Buzzworthy Bumblebee
Buzzworthy Bumblebee is a cross-toyline subline imprint focussing on various incarnations of everybody's favourite yellow Autobot, Bumblebee. Toys from this line began appearing both in stock at online retailers and on store shelves in late 2020 and early 2021, evidently before Hasbro had the opportunity to officially announce any of them.
With vibrant yellow packaging like the previous Transformers: Bumblebee toyline, and package art prominently featuring Evergreen Bumblebee, Buzzworthy Bumblebee centers around versions of Bumblebee from across the brand's history, as well as his human allies and Cybertronian foes.
The line is exclusive to Target in the United States, and Toys"R"Us in Canada.
Toys
Owing to the... unsystematic layout of the Buzzworthy Bumblebee line, as well as its lack of any advance notice in terms of release schedule, we've elected to delineate this page into what toylines each figure (or multi-pack) supplements. The alternative would be to try and force a structure onto something that plainly doesn't have one, and that way lies madness.
War for Cybertron Trilogy
The War for Cybertron Trilogy portion of Buzzworthy Bumblebee features the majority of the subline's new tooling, including two all-new molds: a diminutive Core Class Bumblebee (retailing for five (or more) bucks more than the regular Core Class, owing to an included Spike Witwicky mini-figure), and a Deluxe Class "Origin Bumblebee", representing the character's Cybertronian mode from "More than Meets the Eye, Part 1" for the first time in toy form. A "Worlds Collide" multi-pack also falls under this banner, and its selection of characters, combined with the volcanic environment depicted on Core Class Bumblebee's card art, more specifically tie these toys to the concurrent War for Cybertron: Kingdom subline in all but name.
Core Class
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Deluxe Class
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Multi-packs
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Studio Series
Tying into Studio Series, this assortment copies that line's packaging design – including the cardboard diorama backdrops – but replaces Studio's ubiquitous red design elements with a friendly yellow. The first (only?) assortment consists of figures mostly redecoed and/or retooled from previous Studio Series releases, with each toy gaining a "BB" as part of its ID number to differentiate it from its mainline release. The 74BB Revenge of the Fallen Bumblebee actually ended up coming out earlier than its "regular" counterpart. 2021 saw the addition of "Battle Packs", comprising of new backdrops and re-releases (or minor redecoes?) of older Studio Series toys, even those from three years prior! Much like 74BB, these VS packs feature a Studio Series toy prior to its main-line release, albeit this simply is a re-release of a Tribute toy.
Deluxe Class (2020)
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Battle Packs (2021)
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Cyberverse
Buzzworthy Bumblebee mostly goes for re-releases to represent the Cyberverse corner of the franchise, with the only exception so far being "Spark Armor" Bumblebee's smaller partner, a redecoed version of Grimlock's partner Trash Crash. In addition to the Spark Armor assortment, this segment of the toyline also includes a boxed set of four repacked Warrior Class figures – the packaging for which doesn't actually say "Cyberverse" anywhere, but we've put the set here for convenience.
| Spark Armor (2020) | Multi-packs
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Robots in Disguise
Apparently leaving no stone unturned, Buzzworthy Bumblebee reaches into the 2015 Robots in Disguise toyline and brings back some Crash Combiners, now rechristened as "Crash & Combine" toys. These partially automorphing toys curiously make use of "evergreen" designs for each individual character art – though the combiner identities are rendered in the characteristic Robots in Disguise art style. We've elected to keep things simple and put them on the Robots in Disguise characters' pages.
| Crash & Combine (2021) |
Larger toys
Buzzworthy also features a couple of re-releases of two of Bumblebee's bigger toys for smaller hands from outside of the "Generations" branding, including the surprise return of Age of Extinction's Robots in Disguise line Mega 1-Step Bumblebee, as well as a second showing for Bumblebee's Power Charge Bumblebee. Each toy features the logo and iconography of its respective movie.
Age of Extinction
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Bumblebee
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Notes
- The "Worlds Collide" multi-pack made headlines for suddenly appearing at a Walmart store in the U.S., rather than the line's exclusive retailer, Target. Similarly, the two Crash & Combine sets popped up at a Toys"R"Us in Canada before any American sighting.
