Beast mode, as you hopefully
know by now, is a cheetah. Supreme Cheetor is one REALLY big transformer.
In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, he's the second biggest transformer
ever up to now, second only to Fortress Maximus, a Generation 1 transformer.
He is about two feet long in beast mode, give or take a couple inches.
The beast mode looks pretty nice, but its posability is severly limited
for such a large toy. He only has knee articulation on one of his front
legs! His backlegs, although they can move at several different points,
aren't very posable because the gears holding them together are rather
weak, making the back legs slightly floppy. At least he has waist articulation,
though it can put him off balance a bit if you face him in any direction
except straight forward. A rather annoying feature in this mode is that
his proportionally-small tail, which becomes his sword in robot mode, does
NOT stay in its hole at all, and falls out if you so much as look at it
the wrong way. Cheetor's detailing is also very poor in this mode,m except
for in a select few places. For such a large toy, I expected more time
put into the detailing. He also is not very show-accurate in this mode.
Again, I expect a show-accurate toy in BOTH modes for dishing out $40,
and Hasbro did not deliver in this area. His large barrel chest for robot
mode also stands out a bit too much in this mode. The mode also seems overly
simplistic, it's the robot mode Cheetor lying down with a different head-
which is kind of what it is in the first place. The least Hasbro could
do on such an expensive toy is hide the robot thumbs, for crying out loud!
An intesting note, however, is that most of Cheetor's spots are not black,
but a very dark purple- rather odd, but it makes the beast mode slightly
more show-accurate. Cheetor's spark orb can be viewed by looking in the
red circle on his left shoulder- it looks rather puny when compared to
this extremely large transformer, though. Now, on to Cheetor's gimmicks
in this mode. By turning the dial in his back, his head moves from side
to side while moving its mouth up and down, like on the Mega
Cheetor toy. Pretty neat. His other gimmick is electronic. If you pull
a lever in his lower back, it causes his back panel to raise up diagonally,
and little "hair" pieces turn straight up, making him look like he's angry.
His chest and eyes also light up red and green, dissapating to just green
a few seconds later. It also emits a "roar" when this feature is activated,
but it sounds more like a toilet flushing- rather poor, if you ask me.
Still, at least the part where the "hair" stands up looks nice.
A few notes about Cheetor's
transformation: For such a large toy, it is incredibly simplistic. It involves
little else than a "stand-me-up-and-flip-my-head" transformation, which
has gotten very old and uncreative by now. Some parts also snap off too
easily during transformation- for such a large toy, he should have been
more durable.
In robot mode, sadly,
Cheetor shows little improvement. Although he is very show-accurate in
this mode (with the exception of a few minor proportion problems, such
as the legs being slightly smaller then they're supposed to be), he is
incredibly unstable. His legs are two weak to support his massive upper
body, and he almost always comes crashing down as soon as you take your
hands off of him. Again, this is not good for an expensive toy (or any
toy, for that matter). Cheetor's major posability problems carry over to
this mode, although they are now amplified. His arm movement is extremely
limited due to his poorly-placed gimmicks- he can't even hold his puny-looking-sword
in any position that looks menacing! He doesn't even have waist articulation
in this mode, either. At least he has individual finger articulation, though.
I feel like I'm repeating myself again and again, but... you got it...
for such a large toy, I expected better. His back panel also comes off
too easily in this mode for my liking. Cheetor's gimmicks in this mode
are very burdensome, and leave much to be desired. In his right arm are
two missles. If you push his right arm in at the elbow, it will fire the
missles, and the sound box will emit a firing sound. Although a good idea
in theory, it was not implemented well enough. This locks the elbow in
a permanent position unless you are firing- not to mention that this gimmick
was not needed anyway, since Cheetor never does anything similar to this
in the show. The gimmick on his left arm is even worse. If you straighten
out his hand, then the fingers shoot forward on a long, awkward extentsion,
badly mimicking some kind of "claw slash". This burdensome gimmick does
not even allow you to straighten Cheetor's hand for sword gripping without
activating! This gimmick is extremely frustrating. Cheetor's mouth gimmick
is rather neat, at least. By pushing a tab on the back of his head, you
can move his mouth up and down, and his eyes turn from transparent yellow
to neon green, kinda like battle fury. Cheetor looks so mean when you do
this, though, that he looks almost comical. Still, it's good for a few
laughs.
Although Cheetor wasn't
exactly the smallest transformer, he didn't need a toy this big- his transformation
is too simple, and he's too big in comparison with the rest of the Beast
Machines transformers to really play with much. This was a poorly designed
toy, and several things could have been done to make it better. I do not
recommend paying full price for this toy- wait until it gets below $20,
and then you MIGHT want to get it- it's still up to you, though.
Review by Beastbot