Mbilia Studios
Mbilia Studios is a "luxury collectible studio" allegedly based in Dubai (despite the business actually being registered in Singapore), allegedly specializing in pop culture merchandise for large media 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 ultra-expensive 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
Mbilia's statues are set to be limited to 100 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 $160 off one of their statues, letting customers pay just $3610 instead of $3800 before shipping and taxes. What a steal!
The quality of the designs of these figures 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, but when looking at it from the side, instead we see the thing is actually in two parts, with what would've been the shoulder stock actually be a second cylinder on his right shoulder, and the front of it 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 thighs are clipping through his hips.
Statues
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 figures... two options already on their own poll.
Notes
- 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 generative AI 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 transformations of these characters. Although the hallucinated elements should be obvious, here's a fun breakdown:
- The Optimus animation has the entire front of the truck, from windshield to grille 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, rather than disappear into the background.
- Megatron is apparently derived from his classic G1 gun design, but at the start of the animation, his head and fusion cannon looks 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.
- It's also worth reiterating that, regardless of one's thoughts on using generative AI for animation or other similar purposes, it simply cannot be overstated that Mbilia Studios is a presumably luxury brand (despite their complete lack of a track record) who is selling their products as art pieces for 3800 bones... But, apparently, it also cannot afford to hire an actual animator for a few second-long clips, or someone to actually write the short text blurbs on their website. Make of this what you will.
