Death's Head
01-09-11, 05:48 AM
Blessed with arguably one of the best beast mode sculpts out of the entire Beast Wars line, the Transmetal version of Cheetor looks as sleek and feral as a real cheetah. Thanks to a superb design, no matter how you pose him, he looks like he's about to pounce or break into a run. The articulation granted to all four legs make best use of the beast form, which in some other Beast Wars toys, have lacked much in the way of articulation. So good does Cheetor look in his beast form that I rarely put him in robot mode - I mean, look at him! He's a gorgeous thing, decked out with panels, rivets and various machine-y bits. He looks fantastic! The mix of teal, grey and gold works brilliantly, and the whole mode just sings.
As with all the Transmetal figures, Cheetor has a 'transport' mode which is a diverting bit of nonsense. Two jet engines unfold from the beast's guts. Rearranging the tail adds a fin to Cheetor's posterior. Its completely daft and makes no sense at all, but it's enormous fun, all the same.
Cheetor's transformation isn't the most complex of things, but its is extremely slick and well executed and avoids the cliche of having the robot's arms and legs formed the beast mode's apendages. Instead, the front legs fold up and the back folds away from the head, which in turn splits in half and rotates to the sides to form the robot mode arms. The chest piece swings into place and the robot head flips up from the centre of the torso. Meanwhile, the rear legs straighten out and stand the figure upright, two heels flipping out to give him some balance. The tail unplugs from Cheetor's behind (a little unglamorous, but it does the job). It's one of the smoothest transformation sequences I've ever come across. Lovely stuff.
As much as I'm a fan of Cheetor's alt mode, his robot mode doesn't quite work for me. The colours are fine, and as with all the Transmetal robots, there's the amusing inversion of the anthropomorphic form being more overtly beast like than the animal form (seriously, all the Transmetal robots have scales or fur as a predominant feature on their robot mode), but there's just something a little bit off about Cheetor. I think its those slightly massive pants and thunder thighs. It just makes his whole lower body look a bit hefty and wrong. The head sculpt isn't one of my favourites either, being a weird toothy grimace where the more cat like animation model face would have been a better choice. Still, he can strike some dynamic poses, which is pretty much par for the course for the range at this point, but its still great to see Transformers being proper action figures.
538539540
As with all the Transmetal figures, Cheetor has a 'transport' mode which is a diverting bit of nonsense. Two jet engines unfold from the beast's guts. Rearranging the tail adds a fin to Cheetor's posterior. Its completely daft and makes no sense at all, but it's enormous fun, all the same.
Cheetor's transformation isn't the most complex of things, but its is extremely slick and well executed and avoids the cliche of having the robot's arms and legs formed the beast mode's apendages. Instead, the front legs fold up and the back folds away from the head, which in turn splits in half and rotates to the sides to form the robot mode arms. The chest piece swings into place and the robot head flips up from the centre of the torso. Meanwhile, the rear legs straighten out and stand the figure upright, two heels flipping out to give him some balance. The tail unplugs from Cheetor's behind (a little unglamorous, but it does the job). It's one of the smoothest transformation sequences I've ever come across. Lovely stuff.
As much as I'm a fan of Cheetor's alt mode, his robot mode doesn't quite work for me. The colours are fine, and as with all the Transmetal robots, there's the amusing inversion of the anthropomorphic form being more overtly beast like than the animal form (seriously, all the Transmetal robots have scales or fur as a predominant feature on their robot mode), but there's just something a little bit off about Cheetor. I think its those slightly massive pants and thunder thighs. It just makes his whole lower body look a bit hefty and wrong. The head sculpt isn't one of my favourites either, being a weird toothy grimace where the more cat like animation model face would have been a better choice. Still, he can strike some dynamic poses, which is pretty much par for the course for the range at this point, but its still great to see Transformers being proper action figures.
538539540