Rounding out the small collection of purple, silver, and yellow bugs (again), Bombshell delivers a massively foreheaded Decepticon with the cartoon colorway Japan craves and the clear yellow chest America demands. It's somewhere in between "toy" and "cartoon," meaning a redeco of this bug to hew toward either of those styles will probably not be particularly satisfying. But if you just need something that's good enough to stop buying the purple bugbots, this is a nice conclusion to the set.
The last one was $10 and turned into a blaster for bigger bots - and was fine! If they didn't restart the remake train, I probably wouldn't demand a new one - but its good, it's fun. You'll like it. But don't transform it fully - the silver nub on the helmet above his eyes will get scraped if you cram it in the socket on his chest. As such, mine isn't going to be photographed completely in there. Hasbro needed to mold at least one of those two surfaces in color, as both are painted, tolerances aren't where they need to be.
Standing 6-inches tall, Bombshell has a big hat that gives him a little extra height. The toy is elegant, simple enough to be a good "basic" toy but with enough panels and parts to make you not made that it's a deluxe. Well, maybe a little mad - inflation stings. We don't get swivel wrists, but there are jointed bug lets on the shoulders, and for some reason ankle tilts. I know online fans complain about every joint - heck, I guess I just did - but I don't think I would be upset if they lost the tilts. Anything to get prices back down and parts counts down, especially if they won't get in the way of the figure being awesome. The big boots keep him standing, and you can even angle the legs and somehow he keeps upright. The sculpted detail is also pretty great, looking like an old Takara toy without overdoing the detail like was saw in Siege. The paint on the figure is particularly generous, with faux labels on the sides and backs of the legs, tons of silver on the head and blaster, eyes, and more. I don't know if it means the gray thighs will or won't chip, but at least they look excellent today.
Transformation is easy - there are tabs and slots, but it's mostly very logical and you're not going to have a lot of questions other than maybe the panels on the back of the legs, and where they go. You get a nice bug fellow when it's over.
The bug is a bug! The black blasters make little legs, and you've got that jointed probe cannon on the nose. It's cute - it doesn't do a heck of a lot, but neither did the original. Hasbro and Takara-Tomy opted to not use the wheels of the original toy, and that gives you a silhouette more in line with what you saw in the comics and cartoons. You get what you want here, basically, so other than the aforementioned possible paint scuffing I don't have any complaints.
Simplicity is worth a lot to me - as is good design. I'm scratching my head how 40 years into these toys we're still getting clearance issues and paint scraping, but aside from that? This is a nice little bug robot. I assume there will be another iteration of him later, although I don't know if I'm going to be on board for another one. This one is pretty good as it is, giving you the posable action figure you expect with a perfectly nice transformation. I admit it's a little plain - truly, by now you would think we'd see new action features or an unusual gimmick, but at least it's a good, sturdy figure which is what most adult fans are buying anyway. For them, it will go on a shelf until it is time to replace it and sell it. But for those who wanted to fidget with it, this is probably as good as we're going to get this decade for Bombshell.
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