Curator, American Collection

If you've visited The Children's Museum of Indianapolis in the past couple week you've probably met our newest addition. The 17-foot, 2,000-pound movie prop from the 2007 Transformers movie is made of 300 fiberglass parts cast from 200 custom molds. It took three sculptors and four mold makers to make the fiberglass parts, plus three sculptors to build Bumblee’s frame. In just three months, the talented folks at FXperts, Inc. took an idea and created a superstar.

Bumblebee was specifically requested by the film’s director, Michael Bay, so that a full-size Transformer could be used in filming. Bumblebee was used prominently in all the critical scenes of the movie, and he has become one of the most popular and beloved Transformers.

Parents may remember Bumblebee a little differently from the comic books and cartoons of the 1980s and ‘90s. For the movie, Bay made the decision, in consultation with toymaker Hasbro, to update Bumblebee into a “cool car”—a Chevy Camaro rather than the Volkswagen Beetle that was so popular in the early 1980s.

Now residing in the Welcome Center at The ChIldren’s Museum of Indianapolis, Bumblebee sits atop a rotating platform and arrived just in time to greet all of our visitors taking spring break vacations.

Check out this time lapse video of the assembly of Bumblebee.