It's been a while since one of our silly little April Fools jokes came true. Good to see we've still got the juice.
When we reviewed Studio Series 86 Bumblebee, we compared him to the ultra-obscure Transformer "Bumblejumper" and said Hasbro could easily turn that toy into
the first-ever modern Bumper by just retooling a few pieces slightly. Well hey, guess what!
Unfortunately, they didn't do quite as much retooling as we hoped: the head is new, the important part, giving us a character with a silver face, blue visor covering the eyes, and a helmet with three panels running vertically over the scalp; but rather than change the feet at all, they're the same rounded pieces, which will negatively impact the fidelity of the altmode. Now, yes, this is just a repaint figure in a Target-exclusive four-pack, and it's not like modern TF repaints often get any changes other than a new head, but it would have been so easy to do just a little more, and really honor a character who hasn't had any toys at all in 41 years.
As you'd expect, articulation and transformation are the same
as the existing figure, and he's armed with the same weapon that can be stored on the back of the car. He's yellow like Bumblejumper, not white like Sedan, so this car and Bumblebee look functionally identical when next to one another. The only meaningful difference is that Bumper's headlights are painted black instead of silver, because that's what the original 1984 toy was like. Again, changing just a little bit of the robot's feet would have helped, making the front of the car squarish instead of rounded. It wouldn't have even needed to be the entire foot, just the front of the toes
For a character who only ever had one unacknowledged, semi-official, release before, this update is good enough. But all this means is that someday, we'll get a Bumper who's even better. Hopefully sometime before 2066.
