The kinds of forces that drive demand for figures in collector-oriented Transformers lines are interesting, and strange to think about. Sometimes, what’s in demand has less to do with what or who a figure is, but instead, the circumstances under which they were (or weren’t) released. Make it so a collector can’t have something, or make it hard to get, and it’ll go down in fandom legend. Maybe a toy was canceled (like a lot of tail-end Generation 2 repaints that continue to get homages to this day, like Combat Megatron), or was a rare exclusive, or saw some kind of extremely limited, non-western release. It matters less what these figures are, and what does matter is they memetically persisted in collector’s minds as white whales.
The thing you couldn’t have.
And that’s where we are with Kingdom Shadow Panther. Let’s get this straight: Shadow Panther is a complete nothing of a character. He’s had exactly one fictional appearance, and that involved a tiny cameo in a Beast Wars: Uprising prose story. Outside of that, he has his original tech specs (describing him as lying in wait in the darkness to surprise-attack Maximals), an extended profile in an old IDW Sourcebook (naming him a Decepticon historian and idolizer, and Ravage fanboy), a Kingdom online bio (characterizing him as a ninja), and that’s really it. So why do people care, and why was he made?
When you’re a kid in the mid 90’s without the resources to import a figure, this guy’s a lot more significant.
Well, the original Shadow Panther figure was a black repaint of Beast Wars Cheetor, but more importantly, one that was only released by Takara in the Japanese Beast Wars line, and had to be imported stateside if you wanted one (Hasbro itself would briefly import some on a now-defunct website). He was definitely created by Takara to make the toyline a little bit bigger, with nothing much else to him, but as the first Beast Wars toy the average North American couldn’t get, at a time when shopping online for Takara imports wasn’t as simple as it is today, that just kind of gave him an allure of rarity. Plus, he’s an easy repaint of Cheetor, which means that Shadow Panther even has a Masterpiece figure.
Kinda doesn’t hit the same now that I’m older, and you can just find this thing at toy shows.
But it’s definitely that sense of rarity that led to this Kingdom one getting made, and as a mainline figure no less, in a line where Cheetor already has another black repaint (and heavy retool) in the form of Ravage (reviewed here). So, why do I have one? Well, as I wrote here, Kingdom Cheetor’s a really good figure, there’s some interesting choices made with this repaint, and I’m not immune to “ooo, a homage to an old rare obscure thing.” So, let’s have a quick look at what makes this redeco so different this time around, versus the original tooling.
Robot Mode
I just can’t pose this guy without making him skulk a little bit.
The big change here is Shadow Panther’s new head, which should not be slept on. Packaging art from the previous Shadow Panther releases typically depict him with Cheetor’s standard face. But the original figure could flip his head around to deploy a “Mutant Mask,” which, as I noted in my Mutant Tigatron review here, was a sort of weird bird-beak-skull thing.
Some kinda messed-up family photo.
So, for this new figure, he’s been retooled to have that mask on as his new head. And it’s a very original-figure-accurate version of it, including the sculpted hinges on the sides of it that the original face rotated on.
It’s also hard not to photograph him without him menacing you with his axe.
But more importantly, that totally changes his vibe, because of how scary it is. It’s a silver mask, with no lower jaw, and cold, black, expressionless eyes, like some kind of cryptid you’d see in the woods.
Looming.
It does something interesting with the sculpt. Cheetor was lanky, but that suited him as a speedster, and he carried a tail-whip as a homage to his Transmetal toy. On this guy, combined with that head, the sculpt acquires a whole other vibe.
*The synths from Halloween start playing*
He now feels like a creepy, stalking predator, or a horror-movie killer. Either way, he’s something unpleasant and deadly, stalking the shadows with his bladed weapon, looking for victims. Intentional or not, he now has a character all to his own.
Why Shadow Panther was banned from the Beast Wars TV show.
As a homage, his colors are impressively spot-on to the original figure’s layout, which is satisfying to see after Mutant Tigatron didn’t quite get there (speaking of him, it’s interesting to see the same Mutant Head interpreted a different way on that figure). The face is silver and black, and has those hinges painted yellow. The body is partially an impressive jet-black, with silver highlights, and yellow shoulders to add visual interest. I’m a fan of this shade of matte black, it really feels like it absorbs light.
A less-threatening interpretation of him is that he was a ninja.
Like Cheetor, Shadow Panther’s still very poseable, with bonuses like wrists and ankles, and it’s easy to make him look menacing.
Like so.
He’s very well-suited for stooping and skulking, like a cryptid, waving his axe weapon around, though I do wish his feet were a bit bigger, balancing him takes a minute.
Ravage is annoyed by a persistent fan.
Transformation
Shadow Panther’s transformation is just as buttery-smooth as Cheetor’s was, with only his beast mode head’s pegging out of (or into) his chest feeling tighter than I’d like. Also, as I noted on my Cheetor review, there’s a milimeter-thick tab behind his beast mode head that’s definitely going to snap off after a few transformations, but it’s not needed for stability, and isn’t visible in either mode, so it’s kind of a non-issue. As a bonus, it’s easy to make him even more cryptid-like in robot mode if you just detransform his legs, and maybe add his beast arms to the mix, though it becomes really hard to keep him standing up.
About all I could get him to do was stand up straight.
Panther Mode
Shiny and sleek, if you ignore the yellow.
One thing disappoints me about this form, and it’s that there’s bright yellow peeking out of his shoulders, back, and hind legs, due to his robot-mode bits coming through. I really wish they’d sprued the plastic on this differently, since it breaks up the jet-blackness of this altmode.
Otherwise, it’s pretty slick.
Some stock photography gave him gray shoulders instead, and while I prefer a robot mode with yellow shoulders, this would’ve made this mode cleaner. Maybe they could have painted on the yellow, it’s not like he has spots this time around to eat the deco budget up.
TFW you see Ravage.
Outside of that, he’s very, very black, with only a bit of silver around his backside. I’m fixated on how his panther face is almost totally unpainted black, save for his blank, red eyes, due to how freaky it looks. Even his mouth is unpainted. I don’t know if this was deliberate or not, but it really does make him look frightening and cryptid-like in this mode, too. All Beast Warriors are robots pretending to be animals, but this guy does it in a way that underscores how unnatural that is. It’s a bad forgery that highlights the uncanny valley of it all.
“Not again!!!”
Outside of that, Shadow Panther’s still got a lot of joints in his legs, and manages to be an impressively bendable cat because of it, even if his head and tail are static.
“I thought I filed a restraining order.”
Basically, it’s got that same surprising amount of articulation that I loved on Cheetor.
Overall
The Goth Squad.
This is definitely not a necessary figure, especially if you’ve got Cheetor. But he was a really, really good tooling to begin with, and his new head and deco make him into something totally different and unusual, a gothy, freaky, deadly character. Plus, he’s an obscure-ish reference, and that does something for me. He’s not necessary, but I like him, and if you don’t have Cheetor, he’s worth picking up as an alternative, I think.
Feline Fury!
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