Bumblebee is saved from the acidic insides of Unicron when Daniel Witwicky comes to the rescue.
Neat, don't care. As soon as I took this figure off the peg
at the store, it ceased to be Bumblebee.
In the early days of Transformers, needing to make the line look bigger than it actually was, Hasbro sold Bumblebee and Cliffjumper in each other's colors - that is, fully official releases of Red Bumblebee and Yellow Cliffjumper. So it was easy to overlook, in the second wave of Series 1, when a different little yellow car showed up on Cliffjumper cards. A little yellow car that wasn't Bumblebee, and never appeared anywhere else. There was a rumor among fans that this particular car had also been sold on Bumblebee cards, leading to the name "Bumblejumper." Eventually this was shortened to the less awkward "Bumper," but still nothing was really known about him.
The molded copyright info on the toy made it clear that this was specifically a Hasbro run of the toy, not some Takara stock that accidentally found its was into US packaging, but the character never appeared
in any fiction, even as a random background thing or early glimpse at someone who got pushed back to a later assortment. The mold, which began life as "MC04 Mini CAR Robo 02: Mazda Familia 1500XG," did receive an official release as a Transformer... in Brazil. Identified only as "Sedan." But that release got official art and an official (Portuguese) Tech Spec bio, which may mean those things had been created by Hasbro and simply went unused in the US, or may have just been made in Brazil by Estrela. When we say nobody knows the truth about Bumper, we mean it.
Neither Hasbro nor Takara have ever done an official
Bumper toy in any capacity, despite coming close. For example, everything about this figure except the head just screams "Bumper," so that's who I got it to be. Surely Nonnef or someone will be making a replacement kit to lose the horns and give him some goggles.
Studio Series Transformers get good articulation, and this is no exception. He moves at the head, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. Because of the way the robot changes into a car, the knees can bend in either direction - and in fact, they want to bend backwards more easily than they do the right way, so that's something to watch for. He's armed with a small silver pistol that can be stored on his back when not in use.
The original G1 Bumblebee did not turn into an actual Volkswagen Beetle, but rather into a superdeformed "penny racer"
toy of a Volkswagen Beetle - remember, the toyline we came to know as "Transformers" was actually made from two different Japanese lines: Diaclone, which were scale models of actual vehicles; and MicroChange, which were 1:1 models of real objects. And thus, G1 Bumblebee's altmode was not a car, G1 Bumblebee's altmode was a toy car. The cartoon drew the character with those same squished proportions, and so that persists to the Studio Series.
Since they can't really make this look like a VW Bug without paying licensing fees, only the front end of the car has the
proper rounded shape. The back is flatter and more squared off... exactly the way Bumblejumper's Mazda looked as a toy. Meaning this figure could be retrofitted into being Bumper with nothing more than a new head and new feet, if Hasbro wanted to do that. Imagine how wild it would be to get a Studio Series toy of a character who never appeared in any TV shows or movies at all!
Bumblebee barely showed up in Transformers: The Movie at all, so it's only his existing popularity that's earned him a spot in this line. If all you want is a Bumblebee, we've had better ones in recent years, so you don't need this one; but that's why, in my collection, unless and until Hasbro decides to make a real one, he's becoming Studio Series Bumper.
-- 04/01/25
Who's making the best Bumper add-on parts? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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