Gaslands: The Bumblebee

 

Here we are, another Gaslands project made for therapeutic and practice purposes.

The base toy here is a Hot Wheels Volkswagon Beetle, specifically the one sold as the Transformers character Bumblebee. There's a few of these tie-ins knocking about, if very quick to sell out, but I am keeping an eye out for them at retail. Mine seems to have been a later gold variant, but features Bumblebee's face moulded on the underside. The car in general seems to be a pre-existing mould, and probably is the easiest time Mattel had with this little collaboration; Hasbro has had a much worse time historically licencing the car. Volkswagen is famously reluctant to be associated with war toys. Funny story: while beloved by stereotype hippies for its iconic cuddly appearance, the Beetle started out as a Nazi project that ended up in military use. Its like that one time the Pope turned out to have been in the Hitler Youth, but I digress. I suppose Volkswagen would prefer that people didn't bring this up, hence the Hasbro's difficulty in using the altmode at various points. Mattel doesn’t have that problem with Hot Wheels. The VW Beetle is of course bigger than Bumblebee, far bigger than Gaslands, and indeed bigger than Herby and Mad Max. Its a car I had to do eventually.

Anyways, I didn't have a specific plan going into this, and myself bedazzling the car. I have loads of adhesive gems and such for use as 28mm details, and after applying a few I opted for a studded roof type effect. Is this punk? I don't know, fashion is something that happens to other people. I also applied larger examples to the wheels as hubcaps. The gun meanwhile was a Bulldogs leftover, and sculpting work was relatively minor. Painting was achieved in much the same manner as my usual, but this time I dared to try yellow because of Bumblebee. A tan yellow, which looks a bit crap, but suitably so given the weathering.

There’s not a huge amount for me to say about this one, and I think I’m gonna need something more substantial to do soon. Mind you, it did come out quite well.