first word that comes into my mind for this particular Bumblebee is: shiny!  Just look at all that gold chrome.  If I were Lil' John, I'd be tempted to stick this toy on my teeth.

This is precisely the reason why I am writing about twenty-year old toy.  If leprechauns gave their little, bearded leprechaun-children toys for Christmas, this toy would found be underneath their little leprechaun trees.  It would be too easy to write this toy off as a one-trick-pony, copy & paste "shiny!" a hundred times, and click "publish post."  But then we would be ignoring all the other little details that add to how brilliant this Bumblebee is.

For instance: the tires are genuine rubber; they molded a little (chromed!) exhaust pipe when it wouldn't have been missed; a sticker on the back gives this Bug a Batmobile-esque exhaust for the jet turbine that Volkswagen removed from Hitler's original designs.  And that's just the vehicle mode.

The robot mode is simple, and is simple to transform into, but that's not necessarily a bad thing--I'd say it's a very elegant design.  You not only see where everything goes from vehicle mode to robot mode, but how they got there as well.  It's intuitive.  And unlike some modern transformers, you don't have to sacrifice your firstborn to get it from one mode to the other either.

Then there are the things to appreciate in the robot mode: the little molded fists, the detailing on the legs, and the face mask that's almost too-cool for a robot that transforms into a VW Beetle--it may not be "accurate" but it's certainly more interesting than the pudgy visage on his cartoon-self.

Yet at the end of the day, the advances made in toy-technology over the past twenty years have created just too large of a gap for anyone to truthfully say this Bumblebee is better than the figures that have come after him.  Yes, there's a charm and elegance to its simplicity in and of itself, but it comes across as being outdated when its put next to any other Transformer engineered within the last five years.  And when you do that, it also becomes quite evident that this Bumblebee is not only small, it is the midget at a gigantism convention.

So here's the question: is it necessary to run to eBay to buy a G2 Bumblebee?

Maybe not.

But I do have to say, he is very shiny.

Only a little disappointed it doesn't say "ANDY"