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Series: Beast Machines
Allegiance: Maximal
Categories: Mega
Year: 2000
Quick action equals quick victory!
Formerly hot-headed and inexperienced, Cheetor is growing up fast on Cybertron; still remains Optimus Primal's strongest supporter in the Techno-Organic war against Megatron and his Vehicons. His beast mode offers cheetah-like speed, agility, and endurance. Sharp, powerful claws and jaws. Robot mode has enhanced, frictionless body surface that causes energy pulses to glide right off. Cheetor can accelerate particles around aerodynamic form to create a vacuum useful in knocking down opponents.
Robot Mode: Let's tackle the area where Beast Machines usually fares the worst first: Resemblance to the TV counterpart. Cheetor here actually does rather well in that regard, at least in comparison with other Beast Machines figures. While he's far from a perfect duplicate to his TV incarnation, he is recognisable as the same character, which is saying a lot for a Beast Machines figure.
Cheetor is extremely posable, but he can't really put that posability to good use, because he has a hard time standing. His feet are very small and due to his height, he is barely stable. His multi-jointed legs make it very hard to put him in a solid stance. If you want to make it even more difficult, pull out his legs, make him taller still.
Cheetor's only weapon is the tail of his beast mode. Sadly he's lacking his signature swords from the TV series. The tail doesn't really do much except connect to his hand and hang there. As far as other features or gimmicks go, Cheetor has a Maximal spark crystal in his shoulder and, as I mentioned before, you can pull out the legs. That's pretty much it.
So the bottom line is: Not the worst Beast Machines figure, recognisable as Cheetor, but sadly lacking in robot mode.
Alternate Mode: Once again Cheetor transforms into a cheetah, a techno-organic one in this case. It's really just the robot going down on all fours and switching his robot head for a beast head (which takes far longer than the rest of the transformation). The cheetah doesn't look bad, but the proportions are rather exaggerated. Extremely long limbs, very slim lower body, powerful chest, you get the picture.
Cheetor's beast head looks pretty good and all in all I like his beast mode better than the robot mode. He looks like you'd imagine a robot-animal fusion of a cheetah to look, enhanced for maximum speed. Still, far from the best version of Cheetor out there.
Remarks: In my mind Cheetor remains one of the greatest developing characters in the whole of the Transformers mythos, but that doesn't change the fact that the Beast Machines version of this character is far from the best. It doesn't look too bad, but with the exaggerated proportions and the unstable stance, he doesn't really have much to offer in terms of play value.
So the bottom line is: If you're looking for a good Beast Machines Cheetor, take a look at the Titanium version. I got this one here rather cheap at the B.O.T.S. convention and can't honestly recommend him unless you get him pretty cheap as well.
Rating: C-
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