Phil's Review


Beast Wars Transmetal Cheetor

Cheetor is one of the lead character in the Beast Wars show so it was obvious they'd try and do a new version of him. This mechanical version of the beast is mainly grey, with some green highlights and a large amount of gold chrome. The tail is fixed in shape, but can be removed and inserted the other way round giving him an axe for a tail. He's got ball jointed rear hips and rotating front hips, plus bending knees and ankles on all 4 legs. The beast head can be folded down a bit as part of the TF mechanism. The beast articulation is significantly improved from the earlier BW Cheetor.

Cheetor has a third mode of sorts: open the panels on his sides and flip out 2 jet boosters. Yup, that's it. A Cheetor with rockets. Probably the poorest of the TM vehicle modes (except maybe Monkey on a surfboard !)

TF: Straighten the rear legs behind the beast and fold down the heel spurs. Fold the bottom of the front legs up along the front of the top of the leg. Fold the front legs up so they face forward. Pull the back armour the legs are attached to up and back along the beast. Fold the beast head down under the beast and at the same time push the robot head up through the hole in the panel. Split the beast head in two and fold to the side as the robot arms. Turn the lower arms round so the hands face forward. Remove tail and place in hand as a hand weapon.

The robot exposes a lot of yellow on the robot chest, arms and inner legs, most of it patterned with Cheetor's black spots. The face looks like Cheetor, albeit one with a bit of a grimace. He bends at the ankle, twice near the knee, has ball jointed hips, shoulders, elbow and neck, and has a waist joint. It's nearly impossible to fold the boosters out in this mode.

Overall: Solid figure, a step up from the previous Cheetor in Beast Mode articulation.


Beast Wars Fox Kids Transmetal Cheetor

This is another "What were they thinking ?????" repaint ! The gold stays, the grey becomes a dark red and the green a sort of greeny brown. The yellow paint on the robot turns silver ! It's an odd car crash of colour scheme that has to be seen to be believed. Click on the link above to see TFU's pictures of this extraordinary toy. Hard to track down now !

Armada Cheetor with Minicon Cliffjumper

On the surface of it Armada Cheetor is odd too. The green is dark grey, the silver/grey is black, the gold is bright purple (!) and the yellow is neon red/pink. Train wreck ? No ! Somehow this weird mish mash of colours works. There's a general stealth theme to this toy - spoilt a little by the red/pink ! The minicon posts for this toy are the remolded ends of the boosters - inaccessible in robot mode, and pointing forward in "Vehicle" mode. Only certain minicons would look right attached to this - ones with ports at the back. Sky Blast is one - see previous comments in other reviews about packing a combining weapon with the Armada Beasts. Another is Ransack of the Adventure Team.

He's been repainted as Cliffjumper using the same purple and red/pink as Cheetor (so not red and black as per G1). I seem to remember somewhere that Armada Cliffjumper is a she. The gear gimmick is intact - she has a tow rope on the front that can be pulled out. Roll her along a flat surface and the rope retracts. Alternately clip her to the underside of Armada Cyclonus and Cyclonus' rotor spinning action powers the rope gimmick.

TF: Fold the back down to form the legs. Raise the arms. Simple.

As is the robot - bends at knee, hips and shoulders. More of the red/pink visible here.

Not bad combination - especially in terms of how the minicon attaches. Odd colour scheme that somehow works !


Remolds

There's 2 significant remolds of this toy - X-2 Ravage and Botcon Tigertron.
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