Movie Protoform Bumblebee

Allegiance: Autobots
Toyline: Movie Custom
Year: 2008

After the battle of Tyger Pax many Autobots hailed Bumblebee as a hero for having succeeded in keeping the AllSpark from Megatron's grasp. Bumblebee himself, though, doesn't think of himself as a hero. He simply did his duty and it cost him the lives of many comrades and the ability to speak. A true hero, he reasons, would have stopped Megatron outright. Instead he's now out there, poised to spread their war to other worlds. So when the time comes for the Autobots to head into space, Bumblebee is among the first to volunteer. Streaking through space in his protoform shape, he will search every inch of the universe until he finds the AllSpark and Megatron, wherever they are.

Robot Mode: Once again, let's first take a look at how this custom-made robot is put together. It's pretty straight-forward this time. The body is that of Protoform Optimus Prime, while the head hails from Bumblebee. That's pretty much it. Limewire added some parts to the chest to more closely resemble the way Bumblebee looked in the Prequel Comics and finally painted the whole thing, adding lots of details.

Overall the resemblance to the bot we saw in the Prequel is pretty good. I'm not a hundred percent certain about the colour, as Bumblebee seemed to switch colours several times in the Prequel comics (yellow, beige, grey, you name it), but the polished black metal with gold look suits him just fine and reminds me a bit of Shattered Glass Goldbug, which is certainly not a bad thing. The colouring looks good on BB and really brings out the many details of the mold, which kind of get lost in Optimus Prime's uniform blue-grey.

Not much more I can say here. Nothing has changed about the figure in terms of posability, still excellent, and so I can only sum up the robot mode in two short words: Pretty good.

Alternate Mode: Not a whole lot to tell here. Bumblebee of course transforms into the same comet-shaped space craft as Protoform Optimus Prime. No differences here except for the paint job. Personally I'm not a big fan of this mode, I much prefer the comet-mode of Starscream. Still, Bumblebee looks good in this mode as well, the paint job does a lot to add depth and realism to the figure and brings out the details nicely. So while it's not my favourite mode, I can still give it thumbs up for look and feel.

Remarks: Limewire is a fan of the Protoform concept from the Movie, so it's small wonder he decided to do one for Bumblebee as well. We only saw Bumblebee in this form in the Prequel comics and only for one issue at that, but this figure is a pretty decent representation of that short appearance. While I'm not as big a fan of this mold as Limewire is, he still did a pretty good job on the painting and detailing, so thumbs up for that. Overall, I like this figure. Nice job.

Rating: B+