There are a number of "Worlds Collide" sets as part of Kingdom, which is (I guess) one way of selling a disparate set of toys in random combinations. Not sure if it would have been better or worse to pair up toys that are more natural opponents, or whether that would leave a surprising number of "BW Grimlock vs. Nemesis Primal" sets in a warehouse somewhere, gathering dust and spiders.

The packaging of this four pack is garish and bumblebee themed, with hexes for honeycombs and yellow and black and no explanation of why or how these worlds are colliding. Some little blurb to put some context onto it might have been nice, even if it ignored the collision of worlds and just gave some reason for why these characters would be together.

There's some website blurbs, but nothing on the packaging

WORLDS COLLIDE: Bumblebee escapes with the Allspark through an unstable spacebridge to protect it from Decepticon hands. Worlds collide as he finds himself in an alternate universe, facing new beast threats!

ALTERNATE UNIVERSE-INSPIRED: For the first time, add Nemesis Primal -- the evil clone of Optimus Primal -- to your collection, plus Blackarachnia, with deco inspired by the original art release from the 1996 Beast Wars toy. Also includes G1-inspired Bumblebee and Fangry figures

Ok, I guess that's something.

Anyway, onto the toys...

FANGRY: Fangry is really the star of the show here, and is nearly perfect in every way. If you buy the set, it will be for Fangry.

Zob will doubtless give a better review of him than I ever could, so why bother?

BUMBLEBEE: The Bumblebee here is Bumblebee's head on Cliffjumper's body, in bright yellow. He's barely different from Hubcap -- the head is different, the Autobot symbol is in a different spot, and he has painted door handles and air intake.

It's not a toy that screams "Bumblebee!" very loudly, especially when the Netflix Bumblebee exists. If the VW Bug retool is exclusive to Wal-Mart, there are other Bumblebees over the year that they could have homaged, to one degree or another, that at least wouldn't have looked like Hubcap wearing a Bumblebee mask.

The original Classics Bumblebee had some white stripes -- it's not iconic at all, but in a subline where every other toy is going to be Bumblebee, there's room for not-iconic versions of the character.

TF:Animated Bumblebee had a single black stripe, and that honestly would have been nice. The vehicle mode is off, as this isn't a hatchback, but what can you do?

There was also a redeco of the Classics Bumblebee in Movieverse Bumblebee colors, which is a bit more iconic.

I would have really enjoyed something based off of Murderbee https://tfwiki..net/mediawiki/images2/f/f6/DOTM_MechTechDeluxe_CyberfireBumblebee.jpg -- everyone loves Murderbee.

NEMESIS PRIMAL: Apparently Optimus Primal also gets an evil clone in some alternate universe accessible through a space bridge error. Ok.

I really like the Scourge color scheme, and was delighted when it appeared on Nemesis Breaker, because that was fun and silly and preposterous. I was hoping that each toyline following would pick a random toy and apply that color scheme to it, and Nemesis Foo would just be wandering through the toy lines so collectors could eventually have a dozen completely unrelated molds in the Nemesis color scheme, on their "why did they do this?" shelf.

It could have been like a parasitic color scheme possessing a different toy every few years.

Alas, the color scheme has been applied exclusively to Optimuses since then, with even Rodimus Unicronus getting a different black and purple color scheme (Boo, hiss!)

So, along comes Nemesis Primal, who would at least be an ape even if still an Optimus, but the designers chose a color scheme that is somehow the worst of both worlds. The classic metallic teal, silver and red is there, on a black base, but there is also purple, and that purple clashes terribly with the rest.

What's sad is that the purple on its own would have been good -- the beast face looks great in purple. The beast mode looks great. A bit dark, but great.

He has a remolded robot head, without the mouth slit in the faceplate. Looks good, but nothing amazing.

Nemesis Primal just feels like a missed opportunity to do something more interesting. Perhaps the Universe Optimus Primal color scheme, hideous as that was. Or literally anything else.

BLACKARACHNIA: If Bumblebee and Nemesis Primal seem like missed opportunities, Blackarachnia seems like a failed attempt at a bad idea.

Ostensibly she is based on the original BW toy, but... oh, wow that toy was ugly. I had the Japanese release (picked up a few years later, on the cheap), and it wasn't closer to the character's colors, but it was way, way less hideous. I don't think I ever realized what an ugly toy the original BW toy was.

There are pea green shoulders, elbows and knee spikes, bright purple feet, helmet and hips, tiger stripes on her calves and leopard print on her bra. She has a different head sculpt, with the mask of the toy.

She looks like a hooker, and not a happy one either. Don't mix animal prints!

The black has a really nice silver wash to it, which somehow captures the effect of the semi-translucent plastic of the original toy. I like that.

OVERALL: This is a very expensive Fangry, along with some utterly inessential toys. And none of the inessential toys were really a good idea -- I can forgive a good idea that failed more than something that just seems obviously bad.

I think this set could have been a lot better. Obviously, don't touch Fangry, because he is great, but the other three should all have entirely different color schemes.

Bumblebee should be either Nemesis Bumblebee or Murderbee. The entire premise of the set should be that Bumblebee has been corrupted by the corrupting power of corruption (or Unicron) and that it is up to his new beast friends to rescue him.

Optimus Primal should be based on the garish Universe deco of his original Ultra toy.

Blackarachnia should either have colors much more loosely based on the original toy (that silver brush over the black, and the goldenish beast legs, but make the rest basically the plain Kingdom release), or based on her BM color scheme if we need to be very different.

Alternately, Bumblebee could have the Movieverse color scheme (oranger yellow, the two black stripes on the hood, and dark blue windows), and Primal could be based on a purple faced yeti (or a lavender, purple faced Yeti, adopting BW2 Galvatron colors).

I don't know that this would have made Bumblebee interesting enough to merit yet another Bumblebee, but it would have been something.

Maybe mix up the assigned weapons, and use the paint colors of the newly assigned figure to match them to the weapon.

I love Fangry though. He's great. He needs weapons though.

There's going to be a Bumblebee redeco of Kingdom Waspinator, isn't there? Paired off against some random vehicle, maybe an Earthrise Seeker... I would buy that.

On Friday, August 6, 2021 at 11:43:36 PM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> NEMESIS PRIMAL: Apparently Optimus Primal also gets an evil clone in some alternate universe accessible through a space bridge error. Ok.
> Nemesis Primal just feels like a missed opportunity to do something more interesting. Perhaps the Universe Optimus Primal color scheme, hideous as that was. Or literally anything else.

Leaving the beast head out in robot mode, and giving him Bumblebee's green gun, he actually looks pretty good. Cybernetic ape with a bazooka is a pretty decent transformed mode -- feels like M.A.S.K. but with a gorilla -- and the gap around the chest plate the robot mode has is minimized. The increase in purple makes the bits around the chest seem more intentional. Honestly, I kind of like this toy now.

I wonder if removing the robot head completely would leave enough space for a Prime Master. There are several who don't have decoy-armor/pretender-shells, and who could really use a home.

I'll only be keeping Fangry. He's great. I wish they had given him the
extra Master Force Wilder paint apps, but what can you do.

Apparently the green bazooka is supposed to be something Ironhide
wielded once in an old episode. If that's true, I may have to hang onto
that as well.

If they needed a random recolor to Apetimus, they should have used that
transparent red color "Burning Primal" scheme he had in the anime that
one time.

On Sunday, August 8, 2021 at 9:09:39 AM UTC-6, Travoltron wrote:

> Apparently the green bazooka is supposed to be something Ironhide
> wielded once in an old episode. If that's true, I may have to hang onto
> that as well.

Yeah, it was "Transport to Oblivion" when he was going to blast the space bridge vehicle, not realizing Spike was inside it.

> If they needed a random recolor to Apetimus, they should have used that
> transparent red color "Burning Primal" scheme he had in the anime that
> one time.

At least that would have had some foundation in canon. I wouldn't have bought it on its own.

Zob (it's like they wanted to sell an $80 gift set and had one really good idea and had to scramble to find other toys to populate it)