Bot Reviews: Transformers: Kingdom Voyager Tigatron

As a character, Tigatron kind of had a special aura around him to me, as the first new Beast Warrior to be introduced outside of the show’s premiere. He was born out of a Stasis Pod a little ways into the first season, in a pretty memorable episode (one which I had on VHS as part of a compilation movie released in Canada, which probably helps). Thanks to the circumstances of his creation, he considered himself more tiger than Maximal, loved the planet, and nature, and abhorred conflict, but unlike most characters of that type, would fight to defend it. He was written and portrayed with just the right mixture of zen and ferocity, and was a key player in that whole season.

On the merchandise side, his original figure was actually a straight repaint of Cheetor, taking advantage of the fact that he was already too bulky to be a cheetah, but made for a nicer-looking tiger. Curiously, the show didn’t just make his character model a Cheetor recolor (which would have saved them a lot of money, the most expensive thing on the show was said to be building and rigging new characters). Instead, he was depicted as larger than Cheetor, and with a lot of details changed.

Because of that, Tigatron’s not seen as many new figures as Cheetor in the intervening years (mostly limited to convention exclusives, and a Masterpice), since most of Cheetor’s updates are sleeker and more Cheetah-like, like the Kingdom Deluxe (reviewed here), and don’t lend themselves to a quick repaint. But Kingdom decided to do him right, and release him not as a repaint, but as a wholly new Voyager-sized figure. He’s also the final Season 1 Maximal to be released in the line, rounding out the show’s cast, and a great way to tie it off.

Robot Mode

Tigatron seems a bit small for a Voyager at first glance, but actually lining him up with his peers, he’s only slightly shorter than Kingdom Dinobot, (reviewed here) and slightly taller than Optimus (ditto).

It’s Tigatron’s sveltness that makes him seem small. He shares a lot of design elements with Cheetor, as fits his origins, what with the face-chest, tiger on the back, panels on the forearms, cat-ear-head, and all that, but this is an all-new tooling, and is quite different proportionally

Cheetor was a skinny speedster, while Tigatron has a thicker torso, arms, and thighs, and broader shoulders that make him a bit more proportionally humanoid. He’s also more show-accurate, like, a lot more. We’re in “stepped off the screen” territory here, with only tiny details on his lower legs, backpack, and realistic tiger chest being off. Otherwise, he’s like a scaled-down Masterpiece design.

He’s got a really nice headsculpt, too, with a determined-looking facial expression, that same quality headsculpting as Kingdom Dinbot, where it really does look like they somehow 3-d printed the Mainframe model.

Tigatron’s got similarly accurate colors, which also happen to be really good on their own merits. See, white being his primary color could have made him look a bit too plain. But they were careful to make his colors a shimmering, pearly white, to keep it interesting. There’s a few different shades of it on him, some of which even look like they have glitter on them. On top of that, bits of his fur look like they’re yellowing a bit, which seems odd at first, but is imitating something that happens on real white tigers, plus it gives him more color variety.

And to break that white up, he’s got black stripes painted all over his body, and light green parts to finish it off, also in metallic, plus some red deco on his head. They did an impressive job of just making what could have been a plain deco look varied and interesting, and he doesn’t look like he’s missing any deco anywhere at all, a rarity even in the War for Cybertron Trilogy.

Tigatron feels nice and sturdy in hand, just really solidly built, to go along with his sense of presence. It helps that a new addition from Cheetor is flip-out heel spurs, making him extra stable. The only bit of build I don’t like is that his back-mounted tiger arms don’t peg in or anything, just hang there, though their joints are at least tight.

Another advantage that presumably comes from his slightly smaller scale is that his poseability is a little better than most mainline Transformers. He’s got extras like tilting ankles, swiveling wrists, and a balljointed head. But also, the standard joints on him have more articulation than usual, mostly on his arms, where he’s got double elbows, and multiple shoulder joints for extra motion. He feels Masterpiece-adjacent, and just good in your hands, not too simple, not too complicated.

This time around, he comes with an important accessory that was missing from Cheetor: He actually has his Quasar Cannon this time. It’s nicely sculpted in white, with gross painted pink guts at the back (on the original figure, it formed the cat stomach, and it was the 90s.)

Funny enough, you can take the front end of the gun off, and it’s got a War for Cybertron port at the end. Admittedly, the cannon feels a bit undersized to my eyes, but the Masterpiece’s weapon is similarly scaled, so it might just be me.

In addition, Tigatron still comes with the tail-whip that Cheetor had, but there’s no blade or anything on the end this time. He just…holds it in his hand. I kind of miss those extra details.

Like a lot of Kingdom’s Beast Wars updates, Tigatron doesn’t have many weapons ports on him. He’s got a pair on the bottoms of his feet, one on the bottom of his backside for his tail, but most importantly, one on the back of each of the panels on his forearms. In his debut episode, he popped one of these panels up to shoot a missile from beneath it, and if you can find a missile that can plug in, you can imitate that moment. I used one of Airazor’s.

Transformation

Broadly speaking, Tigatron’s transformation goes mostly the same as Cheetor’s, which means that it follows the way he transformed on the show (which no other version does), and that it’s also surprisingly fun.

A few things have been tweaked, though. The big one is that the entire process of flipping out his tiger head, and hiding his robot head has been made a bit more elaborate, and in the process, easier and less scary. There’s no snap-off tab, and no extremely hard torso-unplugging, the whole thing’s a lot smoother now.

Tiger Mode

Like most of Kingdom, this Beast Mode’s going for a hyper-realistic design. In this case, it really worked out, and Tigatron looks like a zoo gift shop replica of a tiger, but really high-quality.

Transformation seams aside, he’s remarkably clean-looking. His main problem is a green joint behind his head, and I really wish they’d figured out a way to sprue it so it was white, so his tiger colors would be unbroken from the top.

He’s got a little green poking out of the backs of his legs, and on his belly, but it’s much less intrusive. The only part of the design I’m not a fan of is the pre-posed angle of his tail. It feels a bit too low, and vanishes from most angles. You can flip it around in its peg, but it’s clearly not meant to go that way, since it exposes a bunch of hollow bits.

I particularly love his tiger-mode headsculpt.

It’s really well-designed, and well-painted, though it also exposes basically the only place that’s missing deco: The inside of his mouth is unpainted, something I only notice because the rest of him is so well-colored, and Kingdom’s generally been trying to give that part of each animal some deco. Speaking of that, that nice, shiny shade of white pays off again, making his tiger mode’s colors visually interesting, and that’s before getting into all of the stripes, and the yellowing fur.

Like Cheetor, this beast mode’s surprisingly poseable. Aside from that opening jaw, his forelegs have balljointed shoulders, knee swivels, and multiple foot joints, while his back legs just has swivels for all three. He can move way more than you’d expect, though it does make me wish he had some kind of head articulation.

His only real problem in this mode is that his Quasar Cannon doesn’t properly store anywhere. You can plug it into the two weapons ports on his stomache, but it’s just hanging out there, and works more as an attack mode.

Overall 

I haven’t been especially interested in ranking Kingdom’s Beast Wars updates, but out of the cast so far, this is definitely one of the strongest one, and maybe even the strongest overall, in terms of both accuracy, but also in terms of just being a really fun figure. He’s a hair smaller than most Voyagers, but makes up for it with superb paint, sculpt, accuracy, poseability, and engineering. He just feels good. He transforms snappily, and has a cool looking tiger mode. There’s only minor points of criticism, the biggest just being his loose weapon. So, this one’s strongly recommended, even as one of those “if you’re only going to get one figure from the line” type releases, if you’re willing to splurge on a Voyager. Me, I’m happy to see the character get done so well, and I’m also happy to have completed the entire season one cast.

This is a good-looking set of characters, and a raw hit of serotonin for a fan like me.

For over 100 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.