California man creates life size Bumblebee Transformer in front yard.

This story is a couple months old but I couldn’t find a whole lot of information about it on the web so I thought I would re-share it with you. A Lemoore man decided he liked the Transformers so much that he built a life size replica of the cartoon version of Bumblebee in his front yard.

“I’ve always been a fan of the Transformers,” Tom Rhoads Rhoads stated to the crew at mim. “And when my son was born I decided to make the statue.”

The statue stands at 18 feet tall and built from a used Volkswagen, yes that’s right a used Volkswagen, in this economy who can afford to chop up a new Camaro and besides some of us liked the cartoon characters better!

The statue took him and a friend a year to build in their spare time:

“Sometimes it seemed as if we would never get through it, all the parts spread out, but then it just came together.”

A crane had to hoist the 1200 lb robot onto its feet after the welding was completed. Its legs are made of steel and angle iron to keep it secure.

If you asked me, he should have killed two birds with one stone (sorry PETA) and made the gun in its hand be Megatron. We all know he was a lame gun in the cartoon version, right?

Stay tuned, as Tom’s next project is the semi truck in the back. I wonder what he has planned for that…..