Bumblebee

Bumblebee is the smallest and physically weakest of the original Autobots, and the show is unusually honest about what that costs him. He is self-conscious about his size and openly craves the respect of larger warriors, without registering that he already has it. His compensation is access: he is the Autobot the humans meet first and trust most, and his friendship with Spike Witwicky, formed almost immediately after the 1984 reawakening, is the spine of the cartoon's human subplot for three seasons.

Operationally he is a scout, a messenger and a spy rather than a soldier, chosen for jobs where being small and fuel-efficient beats being strong. That role puts him in some of the series' odder set pieces: in "Microbots" he is shrunk along with Brawn and Perceptor and injected into Megatron's body to retrieve the Heart of Cybertron, and in "Sea Change" he is captured off-world by Megatron's forces and has to be dug out by the Tlalakans. He also absorbs a lot of the show's emotional labour. In "Autobot Spike" he refuses further repairs on his own damaged body to go looking for Spike after the boy's mind is transferred into Autobot X and he runs off to join the Decepticons.

His flaw is the flip side of his eagerness: he volunteers into situations he cannot fight his way out of, and he is a soft target. In "The Immobilizer" Ravage plants a micro-bug on him during an errand into town, which is how the Decepticons learn about and steal Wheeljack's weapon. He is a liability precisely because everyone, including the enemy, knows where to find him.

Espionage, reconnaissance and courier work; he is the most fuel-efficient Autobot, which lets him operate far longer and further than the Autobot cars, and his Volkswagen alternate mode makes him inconspicuous among humans. He is a competent driver and a capable underwater operator. Limits are severe and stated outright: near the bottom of the roster for strength and firepower, he loses any straight fight he is forced into, is easily captured, and his small frame makes him vulnerable to damage that other Autobots would shrug off.

• Spike Witwicky: his closest friend and the show's main human anchor, a partnership that runs from 1984 into Spike's adulthood.
• Optimus Prime: the leader he looks up to and, in "The Return of Optimus Prime", who names his rebuilt Goldbug form.
• Daniel Witwicky: Spike's son, who saves Bumblebee, Spike, Jazz and Cliffjumper from an acid pit inside Unicron in the 1986 film.
• Megatron: exploits his size and trust repeatedly, most cynically when conning the Autobot X-bodied Spike in "Autobot Spike".

In the Marvel comics his human friend is Buster Witwicky, not Spike, and his rebuild into Goldbug happens much earlier and far more violently - he is destroyed outright and reconstructed. Marvel then destroys him again during Starscream's Underbase rampage and has Ratchet rebuild him as a Pretender, deliberately restoring the Bumblebee form rather than Goldbug.

One of the few original Autobots to survive the 1986 film, escaping Unicron's interior and serving through season three. Badly damaged during the Hate Plague outbreak in 2006, he is rebuilt as Goldbug and lives to see the next Cybertronian Golden Age.

• The toy came from Takara's pre-Transformers Micro Change line, a penny-racer-proportioned Volkswagen Type 1, and was the only 1984 Mini-Vehicle to stay in the assortment for all three of its years.
• Bumblebee was produced in both yellow and red through 1984-85 (as was Cliffjumper); former Hasbro R&D VP George Dunsay said the recolours existed to 'make the line look bigger'.
• Marvel writer Denny O'Neil's original name for the character was 'Goldbug'. Editor-in-chief Jim Shooter rejected it, so Bob Budiansky chose 'Bumblebee' for the toy's yellow-and-black deco - then reused the discarded name for his 1987 upgrade.
• The cartoon and the Marvel comic coloured him differently on purpose: the cartoon gave him grey limbs, yellow forearms and a white face, the comic gave him blue limbs, yellow shins and a yellow face.
• Volkswagen withheld a Beetle licence from Transformers for decades; Takara Tomy finally secured one for Masterpiece MP-21 in 2014, with Hasbro releasing the same figure in 2016.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• His principal human friend is Spike in the cartoon and Buster in the Marvel comics.
• The circumstances of the Goldbug rebuild differ completely: Hate Plague damage in the cartoon, versus outright destruction attributed variously to G.I. Joe or Death's Head in the comics.
• Marvel later restored him to the Bumblebee name and form, while the cartoon leaves him as Goldbug.