We have yet to see official renders of this toy from Hasbro, but one or more factory production samples were evidently stolen, and now there are pictures:

https://tformers.com/bombshell-deluxe-more-inhand-images-from-transformers-legacy-evolution/49972/news.html

I feel like with each new Insecticon, we get a little farther away from what I want to see in these toys. Now, Bombshell is a favorite character of mine, so I guess that means I'm especially picky about how he looks. This version is decent, but it's not phenomenal.

For one, he's a partial retool of Shrapnel, using the same robot legs and, as a result, at least some of the same transformation and same insect body. Now, this isn't a *huge* deal, as the G1 Bombshell toy actually had horrible legs that bent the wrong way and were hollow on the front, which is the worst place to be hollow. So, even Shrapnel legs are better than what he had before. But, the recycling does bother me a bit. Even if they had committed to an entirely new mold, you know they would have been able to amortize both the Shrapnel and Bombshell molds easily enough when they gave us Chop Shop and Venom (or whoever Bombshell ends up getting reused as; O guess it could be Barrage).

Also, I had hoped they were going to work some mini-Masterpiece magic with the stinger on his head. It shrinks down to impossible proportions for robot mode in the cartoon, so I'd sort of been hoping maybe he would have had a secondary stinger on his head (the entire head could be tucked in the robot chest or something) and the insect-mode stinger would have ended up folded behind his back or something. Sort of like what they did with Wreck-Gar's head. But, alas, that was not to be. He's designed more like the G1 toy, with that massive stinger for insect mode actually ending up on his robot head. He wears an absurdly large hat.

Finally, in the cartoon, Bombshell's upper body is grey in robot mode, but it switches to purple for insect mode. This is likely because somebody was using an unpainted toy for color reference, and their robot-mode sample had some bare die-cast metal. I had hoped they would have done something like make the top half of the toy grey and the bottom half purple, and swap orientation when he transforms. But, they didn't do this, and just kept the purple. That's fine, because this is the way the G1 toy looked, it's the way he looked in Marvel Comics, and I'm sure it's the way he was *intended* to look in the cartoon, were it not for a color model mistake. I'm not broken up about it.

I'm still excited about the toy. Can't wait for him to come out.

Zob (I'll be buying a quantity of them, like around four, I suspect)

On Wednesday, June 7, 2023 at 5:57:57 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:

> I'm still excited about the toy. Can't wait for him to come out.

Reaction to this one online seems to be pretty mixed. Unfortunately I have to say that I'm in the disappointed camp. That "hat" he ends up having to wear in robot mode looks ridiculous, and you can clearly see the sides of his robot head in bug mode. I've seen people say that maybe the one in the pictures is mis-transformed, but it doesn't look it to me.

I would have also preferred the gray chest, but I can see why they went with purple.

I still haven't found Shrapnel, so not completing the trio might be a moot point for me anyway. How did he end up so rare? He's hard to find even online for a good price.

On Wednesday, June 7, 2023 at 10:57:44 PM UTC-6, Sky Raider wrote:

> Reaction to this one online seems to be pretty mixed. Unfortunately I have to say that I'm in the disappointed camp. That "hat" he ends up having to wear in robot mode looks ridiculous, and you can clearly see the sides of his robot head in bug mode. I've seen people say that maybe the one in the pictures is mis-transformed, but it doesn't look it to me.

Yeah, the visible robot head is honestly kind of unacceptable. Obviously they wanted to make his head large enough to be properly scaled in robot mode, since the G1 toy had a tiny head that was easier to hide. But, it really feels like they phoned this one in. I have been singing Hasbro's praises pretty much without exception since Siege began, but Bombshell strikes me as low effort. They really should have done better.

I guess we''ll have to wait for Takara to work their magic and give us Masterpiece Insecticons before we get all the little transformation tricks and things that I really want to see for these characters.

> I still haven't found Shrapnel, so not completing the trio might be a moot point for me anyway. How did he end up so rare? He's hard to find even online for a good price.

Shrapnel was widely available for pre-order from a number of online vendors (Hasbro Pulse, Amazon, BBTS) back in January, but I guess that supply has since dried up. I'm sure there must be a non-zero amount of fans buying multiples so they can have an Insecticon clone army. My brick-and-mortar Walmart just barely received a case of the Shrapnel wave, so it's possible they're finally trickling out to retailers. Distribution is still borked six ways from Sunday, and I find myself buying about 95% of my toys online now. Once in a blue moon, I'll find something at retail I need, but it's so rare now.

Zob (saw some Origins Jazz toys at Target today, but somebody LeBron James'd them and every one of them was missing his chest piece)