(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to the original RID2015 1-step Bumblebee toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the original RID2015 1-step Bumblebee here.)

    What's this? A Bumblebee mold without a reverse-colors redeco?! Well, we can't have that! For this version of "Night Ops" Bumblebee, again the colors have been reversed, but the paint apps have been switched around too. In vehicle mode the yellow is mostly limited to a long stripe down the sides which enlarges to the back side points, which are still made of yellow plastic. (It should be mentioned here that the yellow plastic is a just a bit more "orangey" than the strictly yellow paint, so the stripe is a bit "mismatched" as it goes back. It's a bit unfortunate, the disconnect, though the yellow isn't quite as "orangey" as on many Movie 'Bee toys.) Beyond the stripe, there's also the three diagonal bits on each side of the front hood painted yellow (no stripes this time). The windows are painted silver (EXCEPT for the rear window, sadly), and the front headlights are a really nice moderately light blue that pops VERY well against the black. I really wish this color was used more. In robot mode a bit more of the yellow plastic pokes through on the head and upper arms, but the yellow and black placement is a bit more... "haphazard" in this mode, more like a side-effect of how it's spread out in vehicle mode than with any real thought of how it would look in this mode. There's only a little bit of paint on the robot mode, for one-- black on the front of the lower arms, silver and blue on the face, and a bit of yellow on the upper legs. All of the other paint in this mode is from the vehicle mode. This leads to too much black on the bottom half, a bit too much yellow on the top half, and broken, fragmented yellow stripes on the sides because of the transformation. Because of this, the placement of the aforementioned paint apps in this mode is mind-boggling-- paint the lower arms black, but not the faux tires on the shoulders? No yellow paint on all those details on the lower legs, but highlight those drastically under-sized upper legs with that paint? So many weird choices...
    No mold changes have been made to 1-Step Night Ops Bumblebee.
    I do like the 1-step version of Night Ops Bumblebee over the original 1-step version of this mold, as for me the "reverse" color scheme on 'Bee looks better pretty much without exception. However, though the vehicle mode largely looks pretty nice, the breakup of the colors in robot mode is kinda weird-- and there's the whole "awful mold" thing, too. If you want a RID2015 Night Ops 'Bee, I'd get... pretty much any other version of him in that color scheme.
 

Review by Beastbot

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