It’s Week-something-something of Transformers Thursday held hostage by the Bayformer menace. Christ, I’m getting tired of this! Age of Extinction comes out next week, so soon this will all be over and I can get back to featuring some Transformers that I actually want to look at. I should warn y’all that I’m in a real pissy mood today. Why I’m so put off isn’t important, but because I am, I’ve decided to break the randomness factor of TFT Bayformerpaloosa and channel my anger against a particular Bayformer that is worthy of my rage. It’s the original Bumblebee Deluxe figure from the 2007 movie. Holy hell… what a piece of crap!

I’ve had this figure since it was first released, so I’ve got no packaging to show you. Instead, I thought I’d spend the time to talk about the fact that a few nights ago I re-watched the movie for the first time in a while. I’ll also point out that it is now a day later, so I’m no longer the raging bastard that I was when I wrote the rest of this feature. Consider this an oasis of positivity before I start shitting all over the figure. So, I was a little surprised that I still genuinely enjoy this movie quite a bit. The two sequels have become films that I love to hate, or hate to love, depending on my mood, but this one is pretty alright. It’s not the Transformers movie I wanted, but it’s one that I can accept. I still love the introduction of Blackout destroying the US Army base, the fight between Barricade and Bumblebee is pretty cool, and the battle for Mission City injected a lot of the Transformer-on-Transformer action that I thought was missing from much of the rest of the film. The first time Optimus Prime transforms and speaks still gives me goosebumps. Hell, I even kinda liked Frenzy.  Amazing special effects aside, ‘07 Transformers feels a lot like an 80’s movie in all the good ways. Deep down inside, it has heart, and while there’s a lot in it that I wish wasn’t there, I think it did an admirable job setting up for what could have been a great series of movies. I guess you could say it was a solid origins movie. I look back on it as a missed opportunity and it’s an especially fresh experience when you go back to it after watching the clusterf’ck that is Revenge of the Fallen. Ok, I’ve said my piece and now I’m returning you all to the original bad-tempered bitch-fest that is today’s article.

Now where was I? Oh yeah, what a piece of crap! What you’re seeing is the alt mode as good as it ever looked. Don’t try to tell me, “but Fig, it’s been a while, the springs have worn down.” Bullshit! This is what Bumblebee looked like the day I took him out of the package with his droopy, broken hood. Hasbro had plenty of those little rubber bands holding this mess together. And it took me about ten minutes of tweaking to get it to look this good, because it usually looks like this.

This is clearly what Bee should look like after Sam got wasted on Mojo’s pain meds, blacked out and hit a tree. And don’t tell me I got a bad one either. This is my second Deluxe Bumblebee from the first movie. They both had the same issue. There’s a lot of reasons this crap should piss me off, but the biggest is because I genuinely wanted a decent version of his classic Camero mode. I liked Classic Camero Bumblebee and it sucks that this is the figure we got out of it. It also falls prey to my greatest of toy pet peeves… if you can’t pull off a gimmick that works, don’t do it. This droopy hood is the fault of the stupid “auto-morph” bullshit, and as we’ll soon see, it doesn’t fare much better in robot mode. Had they left that out, the toy’s alt mode would have been fine. The mold isn’t bad at all and while I’m not at all a fan of the painted windows, I see a lot of wasted potential in this car mode. Let’s transform him and see if he fares any better in robot mode. Here’s a spoiler… HE DOESN’T!

This robot mode doesn’t look anything like Bumblebee did in the movie. The chest is inaccurate, the feet are too big, and he just looks all sorts of wrong. Again, thanks to how badly the “auto-morph” gimmick fails, I still have to make all sorts of adjustments on pieces that are supposed to pop into place, so why did they even bother? Those headlights never pop out right and I usually have to dig that Autobot insignia out to get it into position. Is he at least a decent Camero Transformer? I guess. I think my biggest gripe is that it doesn’t look like any thought went into the legs at all. They’re just the back half of the car pulled apart with a few minor tweaks. And guess what? They feature “auto-morph” bullshit as well. Also, the way the windshield hangs off Bee’s back to make the door wings work feels really forced.

As long as I’m spreading the anger and hate, I’ll save a little for myself. Bumblebee came with a pair of missile launchers. I found them while going through another tote a few months ago and put a note on them and put them in a baggie. Well, instead of walking over to the closet and putting them in the drawer where the movie figures are, I wound up just tossing them back into the tote that got buried in my closet. I blame the fact that I probably had quite a few Jamesons in me at the time. Either way, as a result, I didn’t include them in any of the shots. Suffice it to say, they can be attached on his car mode by pegging them into the back wheels, and they make up a pair of shoulder launchers for his robot mode. They’re neat, but they only serve to alienate the toy design from the movie design even more.

The above pictures say it all. That’s what his chest usually looks like after I transform him and the “auto-morph” gimmick fails. One headlight nipple almost never pops out. And I can’t think of a better photo for the end of today’s feature. After beating my head over what it is about this figure that is so wrong, I came up with just a general sense of uneven complexity. It looks like all the engineering went into making the auto-morph in the chest and the rest of the figure was just given no thought at all. It’s like the entire budget was blown on the upper half and the rest was given the engineering of a Legends Class. Maybe that’s a little harsh, but then I think back to how the “auto-morph” totally ruins the car mode. Blah! I want this figure to be good and it just isn’t. Hell, that even got me thinking. If a third party out there made a decent Classic Camero Bumblebee, I might be tempted to buy it. In the meantime, screw this goddamn figure. It’s not even good enough to get sent up to my nephew in Jersey.