I recently had one of those mythical “found a complete, good figure in your parent’s basement” experiences, but instead of some kind of rare G1 find (I wasn’t born for most of G1!), it’s something a lot more recent (well, relatively), and a lot stranger.
And it came with its box, which helpfully sums up the premise of today’s toyline, Beast Machines.
This is the third Beast Machines toy I’ve reviewed on here, and they’ve all been different versions of Cheetor, the kid-appeal character from Beast Wars, who returned for the darker and edgier sequel (here’s my review of the vintage Beast Machines Mega-class figure, and the new Legacy Core). Though, Cheetor wasn’t really a kid-appeal character by the time Beast Machines made it to air. After three seasons of Beast Wars, he was a junior leader, a little like Rodimus Prime, with new character Nightscream stepping into his former role of “rebellious teenage punk.” Still, HasTak decided to make Cheetor the centerpiece of the Beast Machines toyline, in the form of this jumbo-sized Supreme-class figure. It was the big-ticket Transformers item for Christmas in the year 2000, and proceeded to be a big flop that shelfwarmed hard, in addition to getting very negatively reviewed by the Transformers fan community. But I still asked for, and got him that year, because I liked Beast Machines. I said this the last two times, but the Beast Machines show was always unfairly maligned by the fandom, and its chilly reception directly led into 6 years of extremely childish, middling anime, so it’s aged pretty well by comparison. As for the toys? Well, the Mega version of Cheetor was pretty good, so let’s have a look at the big version, and see how that holds up in the space year 2024.
Cheetah Mode
It was a challenge to fit this thing into my lightbox, so these photos are going to be a bit cramped.
So, Supreme Cheetor was one of the first toys to really get a big online push by HasTak, on the fledgeling Transformers internet space. And one of the big marketing bullet points that they repeated over and over again was “he’s as big as a real-life housecat.” And, well, that’s true.
Getting a real cat to even stay still for a photo is tough, so this is as good of a comparison as I can get.
I have two cats, and Cheetor’s roughly the size of them, albeit with a teeny-tiny head, and proportions that are a lot skinner, and more generally alien. But yes, he’s gigantic. He’s not quite Titan-class big, but he dominates any space he’s in by the sheer size of him. Good luck fitting him on a shelf!
I already have trouble finding room for Commander Rodimus Prime.
As for the sculpt itself, the Maximals in Beast Machines were supposed to be “Techno-Organic,” i.e flesh and machine fused together, but I mostly just get “robot cat” from the sculpting here; he’s too abstract to read as anything else. There’s some panels and ports here and there, some bits on his legs that are maybe meant to be read as musculature, but really, a lot of his body is just smooth, unsculpted plastic that doesn’t suggest much of anything.
To be fair, every version of him reads that way.
He’s a weird one proportionally, though, with a wasp waist, huge, bent-back rear legs, and a tail with a spike at the end, with similar spikes on his forearms. This is a mechanical beast from another planet that happens to resemble a cheetah, I think.
Protecting his descendants.
So, a thing about the Beast Machines toyline was that it was notorious for having toys that weren’t very show accurate, approaching G1 levels of inaccuracy, and this larger figure was an attempt to fix that. But it only sort of works in this mode, and it’s clear that the robot mode was the priority. It gets the proportions right in this mode, but almost none of the details actually match his show model, which was aiming to have a proper cheetah hide over a lot of it, and a normal cat tail.
Almost nothing here matches up.
They did do a good job on the headsculpt, though. It gets details like the rounded panels on his cheeks, and the shape of the ears right, but thanks to the translucent plastic and colorscheme used on it, still doesn’t really read as the character to me.
Looks cool, though.
Not that I really considered accuracy important, I like this bizzaro design already, it’s just interesting looking at how it does, or doesn’t fulfill the mission brief.
He might as well fight these three, they’re about as accurate to the show’s Vehicon Generals as he is to his model.
For colors, we’re looking at vast tracts of yellow, specifically a cheddary orange-yellow. It’s mostly unpainted, with only his head seeming to use paint to make the yellow. While there’s no chrome on this larger one (thankfully), he’s also maybe 1/3rd translucent yellow plastic, mostly on his back and waist. I like its use here, it makes him feel kind of high-tech. As for the rest of him, he’s got a little bit of green (both translucent and opaque) and red (ditto), plus a generous assortment of cheetah spots tampo’d on his back, shoulders, hips, knees and tail, in what seems to be very dark purple. It’s hard to call a design this abstract over or under-painted, but they seem to have done a good job with the deco.
And he’s done a good job taking down the Vehicons.
When it comes to build quality, the fact that this got played with by me as a child, and is still in one piece should say something. Sure, he’s got translucent plastic all over him, but it’s the durable kind. I dropped him accidentally when I found him in the basement, and his arm, head and tail all flew off, but I was able to easily re-attach them all, and nothing was broken. Guy’s sturdy, mostly. The big trouble spot in this mode is his tail, removable for robot mode. It’s really loose in its port, and falls out at the slightest provocation. Maybe I should give this 24 year old toy the floor polish treatment.
This is constantly happening.
For stability, he’s got four legs, so he hypothetically supports his weight pretty well, but for articulation, he’s got some limitations if you want him to stay standing. His back legs each have four joints (hips, knees, second knees, ankle rockers), with those first two being universal. They’re all on loud, clicky ratchets, too. Up front is where it gets a bit stranger. His shoulders are on swivels, and his left foreleg has an elbow joint, with a bicep swivel. But his right foreleg’s elbow joint is locked, due to gimmickery. And neither paw has any kind of wrist movement (well, the left one does, but it activates a gimmick), so from that angle, he’s a bit limited.
You can get a decent walking pose out of him, after some fiddling.
Meanwhile, around the middle of him, he’s got waist rotation, and a sturdy side-to-side joint that lets him bend like a cat, which I appreciate.
It very slightly reduces the amount of shelf space he takes up.
Oh, and his neck can move side-to-side, and his jaw sort of opens (from half-open to slightly more open), but both are tied to a geared gimmick.
Having a sit.
Here’s the thing: For all these joints, I’m not really inclined to pose him out that much, because doing so risks sacrificing his stability, or making his tail fall off, and none of these joints really make him feel terribly expressive. So most of the time, I just leave him neutrally posed.
It was a challenge to set this up without him falling over.
So, gimmicks, the main selling point of this superlarge toy. To start with, he’s got electronic lights and sounds, and to my great surprise, they all still worked when I tested this guy! (I should really swap out his double-A batteries, if I didn’t in the past). In this mode, the electronics are triggered by pulling a plastic loop on his back outwards.
This loop, and the little turbine above it, control this mode’s gimmicks.
Doing so makes three sculpted tufts of hair on his back raise up, as well as the entire panel they’re mounted on.
The mechanical part of the gimmick.
Green and red LED lights then begin flashing inside his torso, and he gives two growls, with a fairly long pause between them, as his singular sound effect.
The light-up part of the gimmick. Just imagine the two growls.
I kind of wish the sounds were fiercer growls, or used Ian James Corlett’s growls from the show, but still, not bad at all. If you let go of the loop, a green LED inside his torso keeps blinking, until you manually click the plastic loop back into place.
That last, lingering bit of green.
Okay, I said my electronics still work, but I think one of the green LEDs burnt out, and I’m pretty sure his eyes were also supposed to glow.
Packaging says yes, so I guess mine’s burnt out.
Still, it mostly works! And hey, he’s got a clear yellow panel on top of his head, so you can hold it up to a light source for lightpiping action. Speaking of his head, his other major gimmick in this mode is a geared head movement, where you spin this little turbine right above the electronics loop, to move his head from side to side, and make the mouth open and shut a little bit.
It’s a bit less impressive.
Now, there’s gimmicks in both his arms as well, but I’ll save those for his robot mode, since they mess with his ability to stand up in this form. Instead, I’ll direct your attention to the clear red circle on his left arm, where by peering inside, you can see his Spark Crystal, a red marble with the Maximal symbol on it that every Beast Machines toy had, representing their spark. Which I guess he kept in his arm, for some reason.
It’s like the obvious weakpoint of a video game boss.
Anyway, let’s stand this cat up!
Transformation
This is an unbelievably simple transformation, without even the complicated torso inversion of the Mega-class figure.
This warning on the box is a straight-up lie.
Basically, you stand him up (flipping out heel spurs), unlock and rotate a panel at his waist, swap his head around, compress his torso, lock everything in, and you’re done. To be fair, I don’t think a complicated transformation at this scale would be very fun, so I certainly don’t mind. There is a pretty big build quality problem in this mode, though: The panel on his belly almost always falls off of the friction joint when I’m transforming him.
Like this. Oh, and the tail fell off, too.
It pops back on just as easily, but it’s really annoying when it falls out, and I resist the urge to just pop it off in advance, on general principle.
Robot Mode
This isn’t even his final form.
How tall Cheetor is in this mode is a matter of debate, because it depends on how you pose his strange, bent-back legs. The packaging and product photography would have you straighten them into improbably long, stilt-like appendages, but on the show, they stayed bent a little bit, so I tend to pose them that way.
The higher he gets, the riskier standing him up is.
Either way, he’s the tallest Transformer I own, now. When he was released in the year 2000, only the original Fortress Maximus was bigger. I don’t know how Cheetor rates these days, though, he’s probably at least 5th place.
Readers might not own a Victorion, but I figure most of you have owned or seen a Combiner Wars Combiner, and they’re all mostly the same size.
Also, the real answer to the question “how do you pose the legs” is “whatever way lets him stay standing.” This guy’s got black rubber soles on his feet,,,
Yes, I took feet pictures.
…and heel spurs to help him out, but the fact is that he’s unstable on his feet, thanks to his stick legs, and heavy torso. You can get him to stand, but it’s a dicey affair, and I’m always worried about knocking him over with a gentle nudge. It’s a big problem in this mode.
The most stable configuration is also the weirdest.
Sculptwise, they actually did manage to fulfill the brief: This is decently animation-accurate. The barrel chest, the four orbs on his belly, the spikes and wristbands on his arms, his funky legs, all the details actually do line up with his show design. But here’s the thing: The vibes are off. The Cheetah mode got the shape right, and the details wrong, this mode gets the details right, but the shape wrong. Cheetor’s supposed to look dynamic, and the shape of this guy kind of looks awkward, to my eyes.
The intended vibes (c. Unicron.com)
Maybe it’s the headsculpt. Sure, the details are all correct, between the green mechanical jaw, the dome uptop, the general shape of the thing, but man, that face. It’s missing pupils, and he’s got his (lovingly sculpted) teeth out, in a way that sort of reads as a smile, but mostly just looks unsettling. This is some kinda strange cryptid that I’ve let into my home.
He watches you while you sleeeeep.
Since he’s a re-arranged version of the cat mode, there’s nothing new to say about his colors, it’s mostly all the same, though they did make the odd choice to make the dome on his head transparent, with what I think might be an actual brain sculpted inside? Baffling.
Seeking wisdom from the elder, since he’s got a visibly huge brain.
His articulation is also largely the same in this mode, but just like in cat mode, thanks to how precariously he’s balanced, I’m not inclined to fiddle with his legs. He’s lost his waist joint as well, due to the transformation, but I wouldn’t be interested in messing with that either.
I did manage to do some decent “ooo he walkin'” action, but it was a stressful journey.
As for his upper torso, his new head’s got a decent neck swivel. Meanwhile, his arms still swivel at the shoulders, and he’s only got a functional elbow and bicep swivel on his left arm. On the plus side, his four-fingered hands have those fingers individually articulated at the knuckle, with a mitten joint for where they meet the hand, and a single joint for the thumb. So yes, he can flip you off.
Personally, I prefer the Metal Horns/Spider-Man Web Shot.
But the big point here is that, for all his joints, he’s functionally a near-statue, due to how wobbly he is. Maybe I’ll move his arms a little bit at the shoulders, or swivel his head, but otherwise, I’m keeping him posed as flatly and straightly as possible, to keep him standing.
Or putting him in a Glamor Shot Pose, like this.
Now, onto his gimmicks. You can’t access the electronic growl in this mode, but his arm gimmicks are easier to get to.
“Talk to the hand!”
His big one happens when you bend the elbow on his right arm inwards, and then back outwards, in a pump-action motion. Doing so makes a pair of spring-loaded missiles shoot out from his palm, one after the other, as well as triggering the red lights in his chest, and a kind of “loading and shooting” laser sound effect.
The pump-action missile-shot feature is really hard to demonstrate in still life, thanks to how robust the mechanism is, but trust me, it’s very cool.
For all I’ve been grousing, this is actually a really fun, really well-executed gimmick. The shotgun-like motion is satisfying to do, and the whole thing works very well. More Transformers should do this.
Getting the lights on camera this time around was really hard.
The clear orange missiles are sculpted like energy blasts, so he’s fully doing a Dragonball Z-type hand-beam attack.
Beast Machines did this with a lot of its missiles, and I liked it.
His left hand, meanwhile, has a spring-loaded non-electronic gimmick of its own. His hand is, by default, positioned palm-forward, like his missile hand is, and straightening his wrist causes his clawed fingers to extend outwards, like Wolverine’s claws.
He’s also dressed in yellow, has an attitude, and since he’s still intact after my childhood, we can call him immortal, too.
There’s now an extra joint in those fingers, too, if you want to bend them into a hook shape.
Advanced Raising Your Hand With A Question Action.
Now, this is also a neat gimmick, but it causes a big problem, because you need to keep his wrist tilted to keep the claw in, which means he can’t hold his sword in any kind of normal way.
Basically, it’s stuck like this, facing outwards.
That sword is formed from his tail, by popping it out, and folding out the clear orange interior of it. A neat thing they tried to do with it is that he holds it with his fingers like a person would, by threading them through a hole in the hilt, but the way his wrist has to be tilted means he’s kind of holding it awkwardly away from him, instead of in a proper swordfighting pose. The only other real option is to swivel his bicep, and position it sideways, in front of his chest.
My attempt to make this look cool.
There’s no way he can hold it that doesn’t look awkward, and it can’t fit in his missile-shooting hand, either.
Y’know, between the posed legs, and the angle of the sword, this picture makes him look innacurately dynamic.
Speaking of the sword, he’s got the same problem as Mega Cheetor when it comes to show-accuracy. Cheetor really prominently used a pair of scimitars as his signature weapon on the show. This guy only has one sword, and it doesn’t look like the show design anyway, despite the rest of him shooting for animation-accuracy.
Only the tiny one (and a couple other post-show figures) get the weapons right.
Finally, uptop, the clear dome on his head means his eyes have a lightpiping gimmick again.
Terrifying, thanks.
And behind his head, there’s a little tab you can press down on, which makes his terrifying, toothy mouth open up, and his eyes turn from clear orange to painted green.
“….”
“…AAAAAA”
It’s equally terrifying! But also, sometimes I use it to puppeteer him into saying stuff, so who can say if it’s good or bad?
Overall
To be fair, sneaking up on him and going for the ankles is actually a good strategy.
Okay, straight up, this is not a good toy. I have a lot of love for Beast Machines, and its line of oddball figures, but this guy, I can see why he bombed. Sculptwise, he’s a weirdo, awkward, and off-putting. Plus, even where he’s animation-accurate, he doesn’t really feel like the Cheetor from the show, especially since he couldn’t shoot hand-lasers, and didn’t have Wolverine claws, or do any of the other gimmicks here. This version’s this awkward, ungainly thing, and his gimmicks severely impede him, especially in robot mode. He’s unstable in both modes, and in that robot form, can barely stand under his own weight. And he’s too big for his own good. It’s pretty clear why he didn’t sell.
“Good strategy, guys! A shame it didn’t work out.”
But, honestly, I enjoy his strangeness, his messiness. If this were a modern toy, it’d cost a couple hundred dollars, maybe, and would be a gigantic ripoff. But as an odd novelty from back in the day? It’s a fun kind of mess, the way a bad movie is fun, and eBay listings all have him at like 50 Canadian bucks after shipping, on average. I can say this: If you can get one with all his parts and working electronics for cheap, it’s a fun, odd novelty. But know what you’re getting into, and especially make sure you have the free space. I’m not sure if I do, especially since I already have two cats.
I have no clue where I’m going to fit this guy after this.
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