Part Two: Transformers

In 2010 Activison, in partnership with High Moon Studios sought to right the wrongs that had been inflicted upon Transfans who wanted to celebrate their favourite franchise with video games on their favourite platforms. Both the Transformers Movie game and the Revenge of the Fallen Game (which I own) were sub-par attempts at bringing exciting game play and intriguing story work to a franchise that should have both in spades (in fairness I will say of those previous two games that they looked pretty - but that was about it). Working closely with Hasbro to craft a narrative more closely tied to the G1 universe than the movieverse the result was a prequel of sorts and the beginning of a new universal canon - War for Cybertron.

Hasbro has publicly stated that they are working to harmonize the different back stories in the various G1-esque universes out there (there will still be some former continuities that will not work together but anything that purports to be the G1 characters will now be subject to this new bible of the transformers universe). War for Cybertron was it's coming out party. The game featured exciting game play both in single player and co-op mode and had a compelling and intriguing storyline tracing the origins of the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons back to their home world on Cybertron. To support this new fiction (and revenue stream) Hasbro developed four figures for their catch-all Generations toy line that were right out of the War for Cybertron game. They were Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Megatron and Soundwave (Bumblebee was later re-painted into Cliffjumper). The toys were well received and fans have been clamoring for more characters to get the WFC treatment and be released to mass market - but so far no designs have been revealed.

So today I present to you the penultimate Transformer in my Lenten journey - WFC Bumblebee. There is not a lot to say about this figure other than he is a wonderful representation of his character model from the video game (the advantage of having game designers work hand in hand with toy designers) and he represents a return to the small, scout-style character that defined G1 Bumblebee - not the overpowered gibberish-talking muscle car warrior Bumblebee from the movieverse.

Tomorrow I finish this journey the way I started.

See you then.