Friday Throwdown! Bumblebee vs. 2010 Camaro!

Nearly two years ago, 24’s Jack Bauer narrowly edged out Lost’s Jack Shephard in Pop Culture A.D.D.’s last installment of Friday Throwdown. Unfortunately, young Dr. Shephard didn’t take the news very well.

However, since nearly random fictional characters from different realms of the world of pop culture aren’t going to fight each other on their own, Friday Throwdown is back! Thankfully, the convenience of the internet makes getting back up and running as easy as remembering a few passwords and finding renewed inspiration… none of that awkward strapping illegal VHF transmitters to your Mom’s Jeep ala Christian Slater in Pump Up The Volume for me.

In the coming months, you’re going to be hearing a lot about three things:

1) The economy. (Won’t somebody think of the children!?)
2) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
3) The 2010 Chevrolet Camaro.

Since I’m not an economist – my only investments are in comic books, home electronics, Belgian beer, and pumpkin futures – let’s keep the focus on the things I do know about. Specifically, let’s focus on my favourite Autobot, Bumblebee, and his disguise, the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, a car I shamefully admit to pining for despite my lack of mullets and RATT: Out of the Cellar CDs. (Geek Sidebar: Just so we’re clear, Bumblebee qualifies as my favourite Autobot because Dinobots aren’t technically Autobots.)

Before we ring the bell, let’s introduce our (quite literally) heavyweights:

The Autobot’s Bumblebee!



The 2010 Chevrolet Camaro!



In pitting a fictional robot based on a line of Japanese-turned-Hasbro toys against an actual car most well known for providing teenagers with a place to lose their virginities, Pop Culture A.D.D. declares this the geekiest Throwdown yet! Let’s get it on!

Birthplaces:

Bumblebee hails from Cybertron and was given life by the Allspark.

The 2010 Chevrolet Camaro hails from G.M.’s Oshawa Car Assembly manufacturing plant in Ontario, Canada and was given life by the fightin’ men and women of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), Local 222.

Advantage: Camaro. (*Fist-bump for my fellow Ontarians*)

First Appearances:

Bumblebee raced his way into your humble author’s heart via three-pronged attack in 1984. Seriously, Hasbro pulled some Machiavellian shit to ensure I spent every spare cent of my allowance and whatever money I could get my parents to spend on Bumblebee and the Transformers. There was the line of toys. There was the comic book. There was the cartoon (which, when combined with G.I. Joe, made the best hour of television mankind has ever known). I had no chance.

Released on September 29th, 1966, for the 1967 model year, the first Chevrolet Camaro was designed as a competitor for the Ford Mustang and fanned the flames of the Chevrolet-Ford rivalry, which eventually led to stickers of Calvin peeing on a Chevy bowtie or Ford oval. Simply hilarious.

Advantage: Bumblebee. (Thanks for keeping it classy, Chevy and Ford fans.)

Rebirths:

In the 2007 Michael Bay version of Transformers, Bumblebee first befriends Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky while in the form of a rusted 1976 Camaro. Later, Megan Fox’s Mikaela Banes mocks Bumblebee for being a “piece of crap Camaro”. Ouch. That shit was cold. Apparently a sucker for hot chicks, Bumblebee cues the soundtrack from Kill Bill and rocks the form of the 2006 Camaro concept. Well done, G.M. product placement specialists, well done.

The fourth-generation Camaro died a somewhat inglorious death in 2002 and left a pretty ugly corpse behind. The Ford Mustang had finally prevailed in its decades-long quest to be the car of choice for rental car agencies and douche bags from coast to coast. However, like a phoenix from lame ashes, the Camaro was reborn with the 2006 concept and the first production models starting to roll off the line in March, 2009.

Advantage: Bumblebee. (Was the Kill Bill-inspired use of “Battle Without Honor and Humanity” cheesey? Yes. Was it also awesome? Fuck yes.)

Abilities:

Over the years, Bumblebee has rocked a lot of different looks and shown the ability to do more than just be rendered functionally mute in movies filled with slow-motion helicopters and waving American flags. Cartoon Bumblebee seems to have had an amazingly full, exciting life for being a reconnaissance officer and smallest of the Autobots. Take it away, Wikipedia: “[Bumblebee’s] 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.”

Unlike the previous Camaro or pony cars in general, the 2010 Camaro boasts some pretty modern technology. For the base model, G.M. wisely created a Frankenstein’s monster of a car, using the engine from the Cadillac CTS, the suspension from the Pontiac G8, the Zeta platform from Holden in Australia and styling from 1967. Most surprising, it boasts an EPA highway fuel-economy rating of 29 mpg. So yeah, for $22,995 U.S. or 27,000 loonies, you can drive a car that looks like Bumblebee, rips off 5.9 second 0-60 mph runs and gets better fuel economy than a freakin’ Toyota Camry. Suck it, Mustang.

Advantage: Bumblebee. (I swear “debaucherous” isn’t a word, but used in reference to a “gambling asteroid” visited by a cartoon robot, it somehow seems apt. Apt, I say!)

Ability to Pick up Chicks and / or Dudes:

In the movies, Bumblebee helped a dorky kid land an ultra-hot model-turned-actress-turned-mechanic-with-a-heart-of-gold. Sadly, the world of Michael Bay is as far removed from the real world as McDonald’s is from a three-Michelin-star restaurant. In the real world, you can’t actually have a transforming alien robot car with a soft spot for leggy brunettes. In the real world, your encyclopedic knowledge of Bumblebee is something you do not tell a girl ‘til AFTER you are married, and even then, it may be cause for divorce.

Without a doubt, the real Camaro will be more of a help picking up chicks (or dudes, if you’re a lady or just a fella who likes dudes) than the fictitious Bumblebee. However, the caliber of chick or dude you attract with a Camaro might not be the type of person you bring home to meet your Mom. That being said, Pop Culture A.D.D. strongly suggests you cover your stick-shift before getting’ busy in a Camaro.

Advantage: Camaro. (Geek Sidebar: If, in real life, you do befriend an alien robot car, at the end of your first adventure together, try your best NOT to make out with your sweaty girlfriend on top of your new robot friend while all his robot friends watch. It’s just, you know, rude.)

Final Scorecard:

Bumblebee: 3

Camaro: 2

Sorry, Camaro. We still have an embarrassing amount of love for you here… just don’t go getting all drunk and beardy on us, like Jack Shephard did.

Congrats, Bumblebee! Now why don’t you go ahead and rub it in the only way robots know how… by dancing!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42tXAzlsH5Y)