by Ian O'Neill

This kit is patterned after the Bumblebee Transformer in his Cybertron mode seen in the beginning of the first TV episode in the US. I grew up watching Transformers every day before going to school. While not my particularly favorite character, there are few Transformers model kits for me to make.

This model is a Hyper Transformation Model-01 made by JD Productions. It is supposed to be able to transform, but I gave up on that idea as I started fitting the parts together and realized it was not possible with the kit I had. I chose robot mode as I like robots better than spaceships. There is a paint bottle in the pictures to give the scale of the kit. Most of the joints do not hold well(or in the case of the neck too well; it broke off when I tried to move the head), so they are glued into place, save for the neck which after a small pinning repair is slightly maneuverable as seen in the pictures a bit. I tried to get a 'Hooray!' pose that I thought captured Bumblebee's youthful character. It is painted with Vallejo Model Color paints over either white or black primer depending on the final color. There is some highlighting on the black parts and paneling done on the yellow. The 'white' face was done in a light grey as I hate painting pure white.

Honestly, I must say this is not a very good execution of this kit. From design to casting, there were many flaws. First, there are many ball-and-socket joints. While this allows freedom of movement, this style of joints relies on friction from a very precise fit. Further, the kit design called for 'popping' the balls into the sockets. The casting allowed for this a bit as the material used was of a softer variety, though this also means there are sections that should be rigid, such as longer beams to the balls of the joints, which are too soft. Second, the casting left much to be desired. I had to sculpt out a majority of the inner main body to fit parts. Moreover, there were many misaligned castings of parts. For a tiny kit requiring precise fittings, a misalignment of a millimeter is too much. There were also several 'critical' bubbles where screws were to be screwed in and on edges to be joined. Last was the choice of screws for the body joints. There was no way to get one in straight as both sides were blocked in by the part for the screw mount.

With all these complaints, you'd be surprised that I'd like another of these kits, so I can model up the vehicle mode as a nontransformable version.

Image: Left side

Image: Back

Image: Right

Image: Top view