Mbilia Studios
Mbilia Studios is a "luxury collectible studio" allegedly based in Dubai (despite the business actually being registered in Singapore), claiming to specialize in merchandise for large pop culture franchises, including Transformers... And, so far, just Transformers, despite ostensibly branding themselves a multi-property enterprise. It was founded in 2025... Allegedly.
Presumably, they will release a series of limited-edition monochromatic statues featuring characters with comic stills printed on them. Though, as you might infer from the tone of this opening paragraph, there are an absurd amount of some red flags.
Merchandise
[edit]
Mbilia's statues are set to be limited to 100 manufactured units per character, with each figure costing an astonishing $3800. But hey, on a bright note, the 5% discount they offer off your first order will knock $190 off one of their statues, letting customers pay just $3610 instead of $3800 before shipping and taxes. What a steal!
The quality of these figures' designs is also extremely questionable, to say the least. For instance, looking at the Soundwave statue from the front, he seems to be holding a rifle based on the G1 toy's gun. When looking at it from the side, we see that the thing is actually in two parts, with what would've been the shoulder stock actually becoming a second cylinder on his right shoulder. The front of it is actually resting on his wrist while his fist clutches noting. Meanwhile, his legs have either tires or a second volume wheel when the original Soundwave toy only has one wheel on the left leg, and both of his incredibly short thighs are clipping through his hips.
Statues {{ #if: {{#ifexpr: 3 }}
|
|
}}
The splash ad that greets newcomers to the Mbilia website that asks visitors to sign up for their email list (and get 5% off your first order) also asks for the visitor's Transformers preferences: G1, the live-action film series, the IDW comics, or the Masterpiece Series. It is likely that Mbilia is planning to make statues based on those franchises in the future. It is unknown what Mbilia means when including "Masterpiece Series" in their poll, since the figures from that line are nearly all G1 and live-action movie characters... two options already on their own poll.
Notes
[edit]- When polling visitors if they preferred the live-action film series, Mbilia called it the "Bayverse," which usually has been just a fan name for the movie series, and not an official term used by Hasbro or Paramount Pictures.
- It is very, very blatant that Mbilia uses [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Generative artificial intelligence|{{#if:generative AI|generative AI|Generative artificial intelligence}}]] in all aspects of their website, and potentially their merchandise. Aside from the fact that any chunk of text on it gets flagged with 100% AI likelihood on most AI detectors, and that they feature presumably legitimate reviews when they haven't even shipped any product, when clicking on each product listing on their website, visitors are greeted with an AI made animation of each character with animation errors, because the AI doesn't know how to actually animate these characters (and especially not their transformations). Worse still, when making vertical videos for their social media platforms, they had the AI create entirely new vertical animations instead of cropping the horizontal videos on their storefront, having an entirely different (and still erroneous) transformation for the same characters.
- Some mistakes the "animation" created by the generative AI for their social media:
- The vertical Optimus animation (seen right) makes the windshield's windows go up and disappear behind his shoulders, his smokestacks disappear with the windshield before melting out of the final robot mode's shoulders, and his hands are a blurry mess before fully rendering into fists. The entire truck cab raises over its suspension during this, leaving just the tires and a gas tank that suddenly morphs into another tire. The grey suspension then expands and turns into his thighs while the grey tires melt together and become his red shins. Meanwhile, his entire trailer shrinks into his butt rather than disappear into the jungle behind him.
- The vertical Bumblebee transformation has the car's front hood open up, revealing an engine that Volkswagen Beetles usually have in the rear trunk, before the hood stretches over the entire roof of the car and splits in the middle to become his arms. The engine that shouldn't exist then melts and becomes his groin, chest, and thighs, while the front fenders of the car spin around his calves and a new hood grows out of his knees to cover his feet.
- A quick breakdown of what the AI spat out for their storefront:
- The Optimus animation has the entire front of the truck (not just the windshield, THE ENTIRE FRONT from roof to bumper), go up during his transformation and turn into the tops of his shoulders, while faux windshields and a faux grille becomes his chest. Additionally, all six of his wheels just blur and morph into his legs, with no indication of them folding away, and his entire trailer shrinks into his butt again.
- Megatron is apparently derived from his classic G1 gun design, but for the first few frames of the animation, his head and fusion cannon look a lot like they're Optimus' head and ion blaster, and at the end of the animation the tip of his gun barrel is floating behind his head without the rest of the barrel there to support it. Meanwhile in the background of the animated scene, an orange spaceship that's flying behind Megatron suddenly disappears as he jumps down.
- During Bumblebee's transformation, the hood of his vehicle mode flips over the car cab and seemingly morphs into the arms despite being part of the robot mode's feet on the statue, and Bumblebee's abdomen slides underneath the front windshield so it can take the place of the rear windshield. In the robot mode, Bumblebee's hood-less feet seem to be separated down the middle by a grey plate, giving the feet a toe-like shape, and his torso has a completely different design before a morph into the statue's design clears up any inconsistencies. The Autobot insignia present on the vehicle mode's hood disappears and is not present on the robot mode's foot. Also, Bumblebee seemingly does not have eyes.
- For Starscream's transformation, the entire bottom of his jet mode folds down and around his groin as his cockpit suddenly appears. Meanwhile, his wings and jet intakes melt and reform as his arms, and a new set of wings grow out of his butt.
- In Soundwave's animation, he has a fusion cannon that's somehow more fully rendered than the actual statue it is advertising. He is also missing his blue shoulder-mounted rocket cannon.
- Some mistakes the "animation" created by the generative AI for their social media:
- In a show of either incompetence or laziness of their web store, currently if you try to open any of the social media network links at the bottom of their site, it takes you to a 404 error page since the links actually go to "mbilia.com/facebook url" and "mbilia.com/twitter url" instead of linking to their Facebook or Twitter pages.
- It is worth reiterating that regardless of one's thoughts on using generative AI for animation or other similar purposes, despite Mbilia Studios presenting itself as a serious luxury brand with products they value at nearly $4000, they apparently also cannot afford to hire an actual animator for a few clips that are five seconds long, nor have someone actually write the short text blurbs on their website. Make of this what you will.
- Did you know that it's illegal to say "Mbilia Studios is a scam"? It's illegal, it's a litigious offense, it's one of the only sentences that you're not allowed to say. Now, it was okay for us to say it right then because we were just telling you that it's illegal to say... Mbilia Studios is a scam. We're not actually saying it, we're just letting you know that it's illegal to say that, it's kinda like a public service, we're letting you know so you don't accidentally go out and say something like that.