This small Texas town has a giant Transformers statue of Bumblebee made of car parts from China – Houston Chronicle
In the rural community of Elmo, Texas, crowds gather daily in a gas station parking lot to greet a visitor from another world.
There, a giant but intricate statue of Bumblebee, a taxi yellow robot from the Transformers science fiction franchise, stands on a cement plinth. The 25-foot tall statue watches travelers passing the newly opened Bee Mart, 40 miles west of Dallas, which bills itself as the “world’s first” Bumblebee-themed gas station and convenience store.
The landmark arrived in Elmo after four years of construction and shipping across the world. It was designed and created out of car parts by metal fabricators in China, reported local news site inForney.
Earlier this month, photos and videos on social media showed segments of the statue transported on a flat-bed truck to the site, where a crane raised parts into place for welders to assemble.
Store clerk Judy Butler told WFAA a crowd of people often forms when families pull over to take photos at the statue, which she credits with doubling the new store’s sales. In most photos, smiling children barely reach its knees.
A nearby mural, painted by a local artist, depicts Bumblebee breaking out of the convenience store and charging toward the statue’s location, as though the character had grown impatient with waiting. The mural prompted local resident Russell Wright to call the store owner, offering to help him find local contractors to finally erect the statue.
The project was simply about “making one man’s dream come true,” Wright said.
Elmo isn’t the first town to host a 20-foot-tall Bumblebee statue. Another one, built in Thailand, stands outside an auto body shop in the small town of Stillwater in Oklahoma, nearly 300 miles to the north.