Phil's
War For Cybertron
Bumblebee & Cliffjumper
Review


War For Cybertron Bumblebee

War For Cybertron (WFC) Bumblebee is a bubble car, similar to the racers seen in the film Tron. This design possesses some similarities to the classic Bumblebee design as well - they're a vaguely similar shape - but it also bears a passing resemblance to the 1986 Mini Autobot Wheelie. He's mainly yellow, but it's a more gold honey yellow than the bright yellow of previous Bumblebees. There's a black stripe down the middle and smoked plastic windows on either side. The front grill looks a little like the front of the USS Defiant. The wheels are black, with a clear pink rim round a yellow hubcap. There's no action features as such in this mode, it's just a round bubble of a car.

Transformation: Turn the car over. Unpeg both legs from the rear of the car and unclip from the sides. Bend the legs & hips down under the car. Straighten the legs out to each side and then pull to extend them. Slide each rear wheel into the lower legs and then close the gold panels round it and swing the feet underneath. Straighten the legs under the car. Fold the roof of the car back. Pull the front wheels out to the sides unclipping them from the body. Unpeg the lower arms and fold out behind the car. Swing the arms out to the sides and fold the front wheels back onto the forearms. Fold the middle of the bonnet back to reveal the head. Remove the gun and fold the shell of the car onto Bumblebee's back.

My intial thoughts were that the comments I saw elsewhere, that this is meant to be a difficult toy to transform, were wrong and my opinion was it's a stroll in the park compared to WFC Optimus ! Then I came back to it after a few months.... and couldn't get it right for toffee. So in robot mode it stayed....

Bumblebee's robot mode is all the same yellow as the vehicle with the exception of the upper arms, lower chest, hands and feet which are black. His robot is a little bit of an odd shape: for a start the body is hump backed topped with a large head. It's about twice the size of WFC Prime's but still doesn't have light piped eyes :-(. He has long thin limbs with the forearms massively built up with vehicle kibble from the front wheels. Housed within the forearms are clear pink plastic blades the fold out. The hands are posed open but have a 5mm peg hole formed between the thumb and the fingers. As mentioned there's a gun hidden in the back of the car mode, which could be placed in his backpack here. The gun has a 5mm peg handle so he or any other robot with a standard size fist hole could use it. Articulation is good: Bending knees, thigh swivel - as well as the transformation joint in the middle of the thigh - and universal hips , ball jointed shoulders that fold back, a bicep joint, double bending elbows, rotating wrists and a ball jointed head that can lean forward at the neck.

Overall: It's not setting my world on fire. The vehicle looks nice but does nothing and the proportions for the robot mode are a little odd. But it could have been so much worse I suppose.

WFC Bumblebee was wave 1 Generations toy with WFC Optimus, Thrust & Drift. He was released in Japan with a more gold looking paint job as Transformers United toy UN-02.


War For Cybertron Cliffjumper

WFC Cliffjumper's existence wasn't revealed by Hasbro directly. The clue that he was coming was provided by Bumblebee's instructions that show the toy with a Cliffjumper shaped head - wider at the bottom, doesn't taper in. This was confirmed by Hasbro at Botcon 2010. As you'd expect the toy swaps yellow for red. Unfortunately it's still hard to transform: I couldn't persuade it into car mode!

In fact all five War For Cybertron toys stayed in robot mode until the day I sold them. Realising they'd fit into a smaller box I drew a deep breath and got to work..... An hour later I'd finished but by that point I knew the secrets! The first concerns the shoulders: there's a peg hole in the back of it that the peg on the wrist goes into. Then there's the instruction. Transform the legs bringing the feet together and locking the arms into them THEN fold the roof down on top of it.

I'm not sorry to see WFC BB & Cliffjumper go: they're a pain in the bottom to TF!

Cliffjumper was released in the USA in December 2010 as part of Generations Wave 5 with Thunderwing and Skullgrin. This wave was not carried in the UK, SHAME HASBRO UK, SHAME! He was released in Japan as Transformers United toy UN-03 at the same time as Bumblebee with a more metallic red colour scheme.


Future Repaints

The usual suspects: Goldbug, Hubcap, Waspinator, Bug Bite.... have a look at TFU's Original Bumblebee entry and see how many times that's been repainted! Animated Bumblebee adds a few more too (Elite Guard, Patrol).

Then you could remould the head and release this as Wheelie

Watch as Hasbro milks this mould!


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