Bumblebee (known as Bumble in Japan, Moscardo in Portugal, Űrdongó in Hungarian) is the "little brother" of the heroic Autobot faction, constantly striving to prove himself in the eyes of the taller, stronger robots that he respects - especially his leader, Optimus Prime. So strong is this admiration toward others, he takes risks that put him in danger. Although a bit of a wise-cracker, he is a capable and reliable messenger and spy, his small size allowing him to go places that his larger comrades cannot. He is highly fuel efficient, has great visual acuity, is particularly adaptable to undersea environments and transforms into a Volkswagen Beetle. He was later reconstructed in a stronger, more mature form as Goldbug.
Bumblebee is established as the smallest of the first year Autobots, but his actual size varies greatly in the various media, ranging from the same size as other Autobot cars to barely taller than a human. His only official height was in an early issue of the Marvel comics where it is stated he is 15 feet tall.
Bumblebee's primary function in the original Transformers animated series and comics was to serve as the "young" character with whom the youthful viewing audience could identify, and he would befriend the Autobots' primary human ally - the young son of the Witwicky family (Buster in the Marvel comic - see issue #1 - and Spike in the cartoon) - to this end, a concept that persists into the 2007 live-action film. Although a well-known character because of this, Bumblebee is quite unusual in that, unlike many other Transformers, his name has not been re-used and applied to unrelated characters throughout the ensuing twenty years of Transformers media, due to the loss of the trademark until recently. His role as the "young yellow character", however, has inspired other Transformers characters with the same role such as Cheetor and Hot Shot.
Marvel Comics
When the Autobots and Decepticon awakened on Earth in 1984, Bumblebee was part of the first team of Autobots sent out to investigate the planet. Eager to be the first to encounter a local life-form, Bumblebee unfortunately got his wish when he was injured in a battle with the Decepticons at a drive-in movie theater, and - stuck in car mode - was found by the young human, Buster Witwicky. Buster took him back to his family's automotive garage, where his father Sparkplug repaired the car, and was shocked when it transformed into a robot. Bumblebee arranged their first meeting with Optimus Prime, and his role as a "liaison" of sorts between the Autobots and humans continued as he participated in the first meetings with millionaire industrialist G. B. Blackrock, eventually leading to a deal between them that saw Blackrock supply the robots with fuel.
After some smaller roles showing new Autobot recruits around and searching for Decepticon activity, Bumblebee took the spotlight again when he came to question his usefulness to the Autobots, and abandoned them without explanation. Unfortunately, this occurred just as Decepticon leader Shockwave had targeted Bumblebee as the weakest link in the Autobots, planning to mind-control him and use him against his comrades. Taking refuge from Decepticon pursuit in a used car lot, Bumblebee was subsequently stolen by two teenagers, who took him on a joyride through the city. This attracted the attention of both Autobots and Decepticons, and after saving the teens from a Decepticon attack, Bumblebee himself was saved from them by the Autobots, convincing him of his worth to them.
When Bumblebee was assigned to watch over the launch of the mobile Power Station Alpha, also guarded by the daring special mission force G.I. Joe, a Decepticon attack prompted him to transform in order to save a civilian boy, only for the Joes to mistake him for a Decepticon and open fire, destroying him. Learning of their mistake and allying with the Autobots, the Joes set about trying to rebuild Bumblebee; with the aid of Autobot medic Ratchet, Bumblebee was reconstructed as Goldbug.
Charged with hunting down the petty criminal known as the Mechanic, who had stolen some Autobot equipment, Goldbug and Blaster opted instead to remove themselves from the tyrannical command of then-leader Grimlock. A run in with the Decepticon Triple Changers led to both robots becoming infected with the metal-eating disease known as the Scraplets, but with the help of human Charlie Fong and the Autobot Throttlebots, a cure was found in the form of water, and they were saved. Their respite was short-lived, however, when the group, low on fuel, was caught up to by the Protectobots, under Grimlock's command, and Blaster was captured. The abandoned, immobile Throttlebots, including Goldbug, were then captured by the government-sponsored Rapid Anti-robot Assault Team (RAAT), who intended their destruction. Sympathetic to their plight, RAAT operate Walter Barnett removed their brain components and installed them in toy cars while their bodies were destroyed.
After managing to escape the Predacons, Goldbug returned to the Autobots' volcano base, only to discover that the Ark had been restored and had blasted off. Blindsided by Decepticon leader Ratbat, Goldbug's toy body was blasted, but soon found by the Autobot Headmasters - freshly arrived from the planet Nebulos - who used their technology to construct his body for him again. The group soon learned that the brain patterns of Optimus Prime (who had died sometime before) had been preserved on computer disk by a human named Ethan Zachary, and Goldbug took the disk to Nebulos, where Prime was restored to life as a Powermaster.
Subsequently, Goldbug was among the Transformers who was deactivated while defending the Earth against the cosmically-powered Starscream. Bumblebee's body was seen among the deactivated Autobots Ratchet was doing his best to revive in Transformers #56, "Back from the Dead".
While Ratchet diligently worked to restore the deactivated Autobots to life, his attempts constantly met with failure. In the midst of his work, he was captured by believed-dead Decepticon leader Megatron, who demanded he rebuild Starscream as a Pretender. Ratchet succeeded in this task, but while Megatron left him unattended to observe Starscream's attack on Earth, he was able to use the prototype Pretender shells to restore to life Grimlock, Jazz and Goldbug, who he restored to being Bumblebee out of personal preference.
During a battle with the Decepticon Mayhem Attack Squad, Bumblebee, Jazz and Grimlock were transported to the center of Cybertron, where they discovered the slumbering form of their creator and deity, Primus. The battle that followed caused Primus to briefly awake with a scream, alerting his ancient enemy Unicron to his location. Aware that Unicron was now bearing down on Cybertron, the Autobots began a search for the Creation Matrix, the only force capable of stopping the chaos-bringer. Bumblebee, Jazz and Grimlock followed a lead to VsQz, third moon of the planet Cameron, where they ran afoul of both a monstrous creature created by the corrupted Matrix energy, and the mighty Decepticon Pretender, Thunderwing, who defeated them and claimed the Matrix for his own. They were later rescued by their fellow troops, and Thunderwing was defeated.
Bumblebee put in one further appearance in the U.S. Marvel comics. In a nightmare alternate universe where Unicron had destroyed Cybertron, and Galvatron and the Decepticons ruled Earth, Bumblebee was shown in flashback as one of the casualties of the Decepticon conquest, being killed by Scourge.
In the expanded universe of the Transformers comic published exclusively in the U.K., which reprinted the American series with new stories spliced in between, Bumblebee had a lead role in several other stories. In one, he went AWOL to track down and capture Ravage, in the process running into a Decepticon trap and needing rescuing. Later on, he was part of the Dinobot Hunt; on his own, he rescued three Autobot prisoners and disabled the Decepticon's means of mentally controlling Sludge.
As the U.K. series did not reprint G.I. Joe and the Transformers (in which the above account of Bumblebee's transformation into Goldbug occurred) until much later, a new story was penned that reimagined the change in a very different way, as part of the U.K.'s larger running time travel storyline. When the deranged future Decepticon leader Galvatron travelled back in time to 1987, the bounty hunter Death's Head pursued him. The mass-shifting inherent in the time-travel process caused the Autobot First Aid to be displaced to limbo when Death's Head arrived, which alerted Bumblebee to his presence. Wanting to keep the fact that he was in the past a secret, Death's Head blasted Bumblebee, completely destroying him, but his remains were soon happened upon by the Junkion, Wreck-Gar, also from the future. Putting his advanced mechanical skills to work, Wreck-Gar soon rebuilt Bumblebee as Goldbug and the upgraded Autobot joined in the battle against Galvatron, at one point facing him one-on-one (and losing) before Ultra Magnus intervened. Goldbug had a few additional adventures dealing with Galvatron's threat in other U.K.-exclusive stories.
After the time-and-space-shattering events of the Time Wars, the U.K. comic introduced an alternate timeline that chronicled the adventures of the Autobot Earthforce, a group of pro-active Autobots under Grimlock's command, who were dedicated to safeguarding Earth while Optimus Prime's contingent dealt with the threat of Unicron. Bumblebee was a member of the Earthforce, performing such notable missions as helping Ironhide stop the Decepticons' plan to rebuild Devastator as an individual being.
Animated series
Bumblebee holds the distinction of being the second-ever character to appear on-screen in the original Transformers animated series, while on a mission to recover a small clutch of energy conductors with Wheeljack, illustrating the energy crisis holding sway over their home planet of Cybertron. Bumblebee was subsequently among the Transformers aboard the Ark as it set off searching for new worlds and new energy sources, which crashed on Earth, causing the Transformers within to be trapped in stasis for four million years. Awakening in 1984, Bumblebee distinguished himself by helping Ironhide quell a raging river and using his small size to help Sparkplug Witwicky plant explosives in the midst of a Decepticon mining operation.
He later befriended Sparkplug's son Spike, but their first adventure together was not a pleasant one, as they were both kidnapped by the Decepticons, and Bumblebee was brainwashed into luring the other Autobots into a trap.
As a regular character throughout the show's first two seasons, spanning 1984-1985, Bumblebee's escapades were almost always carried out alongside Spike. His adventures have taken him back to Cybertron, to the prehistoric Dinobot Island, the sunken city of Sub-Atlantica, a world of alien giants, a debaucherous gambling asteroid locale and more. He has been scorched by acid rain, fought as a mindless gladiator, been mauled by a monstrous alien cat, quested for "robotic insecticide" and, in one of his most significant roles, was one of the few Autobots to survive a brainwashing scheme by the Decepticons, leaving it up to him to save his comrades.
In the episode 51, "Prime Target" the big game hunter Lord Cholmondeley captured a secret Soviet jet, leading to panic of possible war. Cholmondeley then set his sights on the ultimate trophy, the head of Optimus Prime. In order to lure Optimus in Cholmondeley captured Bumblebee and several other Autobots. Optimus Prime accepted Cholmondeley's challenge and defeated the big game hunter and freed the Autobots.
In the episode 59, "Trans-Europe Express" a charity auto race from Paris France to Istanbul Turkey was held. The Autobots Bluestreak, Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Smokescreen, Sunstreaker, Tracks and Wheeljack participated along side several human racers including Augie Canay. Meanwhile Megatron had been able to discover the whereabouts of the Pearl of Bahudine, the power core of a Cybertronian weather control machine. Megatron had the Stunticons eliminate the Autobots from the race while stealing Augie's car to use its experimental engine's metal to make a control device for the pearl. Bluestreak, Tracks, Bumblebee and Augie were able to stop the Decepticons by unleashing the power of the pearl, but to stop the pearl Bumblebee had to destroy it. Augie had the gold shell of the pearl sold and the money given to charity when he learned the race was a fake set up by the Decepticons merely to get his car.
By the time of The Transformers: The Movie, set in the Earth year 2005, the Autobots had been forced off of Cybertron, and Bumblebee and Spike manned Moonbase Two on one of the planet's satellites as the Autobots prepared a strike to take back the planet. The attack was scuppered by the sudden appearance of the giant planet-eating robot Unicron, who consumed Moonbase One as Spike and Bumblebee looked on in horror. As Unicron turned on their moon, the pair set a cache of explosives to detonate in his maw and abandoned the base in a small shuttle, but the detonation failed to even scratch the chaos-bringer and he inhaled their ship. Deep in his digestive system, the pair were trapped on a conveyor that would drop them in an acid vat, but they were saved by Spike's son Daniel, and they and the other Autobots escaped Unicron's body as it was destroyed through the power of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership.
Bumblebee was one of the few characters from the beginning of the series to continue appearing in the show's third season, set in 2006, where he could regularly be found performing duties in Autobot City on Earth. He and Spike were reunited for an old-school adventure when the ghost of Starscream invaded the city in order to steal the eyes of the giant Autobot Metroplex, but they were unable to stop the villain from accomplishing his task.
When the body of the deceased Optimus Prime was recovered from space by a pair of Transformer-hating human scientists who intended to use it to lure the Autobots into a trap, Bumblebee was part of the rescue team lead by Rodimus Prime to recover it. Entering the lab, some of the Transformers were exposed to rage-inducing alien spores that caused them to run wild, and although Bumblebee avoided infection, he was seriously damaged by the rampaging Superion. A member of the alien race called the Quintessons subsequently repaired and restored Optimus Prime to life in order to stop the "Hate Plague", and also worked his technical wizardry on Bumblebee. The little Autobot had been so severely damaged, however, that he required an entire reconstruction. In his new, shiny body, he commented that he had gone beyond just being Bumblebee, and was now a "gold bug", prompting Optimus Prime to redub him "Goldbug." As Goldbug, Bumblebee traveled with Optimus Prime to the planet of Chaar in order to secure a heat resistant alloy that could protect him from the plague, only to be infected on the mission and later cured when Prime used the power of the Matrix to purge the plague.
Goldbug also enjoyed a brief appearance in the fourth and final season of the series, defending Autobot City and Cybertron against a massive Decepticon attack. Because of a scene showing Bumblebee instead of Goldbug, it still makes him one of only nine characters to appear in all four seasons of the show.
After the animated series ended in the U.S. Bumblebee appeared in animated form in the commercial for the Classic Pretenders.
Bumblebee made a cameo in the pilot of the Transformers: Animated series on a historical video being viewed by Optimus Prime. This historical video was stock footage from the original animated series.
He made several further appearances in the Japanese-exclusive series, Transformers: The Headmasters, which supplanted the fourth American series, and appeared to die while attempting to stop a metal-warping meteor from crashing into Cybertron, only to turn up alive and healthy later on in the series. The role of a young human and small Autobot friend in this series was taken over by Daniel and Wheelie.
Books
Bumblebee was featured in the 1985 audio and book adventure Satellite of Doom.
Bumblebee appeared in the 1986 story and coloring book The Lost Treasure of Cybertron by Marvel Books.
Dreamwave Productions
When Dreamwave Productions introduced their re-imagined version of Generation 1 continuity for the 21st Century, Bumblebee was present for the Autobots' new adventures once again. The War Within, set in Cybertron's past, chronicled Bumblebee's early adventures in the Battle of Altihex and the defense of Iacon in the face of an attack by Shockwave.
When Optimus Prime and Megatron vanished in an early spacebridge experiment, causing the Autobots and Decepticons to splinter into smaller factions, Bumblebee remained with the Autobots under Prowl's command.
As ever, Bumblebee was among the Transformers trapped in stasis aboard the crashed Ark who was reactivated on Earth in 1984. Although not depicted in fiction, the general events of the television series pilot seemed to take place in the Dreamwave continuity - with Bumblebee meeting and befriending Spike Witwicky.
The war on Earth ended in 1999, however, when the Autobots successfully defeated the Decepticons and attempted to transport them back to Cybertron aboard the Ark II. Thanks to sabotage orchestrated by American military general Robert Hallo, however, the Ark II exploded after exiting orbit, and the Transformers fell back to Earth. Hallo's plan to take control of them was foiled by his former partner Adam Rook, who rounded up several deactivated Transformers, Bumblebee among them, and put them under his control, intending to sell them on the black market as weapons of mass destruction. During the auctions, Bumblebee was among the Transformers sent to attack the Smitco Oil Refinery as a demonstration of their power. Megatron liberated himself from Rook's control and soon did the same to the other Decepticons, who took some pleasure in dismantling Bumblebee and the other Mini-Bots. Rescued by their reactivated Autobot comrades, Bumblebee and co. were soon hale and hearty again and dispatched to stop Megatron's plan to cyber-form the Earth with a metallic virus.
A year later, Shockwave arrived on Earth, having successfully unified Cybertron and intending to arrest Prime and Megatron's forces as war criminals. Bumblebee was among the Transformers captured by Shockwave, and was later part of the team who joined the underground Autobot resistance on Cybertron.
Following the liberation of Cybertron from Shockwave’s rule, Bumblebee was assigned to help reinforce Jazz’s team on Earth and was placed in command of the Autobot supply shuttle Orion, with a team under his command for the first time. Upon arriving in the Earth system from transwarp space, they witnessed the arrival of the deranged clone of Starscream, Sunstorm. When the resultant conflict with Sunstorm caused most of the Autobots and Decepticons on Earth to knocked out of commission, Bumblebee and Jetfire tracked the madman to beneath the Earth's surface, where Bumblebee was knocked out and saved by begrudging Starscream. Jetfire subsequently seemed to die battling Sunstorm, shaking Bumblebee's resolve so badly that he decided to leave the Autobots.
Turning to Spike for advice, the pair went on a drive in Cincinnati, where they debated responsibility and saved a woman from some muggers. Bumblebee apparently remained unconvinced, but Dreamwave's subsequently bankruptcy and closure left his story unfinished. The profile series, More Than Meets the Eye, featured entries for Bumblebee as both a Pretender and as Goldbug, but gave no in-story reason for his upgrades to these forms and they never appeared in the fiction of the series.
In the alternate Dreamwave Transformers/G.I. Joe storyline set in World War II, Bumblebee was formatted to turn into a motorcycle with sidecar.
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