Geek Review: BumbleBee USB Flash Drive

As a kid, there was one thing that a Transformer toy had to do.

From the small little BumbleBee and Cosmos figures, to the massive Shockwave ones, the trick was in learning all the twists and turns, to transform the robot into something else, and back to the robot again.

While the same thrill remains these days, a part of me is now interested in owning Transformers collectibles, simply because they look great. It can be the older Diamond Select statues, the recent ones from Sideshow Collectibles or the upcoming ones from Hot Toys.

Their secret? They look more like the designs from the cartoon, anime and live-action movies and they are not made of cheap plastic.

The downside? Their sky-high prices.

In comes folks like infoThink, a Taiwanese accessory maker with their Transformers series of USB flash drives. If I am not mistaken, they are the folks behind the highly sought after Iron Man and Avengers flash drives and the quality of work is obvious.

Available in four designs, the Transformers series are not full robot designs and cannot transform. You get to choose from the heads of Optimus Prime and BumbleBee, or their arms. Each of the design comes in either 8GB or 16GB and infoThink does not sell direct to consumers either. You have to buy them from online retailers such as FantasyUSB.com.

FantasyUSB.com sent us a unit of the BumbleBee head one and here is the thing. I don’t know if I broke it, but if it’s broken, I love it more. And if it isn’t, the design is incredible.

The head itself is a well-crafted piece of plastic, adorned in the same black and yellow as the recent movie, Transformer: Age of Extinction. Granted, the movie version of BumbleBee has been tweaked in all of his four film outings and the one here is a spin on that. The design isn’t flat like the Mimobots USB either. The head is rounded and when you plug it in to a laptop, BumbleBee’s eyes light up in a blue hue.

And you must be thinking, if the head is rounded, it won’t fit into my laptop because the distance between the USB port and table that the laptop is sitting on does not have the space for a rounded head to fit in nicely.

On this point, there are no arguments, but if you pull on the USB bit on the flash drive, there is a release catch that allows the flash drive itself to be removed from the groove at the base of the head. The drive itself is still attached to the head, but the mechanism now allows for the drive to be rotated to the front.

What this means is that when you insert the flash drive into your laptop, the rotation now enables BumbleBee’s head to be rotated to face forward instead of just facing upwards. So yeah, I now have BumbleBee’s head resting on my laptop, as if he is resting his chin on my laptop.

Why do I say that it might be because of something I did? The literature does not mention this, and many of the online listings I have seen make no mention of this either. But given the larger than expected size of BumbleBee’s head, its positioning on the edge of my laptop was the first thing that crossed my mind, and this ability to rotate the USB drive solves that concern. The only thing is that the flash drive itself light up in blue, so when you rotate it, BumbleBee’s eyes no longer light up.

But either way, the resting position of BumbleBee’s head is also able to handle the thickness of the screen, so I can make it seem that BumbleBee is protecting the contest of my laptop when the screen is down.

Clearly, this flash drive is much more than meets the eye.

Final Verdict

There is nothing intrinsically unique about a USB flash drive and to be honest, none has ever reached that status. But the detailed of design of BumbleBee’s head is indication of work put into it, and the rotating design, which has not been highlighted a lot, means some thought has been put to making sure this device is user friendly.

Our review piece was provided by the good folks at FantasyUSB.com or check them out via their Facebook page if you prefer.