Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 28, 2009 16:50:02 GMT
Cheetor
Universe Cheetor is a complete redesign of the original Beast Wars Cheetor. This new version is larger than the original deluxe, mainly due to it's increased length. The neck looks a little long for my liking and shoulders a bit too pronounced above the back. All four legs bend at the hip, knee & ankle. The head includes an action feature - pulling back on a tab on his back causes the mouth to open and the eyes to change from their normal green to red - a tribute to the many colours of eye the original Cheetor was issued with (the other colour eye the original Cheetor had was blue).
TF: Pull his front shoulders up so the top of the back comes up revealing the robot shoulders folded up inside. Fold these and the panels they're on out to the sides then rotate the panel round so the slots in the panels match the tabs on the side of the Cheetah neck. Push slot and tab together. Fold lower front legs under the robot arms and flip the head up from the top of the neck. Pull the legs down from under the tail. Flip the panel covering the underside of the robot legs up and fold the plates on the side of it out & back. Push into the underside of the beast neck - the side panels have tabs that should rest in a slot on either side of the body. Straighten the rear legs out to form the robot legs and fold the lower portion of leg & the feet out to form the feet.
The weapons for the robot mode are contained with in the toy: The side panels on the legs fold out to reveal Cheetor's throwing discs - packaged separately in the bubble - these turn to extend three blades. The tail pulls off to become a club. So no guns like the original Cheetor or swords like the BM version then ?
(Just starting to warm up now ....)
The robot has a head that turns - similar shape to the original Cheetor helmet but the faceplate is now completely cat like loosing most of the robot features of the original toy. The shoulders are ball jointed, there's a bicep swivel just bellow the shoulder and a bending elbow after far too short an upper arm. The lower arm is the right sort of size but is hampered by the beast kibble tucked underneath it - it projects back so far that combined with the shortness of the upper arm it makes the bicep swivel near useless. A longer upper arm would solve this problem and look better aesthetically. However the kibble doe mean you can't straighten Cheetor's arms out. Then we've got the shoulders - attached so loosely to the body of the toy that every time you move the arms in any way they come away from the body. And the panel's they're connected to stick out colliding with the kibble under the arms. Ball jointed hips, bend knee & ankle complete the articulation - but the legs themselves create more problems being far too long and skinny compare with the rest of the toy and especially the arms. Then you look at the toy side on and see the huge backpack the toy has consisting of everything from the rear beast hips forward. The gimmick still works on the beast head in this mode but it part of the problem because the toy has to be fixed between trigger and head which means you can't fold the majority of the backpack up.
The beast mode is decent looking and passable. The robot is a complete joke. Avoid at all costs and track down the original Beast Wars version.
They'll be Tigatron & Shadow Panther repaints I'm sure but I won't be buying them.
Universe Cheetor is a complete redesign of the original Beast Wars Cheetor. This new version is larger than the original deluxe, mainly due to it's increased length. The neck looks a little long for my liking and shoulders a bit too pronounced above the back. All four legs bend at the hip, knee & ankle. The head includes an action feature - pulling back on a tab on his back causes the mouth to open and the eyes to change from their normal green to red - a tribute to the many colours of eye the original Cheetor was issued with (the other colour eye the original Cheetor had was blue).
TF: Pull his front shoulders up so the top of the back comes up revealing the robot shoulders folded up inside. Fold these and the panels they're on out to the sides then rotate the panel round so the slots in the panels match the tabs on the side of the Cheetah neck. Push slot and tab together. Fold lower front legs under the robot arms and flip the head up from the top of the neck. Pull the legs down from under the tail. Flip the panel covering the underside of the robot legs up and fold the plates on the side of it out & back. Push into the underside of the beast neck - the side panels have tabs that should rest in a slot on either side of the body. Straighten the rear legs out to form the robot legs and fold the lower portion of leg & the feet out to form the feet.
The weapons for the robot mode are contained with in the toy: The side panels on the legs fold out to reveal Cheetor's throwing discs - packaged separately in the bubble - these turn to extend three blades. The tail pulls off to become a club. So no guns like the original Cheetor or swords like the BM version then ?
(Just starting to warm up now ....)
The robot has a head that turns - similar shape to the original Cheetor helmet but the faceplate is now completely cat like loosing most of the robot features of the original toy. The shoulders are ball jointed, there's a bicep swivel just bellow the shoulder and a bending elbow after far too short an upper arm. The lower arm is the right sort of size but is hampered by the beast kibble tucked underneath it - it projects back so far that combined with the shortness of the upper arm it makes the bicep swivel near useless. A longer upper arm would solve this problem and look better aesthetically. However the kibble doe mean you can't straighten Cheetor's arms out. Then we've got the shoulders - attached so loosely to the body of the toy that every time you move the arms in any way they come away from the body. And the panel's they're connected to stick out colliding with the kibble under the arms. Ball jointed hips, bend knee & ankle complete the articulation - but the legs themselves create more problems being far too long and skinny compare with the rest of the toy and especially the arms. Then you look at the toy side on and see the huge backpack the toy has consisting of everything from the rear beast hips forward. The gimmick still works on the beast head in this mode but it part of the problem because the toy has to be fixed between trigger and head which means you can't fold the majority of the backpack up.
The beast mode is decent looking and passable. The robot is a complete joke. Avoid at all costs and track down the original Beast Wars version.
They'll be Tigatron & Shadow Panther repaints I'm sure but I won't be buying them.
