Beast Machines Night Slash Cheetor
Of course we all know about the late Beast Machine toys in the 'Battle for the Spark' line.
This is when Hasbro released a group of toys that were much more show accurate than previous
releases. This included stuff like Savage/Noble, Blast Punch Primal, Strika and now (for me
at least) Night Slash Cheetor.
If you've been keeping up with Beast Wars/Machines, you know generally the Cheetor toys have
a history of being not so great. The original was okay, though it wasn't overly great in beast mode. TM
Cheetor was the rare highlight of the Cheetors, the first BM Cheetor was a lanky, unstable giant, and
don't even get me started on Supreme Cheetor, the shelf warmer of the century.
So enter Cheetor's sixth toy (but not his last with the new Playskool version coming out soon),
of the Night Slash variety. Packaged in robot mode for some odd reason (I guess because beast mode is
too long to package without having it either scrunched up or vertical), NS Cheetor is the most
show accurate Cheetor ever made, I think, though the colors aren't right, obviously.
Beast mode is, um, not the strong point of the toy by any means. Pretty much it's his robot
mode crawling on all fours with the heads swapped. The gimmick in the front arms severely limits
those legs, which are floppy because of it. Also his front paws don't look anything like paws. I
also kinda wish the ball joints on his wrists weren't so limited. They can swing inwards, but
up and down movement they don't have. Also his shoulders and elbows, due to the gimmick, are
limited to being swivels and hinges, respectively. And the swivel shoulders only move one way, unless
you want to strip the internal gearing.. Beast mode is, how shall I say, the suck.
Transformation is as simple as Cheetor can get. Stretch him out, rotate his feet, swing out the
front of them, fiddle with his hands, open chest and back, swap heads. Tada! Robot mode Cheetor!
As has been the case with every BM Cheetor toy, this guy has some long horkin' legs. Of course they're
meant to be positioned in a sort of backwards 'Z' shape with his feet actually ending up behind his
body. However, his legs, which have six joints each (including the feet), are very poseable, and
ol' Cheets can be put into a lot of nifty poses. As long as you don't want to involve his arms, which, like I
said, have severe movement limitations.
Ah, but there's more! Press a button on his shoulders and a sword stored in his upper arm will
swing down into his hand via a nifty spring. It's really a pretty simple mechanism, and the sword
always ends up in his hand no matter where you position it, but it's rather ingenious. Whoever though of
it should get a nice pat on the back.
It's also nice to FINALLY have a Cheetor that doesn't use his tail as a weapon. I can't even begin to
tell you how that was starting to annoy me.
But that's not all!
Pressing on his spark (which is obscured by an orange translucent plastic dome) causes his arms
to move up and down in alternating directions. It's a pretty neat looking action feature, and
actually pretty close to what he does on the show. You can simulate the speed pretty well, as well. Just
press the spark more.
There's also a small rotating cylinder in his chest that's attached to the gimmick. Kinda hard to
see through his chest plate, but if you open it up you get a nice show. A cool bonus I think. Also
for the record Cheetor's head is pretty much dead on with the show, except for the orange glowing eyes, which is
quite freaky looking coupled with the dark color of the toy. Very cat-like.
Overall? Well, I paid $12.99 for mine from BBTS, which is a tad more than I would have liked, but
I wanted to get more than just my minicar key chains for the $5 shipping fee. If you can find one for the
regular deluxe $10 price tag, go for it, though I wouldn't recommend putting him in beast mode too
much.
