This is one where explaining it feels like it’s going to eclipse the actual review. Okay, so, Rise of the Beasts. Great movie, right? While Studio Series has given most of the cast the collector-oriented figure treatment, there’s a whole separate Rise of the Beasts-branded mainline out at retail, too. It’s got a few Deluxes and Voyagers of its own, but it’s mostly focused on gimmick toys instead, like the Beast Battle Masters. Rather than being based directly on anything in the movie, these little guys are tiny bots, or animals, that change into weapons for larger figures to wield, Targetmaster-style. Battle Masters have been around since Siege debuted in 2019 (Here’s a review of the first wave of them, which included updates of some actual G1 Targetmasters), and continued into Earthrise (Here’s a review of Rung, probably the best Battle Master ever made), but went away after that, occasionally showing up as a bonus pack-in figure with a larger ‘bot (like with Shattered Glass Flamewar, reviewed here). Rise of the Beasts brought them back, though, both on their own, and packed in with larger bots, and I reviewed one of them, Skullcruncher, over here. Skullcruncher was an oddity, in that he was a new character (well, new to the world of the movies), while the rest of the line was tiny version of the movie’s Maximals, who changed into weapons instead of their robot modes (I really wish some copywriter somewhere came up with some lore for why these guys exist, it’d be fun.) Naturally, they did one for Cheetor, who came on his own, or packed in with a larger Arcee.
The normal version of Battle Master Cheetor, which you can currently find on retail shelves.
And then there’s this release. So, this “Burning” version is only available in Japan, and not easily available either. It’s a “Campaign Item,” (yes, there’s a Transformers Wiki page for it). Basically, it’s a small figure that you can only get for a limited amount of time, in a specific way, almost like the next level of exclusive. Often, they don’t actually cost any money, but require you to jump through some kind of hoop. It can be “sign up for something,” “pre-order or buy a specific figure,” “spend a certain amount of money,” or even odd ones, like “sign up for a credit card.”
I’ll always remember this miniature version of the Aerialbot Slingshot, which you could only get if you signed up for a Transformers-themed Visa credit card in Japan.
Since they’re usually free figures, these Campaign Items are nearly always repaints of mini-Transformers, like Mincons, Micromasters, Spychangers, or in this case, a Battle Master. In Burning Cheetor’s case, to get him, you specifically needed to….checking the Wiki….pre-order one of three larger Rise of the Beasts toys (Ultimate Optimus Primal, Beast Mode Optimus Prime, or Beast Mode Bumblebee), or spend 5000 yen at a brick and mortar store. Of course, I did none of those things, they showed up on the secondary market after the fact, and I was able to snag one from a friend, giving me a chance to look at something rare and odd, in the form of a tooling I don’t have. And now you get to have a look, too!
Cheetah Mode
Peruvian Burning Shorthair.
He’s a little cat! To give you an idea of scale here, Cheetor is significantly bigger than Siege/Netflix Ravage, but still smaller than G1 Ravage and Steeljaw.
Itty bitty kitty committee annual gathering.
In theory, we’re looking at an extremely scaled-down version of the techno-organic cheetah from the movie. In practice, it’s kind of hard to make out the sculpting in this colorscheme, and squinting at movie screenshots, it’s unclear if they actually based this on his final design. But at this scale, it doesn’t really matter, you can cheat, and it feels right.
Three times faster than the larger model!
It’s a robotic cheetah, that’s what he was. And it really is more “robotic” and less “organic,” between the visible pistons on his legs, the angular “ribs” on his torso, they’ve definitely leaned more into tech detail than fur detail. The only obviously-wrong thing is his pointy spike of a tail, and that’s necessary to facilitate his altmode.
One bird he’s not going to try and hunt.
A lot of these Campaign Items tend to be clear repaints, for whatever reason, and Burning Cheetor is no exception. In fact, he’s just two colors: Clear red, and opaque red. The clear bits on his head, legs, and back are very deep, almost Cranberry-looking, while the opaque torso and feet are a bit lighter. There’s no paint on him anywhere, which is a tiny bit of a disappointment, he could have used a little something on his face to bring out the sculpt, it’s entirely washed out.
“Not the paint!”
He also, I guess, has a third color, in the form of the flatheaded bolt used to construct his neck being bright silver. Usually, you ignore stuff like this, but the rest of him being so monochrome makes it stick out. This sounds oddly negative, but I think it’s an interesting look. I don’t know that I buy that he’s burning, or composed of energy, it’s more like he’s 50 percent hard candy, 50 percent chewing gum.
And all pounce!
Figures made with too much clear plastic can always be a dicey proposition (which is why so many Earthrise and Kingdom-era figures are currently getting repaints that replace it with opaque material). Clear plastic can be fragile, it can crack and splinter. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case here, whatever specific material the clear parts are made out of feels solid. And the use of opaque plastic on him suggests that thought was put into his durability, so I’m not worried about breaking him.
Biiiig stretch!
For articulation, he’s pretty basic, but actually ahead of the game when it comes to the scale. All four of his limbs are attached to his body on ball-joints, sculpted mostly for forward-and-backward motion, with a little bit of spread (not enough for him to belly-flop, though). Meanwhile, his front feet have ball-jointed ankles, for additional range. So, that’s six joints, putting him ahead of the other Battle Masters I own, which all have 4-5 joints apiece.
He’s not a dog, but he still enjoys this sort of car ride.
I do kind of wish his head could do…like…anything, but even the mainline Cheetors can’t manage that. He’s got just enough going on to do some Cat Poses, and that’s really all that matters.
Loafin’.
Transformation
Like every Battle Master, this is really simple. You just flip the head away and the blade out, reposition the cat legs into a compact configuration, and then flip out a 5 millimeter peg, and you’re done.
Also, you can create a horrible Cat Man with an empty gut and giant ponytail.
I will say that the legs do suffer from not having any sort of set position to tab into, they just hang there. You can get them nice and compact, for sure, but some method of actually securing them would have been nice.
Sword Mode
This mode’s a land of contrasts, of thing that work and things that don’t. Let’s start with the sculpt.
Not as pointy as it looks.
At the top, it’s a really nice, ornate, angular blade, looking like a fantasy weapon. And at the bottom, it’s an oversized hilt of folded-up cat. And that folded-up cat includes those legs that don’t secure to the body in any way, though all of the ball-joints they’re on are tight enough that they stay in place. To be fair, turning a whole quadrupedal animal into a skinny blade is kind of an impossible task at this scale, and the blade’s at least longer than the hilt, so it basically works, I think.
It certainly works for Arcee.
What really works, though, is those colors. Having him be solid red helps hide that it’s a folded-up animal, and the fact that the clear limbs wrap around most of the opaque plastic means that my eyes now read him as being totally transparent, which means that I also read him as a glowing red energy sword, which is just cool, and means I’m inclined to pair him with Titans Return Arcee, since she’s based on the IDW Comics version of her, who favored energy swords.
She’s being a real sportsman here, not pulling out one of her pistols.
That brings me to an odd wrinkle in the construction of this weapon: The 5 Millimeter peg that you can use to attach it to larger bots. Because so many modern figures use 5 Millimeter pegs, there’s a pretty broad range of Transformers you can give this to.
I liked Rise of the Beasts, but this version of the movie would have been cooler.
The problem is how the peg has been placed. It’s mounted on the side of the hilt, instead of the bottom, meaning that it can’t actually be held like a normal sword. If it goes in someone’s hand, the blade points forward, like a gun, instead of upward, in a way that looks a tad bit awkward.
A poor substitute for a quasar cannon.
On the other hand, many figures that use 5 Millimeter pegs have them on their forearms (like Arcee), so you can plug it in there, as a kind of claw/wristblade type implement.
It makes G2 Sideswipe even more 90s.
It does look cool that way, especially on characters where it’s thematically appropriate for them to have a big claw, I just wish they could also hold it normally, though that would require the peg being in a different spot entirely for that to work (specifically, the cat’s butt), so maybe it’s something they didn’t want to do, or couldn’t engineer, because that’s where most of the blade hides in cat mode.
N-Zap is rapidly becoming the Arms Micron Master.
Either way, it turns out a red energy sword pops on a lot of figures, and it’s fun to see who can wield it best.
DALP is one of the better choices, I think.
Overall
An uncommon, niche exclusive like this can be hard to rate, so let’s pull back a bit. All Battle Masters, since they first showed up in Siege, have been fun little guys, but they’ve always not necessarily a good deal for the money, especially once they stopped coming with blast effects. A lot of the ones I have were pack-ins with larger figures, which makes them feel like better value. Still, it’s worth getting a couple, especially if you can find them for a good price.
Funny how many I’ve wound up with so far.
This particular tooling’s a fun one, changing into a sword’s a more unique twist than becoming another gun, and being an animal companion is also more interesting than being a tiny Robot Person. It’s got the obvious drawback of not being able to be held in someone’s hand like a normal blade, but that’s about the only issue here.
DALP doesn’t mind.
As for this exclusive version of it, I can say that the solid red really brings something to the table in weapon mode that I wouldn’t get from the normal release (which you can find on store shelves right now, so I’ve physically seen it plenty of times), so on a visual level, it’s better than the standard release. Now, don’t go paying insane aftermarket prices for it, though, none of these guys are really worth that. But, if you get a shot at it for a fair price, like I did, I say go for it. It’s a nice little add-on to your bigger transformers, and the novelty of having a rare Takara exclusive counts for something, too.
Bananna, and Cherry.
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