The sizes of Beast Machines toys. Look at them compared to each other and I guarantee you'll be going 'wrong wrong wrong!' in no time at all. Look at the sizes of these things (let's use the maxi's, they have more obvious problems, but don't for one second think the vehicons are flawless):
Optimus: deluxe
Cheetor: mega (a very large mega at that)
Rattrap: mega
Nightscream: ultra
Blackarachnia: deluxe
OK, the show designs come after the toys, yes, but all the Maximals are old characters, apart from Nightscream, who was an idea taken to Hasbro by a writer, so Hasbro knew what role these characters played. So then, the first glaring problem is that Nightscream, the second smallest Maximal in the show, towers above all the other Maximals. Oh dear. Rattrap, the smallest Maximal, towers over Optimus. In fact, everyone towers over Optimus, including Blackarachnia (she's a rather large deluxe). Not to mention the beast modes. The beast modes were never that size accurate in BW, but there was some sort of logical hierarchy (sort of excluding the insects, arachnids and other assorted invertabrae) i.e. rats are small, and gorillas are large. Therefore Optimus is bigger than Rattrap. Simple stuff, right? A two year old can get this size thing under his thumb, let alone a Hasbro worker, right? However, as a result of Hasbro's odd, odd way of determining sizes, we have a rat that is larger than a gorilla, and it gets worse. We have a gorilla that is smaller than a cheetah, a bat and a spider. Oh and it gets much, much worse.....[drumroll]
Supreme Cheetor.
Not content with making a Cheetor around twice as big as the Beast Machines Optimus, Hasbro saw fit to give him his own size range. He is now almost twice as tall as the Beast Wars Optimal Optimus (the largest Beast Wars toy made). And it's the size of a housecat in beast mode. A housecat. Let me run that by you once more....
Now then, in the history of transformers, the really large toys are usually special, with a complicated transformation, hopefully more than two modes, and most importantly, a mode that deserves to be that big. Like Fortress Maximus (original series), it's a base, of course it deserves to be big, or Optimal Optimus, OK, your average gorilla should be smaller, but it's got four modes, and the storyline to back up the size. And now we have Cheetor. Problems?: 1) Cheetahs aren't generally noted for their size. 2) The transformation is rather simplistic, and could have worked on a deluxe. 3) it only has two modes. And two modes that are very similar to each other at that. Why has this happened? Probably because Hasbro is making the supposedly popular characters bigger, and more expensive. Therefore Nightscream and Cheetor, the deeply annoying but apparently popular among the kiddies, 'teenager' characters get huge toys. Hmph.
