Cheetor is a cheetah - a tiger like big cat. He's mainly yellow, covered in black spots and with some touches of blue visible on the legs. The beast mode has minimal articulation - the fore shoulders only move because it's part of the TF. The rear legs are hinged at the hip - ball joint - a swivel just above the knee - useless in beast mode and fore and aft at the knee. But it looks quite nice.
To TF: remove the tail up to and including the top of his bottom and then remove his stomach - set these aside as his weapons. Twist the rear legs and waist through 180 degrees half way up the body. Twist the rear legs 180 degrees at the swivel joint above the knee. Fold the feet down. Fold his lower back down to become a loin cloth.cod piece, fold his rear legs down at the shoulder and then break apart the beast upper back and shoulders to become the arms. Fold and swivel - via a hinged connecting piece - the beast head onto his robot chest. Pop the robot head up.
The robot mode is VERY posable - knees, swivel above the knees, ball and socket hips, waist, ball and socket shoulders, plus an element of the tf that allows the shoulder to come forward, a bicep - very high just under the shoulder, a fore and aft elbow and his neck. The head also has the ability to look down but that's only part of the mechanism to show his Mutant Head - a gimmick used on S1 dlx and larger Beast Wars toys. I've never been able to work out if his mutant head should have a pointed jaw with fangs or a pointed helmet with horns. I think it's the former as the other way would render the tilting head not necessary. Either way it looks a bit silly, and you'll be using the traditional head with face plate, a crest and horns. His tail folds back on itself to form a rifle, and the stomach with attached pipe is a small water pistol ! There's a lot more blue visible in this mode, especially on the head and limbs.
The original Cheetor has 3 significant variations centering around the beast eyes: Initially they were red, then blue and finally green. The robot eyes on the first 2 versions are gold, but green on the third. The green seems to have stuck: this colour is carried over into subsequent versions and on into Beast Machines.
Overall: Great original toy. Fun to play with as a robot. Worth picking up this or one of his subsequent repaints.
Shadow Panther is black - and when you look at him it's immediately obvious he's a Ravage homage - with some yellow and silver on the rear legs and pink eyes. When the toy was released in the US it was called Tripredicus Agent - which was the roll undertaken by Ravage in the Beast Wars Season 2 episodes "The Agenda"
Shadow Panther's robot has pink eyes, with silver inside his crest, on his face plate, forearms, loin cloth, water gun barrel, leg fronts and feet. He's got a yellow head rest, shoulders, inner upper legs and knees.
Shadow Panther is superb, good choice of colours brings original Ravage to mind. Expect a BWX version at some pt.
Shadow Panther is D-07 in Japan and is also in VS-07 with Howlinger (Wolf Fang)
The four toys in question being the original Fox Kids repaints. It's not a bad repaint, minimal alterations to the original and you could easily stretch to accepting it if you had no other version.
I still own the original Cheetor so I was able to get it out to compare with the new one. The yellow on the new Cheetor isn't nearly as bright and plasticy as the old one - there's an almost metallic sheen to it too, as there is on the now paler blue used on the toy. Both of these remind me of the Fox Kids version that never showed up in the UK - see here for a comparison of original, FK and BWX versions - except that the spots are the proper black and not magenta. There's a red and silver Maximal symbol added to his right foreleg.
Good update this - makes the original look very plasticy - and corrects the major mistake on the Fox Kids version. Get it.
Now for updated Tigatron and Shadow Panther versions !
Tigatron is a revision of the original Tigatron toy, which in itself is a repaint of Cheetor. The original Japanese version - repainted from the US version to more closely match the TV show - is soooo much superior to the original. Further it is possibly one of *the* best repaints of all time. So can you better that on a redone version ? Wait and see.
The majority of Tigatron is white, with some black stripes, green eyes and some metallic green on the rear legs. Looks nice, but somehow the white isn't as white as the previous Japanese version, but still miles better than the yellow cream of the US version.
In robot mode a lot more of the secondary colours is visible - Tigatron's face, upper arms, thighs, leg spikes, feet and helmet are silver, his elbows, water gun barrel, loin cloth and lower leg fronts are metallic green and his shoulders, inner upper legs, knees and head support are a more matt green. Robot eyes are pink, and the inside of the crest is painted an olive green. Some odd paint choices here, Tigatron's head should be white to match the rest of him.
Tigatron..... well it's good, and as I said above it's much better than the US release. In this particular case I feel the original Japanese release was better.
