Home Special Features Evolution Revolution: A Beast Era Retrospective
Transmetal Cheetor
Height: cm tall in Robot Mode, 18cm head-to-tail length in Beast Mode.
Articulation: 12 points total- ball-jointed neck; 2 points each arm: ball-jointed shoulder and elbow; swivel waist; 3 points each leg: ball-jointed hip, hinged knee and ankle.
Colors: Molded silvery gray, teal, and yellow. Vacuum-metalized gold parts. Painted yellow, black, teal, red(Beast eyes) and light blue(Robot eyes).
Accessories: Tail Weapon.
Author: RAC
Young, headstrong, impressionable, and above all, yellow, Cheetor is the first Maximal to fire a weapon during the Beast Wars. In fact, he fires the first shot, period. The ensuing battles put him through a lot of changes, and not just structurally: Cheetor does eventually grow up, as all rookies that are lucky enough or skilled enough (or both) do. By the time the Maximals return to Cybertron Cheetor emerges as a capable field commander, keeping the increasingly mystical Optimus Primal tethered to reality. Ultimately, once Megatron is dealt with once and (mostly) for all, Cheetor is left holding the keys to the shiny new technorganic Cybertron. Not bad for a kid once too naive to distinguish good advice- or attention -from bad.
"Okay, Okay! I'll never do that again! ...until the next time."
Like I allude to above, Cheetor is the official Kid-Appeal Character of the Beast Era. Not only is the yellow a tell, but Cheetor also ended up with more toys than any other Beast character except for Optimus Primal. This is only the second in that long line, but it's also a pretty distinctive one- and a good toy at that.
Beast Mode
While the earlier, fully organic Beast Modes have grown on me, Transmetal styling is vastly superior, as far as I'm concerned. You're hardly going to mistake him for a regular old cheetah, but it's a really nice-looking figure, so I don't much care. Cheetor is still a big cat, but now sports a fully robotic body which is pretty much evenly split between silvery gray and chrome gold, with some teal thrown in for good measure. A feature all Transmetals have in common is their name printed somewhere on their bodies- in this case, kitty has his name printed on his collar- or the base of his neck at least -in case he gets lost.
Articulation here is also really good- the best I've seen on a feline Transformer, and it beats the hell out of the original Cheetor's statue-like Beast Mode. Swivel shoulder and two hinges in front, ball-joint hips and three joints in back, and the robot waist is perfectly functional here too, if a little tight for comfort. I do wish the neck did more, though, since you can't turn his head very well. You can adjust the angle and have him look up or down a bit, but even that's a bit of a cheat, forcing his Robot Mode articulation into service, and there's a limit to how far you can push it without making it obvious it's not supposed to do that. Being a rigid weapon, the tail is also completely immobile.
-Flight Mode
For the (alleged) "3 Mode Conversion" feature seen on all Transmetals, Cheetor gains a flight-based variation on his Beast Mode. His flanks are panels that swing out and unfold to become short wings with small but (apparently) powerful turbines on the ends. (You can spot his Energon Chip on the underside of his left wing.) The turbines themselves telescope- the innermost fins are tabs that let you slide out the inner section. You also remove his tail, turn it so that the blade of the weapon faces up as a sort of stabilizer fin, and replace it. End result: flying cheetah. (Well, flying cheetah with hollow belly: you can see straight through Cheetor with the jets deployed, and get a good look at his upside-down-and-backwards robot head. Definitely best viewed from the front and/or above.) It's not the most comprehensive third mode ever- as you'll see, most Transmetals' third modes are more like variants on Beast Mode -but it's a neat additional feature.
Transformation
Simple stuff, but it works: yank out the tail, straighten out the hind legs, pull back the forelegs into a kind of backpack, split the cheetah head (ew!) and fold the robot torso down. The crest on the robot head sometimes gets stuck on the torso as it goes by, despite there being a small cutout there to help prevent that. It takes some fiddling, but not enough to be annoying, most of the time.
Robot Mode
Here's where Transmetal styling gets interesting! All the organic bits missing from Beast Mode are on Cheetor's Robot Mode- there are patches of fur all over Cheetor's body, with a cheetah pattern on his forearms, chest, and thighs. The metal parts are still here as well- the fur is all mounted on a mechanical frame, and shiny vac-metalized ribs show through from the front. Cheetor still looks like himself as well, with a little more blue on his head than the previous body. I particularly like Cheetor's eyes- the edges seem to be pretty deeply sculpted, and it really makes his eyes stand out. And like most of the line, he's got quite a grimace on him- seriously, I'm still pretty new to BW, and I haven't seen this much tooth-gritting since the original TMNT toys...
The head's a ball-joint mounted on a hinged piece, and it gets 360 degrees of swivel and good tilt in all directions. I find the head wants to pop off pretty easily as the hinge is very stiff, but this may be a result of my restoring this Cheetor with a head that did not originally belong to it. The shoulders and elbows are ball-jointed, and work very well. I'm finding that Beast Wars-era Transformers have ball-joints down to a science: I get a joint that swings 90 degrees along one axis and swivels a full 360 degrees along the other practically every time. Cheetor doesn't have proper hands, but freakish claw/flipper-like things with the slightest hint of other fingers molded in the inside- I guess this is so they fit in the cheetah jaw. You can assemble the cheetah head blaster that Cheetor uses in the series, but not without using the transformation joints, which looks a bit odd.
His swivel waist can get a full 360 degrees if you push it, but seemingly wants to stop at 90 degrees left or right. The hips don't quite get the standard ball-joint range due to the shape, but the restrictions are minimal. The knees don't get a full 90 degrees either- the kitty-leg joints directly beneath do far better, so it's a shame they bend the wrong way in this mode. The ankles are great, though: a range within spitting distance of 180 degrees, yet they're tight enough to hold a pose. Pretty flexible in both modes!
Accessory
Cheetor's accessory is a tail weapon. Officially it seems to be a whip, though it's hard plastic, so it's not terribly whippy in toy form. Seems to me to be some kind of curved-handled hatchet, but that's just me. But it stays securely on the Beast Mode's rear whether the fin is up or down, and stays securely between his clawflippers in Robot Mode. So it's decent, whatever it is.
When Buying Loose
First and foremost, be on guard for the heartbreak of Transmetal Psoriasis: the chrome loves to flake off these guys, and once it starts to go, there's seemingly little you can do about it. Other than that, the most commonly missing Cheetor bits are his head and tail- those are the ones I had to replace on my incomplete Cheetor body with the intact chrome. The arms can also be missing, but that's easy to spot in either mode- you'll surely notice if Cheetor has one robot arm or half a cheetah face.
Closing Remarks
Cheetor's pretty nice! He looks neat, he's flexible, he transforms nicely, and I don't know if I'd call his flight mode a full third mode, but it's a nifty addition to the toy. He's Excellent, and despite already having the Armada version, I'm glad I got the original.
-RAC
All figures, toy lines, and the characters they represent are Copyright and Trademark their respective owners. All reviews and photographs contained herein are the property of ExVeeBrawn and RAC. The opinions expressed herein are those of ExVeeBrawn and RAC, and do not represent the opinions of any manufacturers, or copyright or trademark owners.
©figurereviews.com 2005-2011