Dave's Transformers Cyberverse Rant: Deluxe Cheetor

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Transformers Cyberverse Rant: Deluxe wave 4

Cheetor (cheetah)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cyberverse/Deluxe4

That's it. The rest of the wave is repackaged Soundwave, Thunderhowl,
and Grimlock. I didn't look closely, but I suspect the BAF pieces were
missing from the repacks.


CAPSULE

$20 price point.

Cheetor: Okay if cheap-feeling robot, typically flawed beast mode, has
Energon Armor pieces that are kinda meh. I mean, $20 doesn't get as much
these days, I know, but this doesn't feel like a Deluxe. Mildly
recommended.


RANT

Packaging: New low-waste boxes with no plastic in the windows and the
figure plastic-tied to a cardstock backing. Given how many headless Space
Jam figures I see lately, I suspect a lot of fourth wave Deluxe figures will
be missing whatever pieces can be torn off and pocketed.
The boxes are the same size as previous Deluxes, but with the upper half
of the front totally open. These are done in the Dinobots Unite trade dress
with a lot of green to go along with the yellow and black. The left side (as
seen from looking at the front) has a Dinobots Unite panel showing dino modes
of (top to bottom) Swoop, Grimlock, Slug, Snarl, and Sludge. The right side
has somewhat bad art of the robot mode, while the bottom front has art of the
beast mode. The back has renders of the two modes, and a callout with a
mirror-flipped version of the beast art and "SABER STRIKE" as an epithet.

Note, where the first wave of post-BAF Deluxes focused on Fire Blasts
and other weapon effects, Cheetor gets Energon Armor bits.

Y'know, the original selling point of this class was "Cyberverse
characters with Generations quality," and while it never quite lived up to
that, this toy really doesn't even try. It's better than a Warrior, which is
damning with faint praise already, and feels like a knockoff rather than a
real Transformers toy. On closer inspection, it does still have a lot of
pinned joints, but it's the pieces that pop off that jump out at you.
Sometimes literally. A few crucial flaws can make the entire toy feel
cheap.


AUTOBOT: CHEETOR
Assortment: F2758/E7053
Altmode: Robot Cheetah
Transformation Difficulty: 11 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Epithet/Gimmick: Saber Strike
Function: Guardian of the Allspark

Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one each on the claw weapons, one on
the beast mask. The daggers are just held in by push-out loops in the
corners of the tray, but they're strong enough that it's nontrivial to remove
the daggers without opening the box. The claws and helmet can be removed
without cutting the ties if you tug hard enouhg, but they're below the window
and it's hard to remove them without just tearing the box open. By contrast,
even removing all the ties doesn't free the robot, as the forelimbs are
stuffed behind the card and it takes some work to get the figure out without
ripping the card or popping off parts of the toy.

Robot Mode: Well, it's recognizably Cheetor, although with a really high
popped collar that serves to hide the robot head in beast mode. It keeps
with the more robotic beastmode aesthetic from the show, so lots of flat
surfaces and angular bits, very few smooth curves. They decided to give him
paired blades in homage to Beast Machines Cheetor, although they're more like
long knives than swords. There's lots of hollowness, particularly the
forearms (inner faces open) and boots (rear face open).
5.5" (14cm) tall in golden yellow, bronze, medium blue and neon green.
With the shoulder armor in place, the blue bits are nicely balanced, being on
the shoulders, face, pelvis, and shins. All of the armor pieces are clear
neon green plastic. Dull bronze plastic is used for the abdomen, beast lower
legs on the backpack, biceps, fists, and hip joints. Everything else is
golden yellow plastic.
There's bronze paint (significantly shinier than the plastic) on the
helmet forehead tablet, the back of the collar, the tops of the forearms, and
the fronts of the thighs. Black is used for the various beast spot patterns
on the chest, right shoulder front, outer faces of both shoulders, beast
front hips on the backpack, and on the outer faces of the boots. Rectangular
details (three horizontal thick stripes) on the thigh fronts are also painted
black. Gloss blue plastic is used for the non-claw parts of the shoulder
armor, the center of the pelvis, and the shins including kneepads. The face
is painted a slightly lighter matte blue. There's extensive canary yellow
paint on the "shield" (beast head armor) and the non-blade parts of the
knives. The eyes (both robot and the beast eyes on the chest) are painted
neon green, and there's red printed Autobot symbols on the front of the left
shoulder and on the forehead of the shield.
The neck is a restricted ball joint, but if he turns his head too much
he can't see past his own collar. Smooth swivel waist, ball joint shoulders,
upper arm swivels, hinge elbows, ball joint wrists. The hips are ball joints
and there's an upper thigh swivel mostly hidden inside the thigh, hinge
knees, double hinged ankles for both directions of bend. Other than the side
to side hinge inside the feet, all the hinges are pinned. There's also a
pinned hinge mid-shin for transformation purposes, but it bends pretty easily
when you don't want it to. The tail is on a non-pinned but very secure
hinge, and cannot be (easily) removed to use as a weapon. It will swing
forwards between the legs in a move that might not have been well-thought-
out on the designers' part. (The tail is only 4.5mm in diameter, so he can
only be held loosely as a brawling weapon.)
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, and there's 3mm sockets in the front top of
each backpack-leg hip. There's also a 3mm socket on the underside of the
pelvis.
The energon armor accessories include two shoulderpads, a shield, and
two blades. The shoulderpads are a little under 1.5" (3.5cm) long, about
half claw, and use thin tabs to go into the stress slots on the outer faces
of the shoulders. Annoyingly, they cannot be placed on the arms as weapons,
the wrist stress slots are too wide and the tab is too small to be held in a
fist. Major missed design opportunity there. The shield is very obviously a
mask for beast mode, and it attaches via the wrist stress slot...so it can't
go on the shoulder. It has big saberteeth left unpainted neon green clear
plastic, and is somewhat reminiscent of a Zoids Liger design. The blades are
a bit under 2.5" (6.5cm) long, with rectangular grips compatible with 5mm
sockets, plus small 3mm pegs on the sides of the hilt (one on each blade,
mirror images of each other). They're curvy, but not scimitar-like. More of
a fantasy long dagger shape, like some of the more whimsical elvish blades
done for Lord of the Rings.

Undocumented Feature: The pegs on the sides of the blade hilts that are
used to attach them to the beast mode also let them store on those same
sockets in robot mode, either folded up as wings or folded down to be out of
the way. I supposed you could also store the shoulder armor on the beast
paws in back too, if awkwardly. No good alternative storage for the "shield"
though.
Undocumented for a VERY good reason is the fact you can attach one of
the blades to the underside of the pelvis using its 3mm peg. "If you have a
curvature that's not normal, you may have PD...."

Transformation: It suffers from the classic Cheetor problem of "what do
we do with the robot legs?" Kingdom Cheetor managed to thread that needle
reasonably well, but like most other Cheetors this has a sort of "shrug and
hope no one pays attention to the back half" attitude. At least it manages
the robot arms better than most, tucking the forearms up into the torso to at
least approximate a thick chest and narrow waist. There's little pegs on the
forearms that don't actually go into anything, they're just guides to help
position the forearms so that the chest sides can lock into place properly in
the wrist stress slots. They also go into slots in the abdomen sides, in
theory. I had a hard time getting both in, there might have been a minor
mold defect. Anyway, a lot more thought put into the front half of the beast
than to the back half.
Going back to robot mode, you need to make sure to collapse the spine
enough that the beast mouth grabs onto a tab on the abdomen and more or less
stabilizes the torso. It's still a little wiggly, but acceptable.

Beast Mode: It's not as much of a flat cat as the Elite Class Cheetor,
and if you ignore the rear legs (which the designers clearly did) there's not
too much hollowness. The chest is thick like Beast Machines Cheetor's, if a
bit too angular and obviously made of arms.
Total length depends on how you deal with the hind legs, but the snout
to tail tip length is 5.75" (14.5cm). Most of the blue gets hidden on the
underside, making the armor claws the only significant blue bits. The only
new plastic is the beast lower jaw, which is dull bronze plastic. No paint
apps not already covered.
The jaw is hinged, but the head does not otherwise have articulation.
The front hips are restricted ball joints, and the false knees are hinges (no
real attempt to even fake the appearance of the true knees). All the robot
lower body articulation remains in the rear end, but it's pretty useless
because there's no good way to pose the rear legs.
The shield goes on the head, obviously. The shoulderpads go into slots
on the forepaws (not very solidly, unfortunately), and the blades go onto the
inner faces of the front hips. The overall effect reminds me of the Coeurl
from Final Fantasy XIV.
When trying to remove the armor mask from the beast head, the entire
head is WAY more likely to come off than the helmet is, thanks to the
relevant hinges being unpinned. There's a three-hinge assembly connecting
the head to the neck, and only one of the hinges is pinned. Carefully grab
the ears (which stick out through gaps in the mask) when removing the mask.

Overall: Most Cheetors get tripped up trying to make a good beast mode,
and this is no exception. The "flat cat" Elite Class is more show-accurate
in outline, but looks much worse in detail than this one. Next to Kingdom
Cheetor, though, it's a total loser. The robot mode is okay, if a little
unstable. And while it has loads of pinned joints, it really doesn't feel
like a Deluxe, more of a slightly better Warrior.


Dave Van Domelen, got the Dino Combiners $25 sets as well, but they're
not good enough to be worth reviews, they just got brief comments on the
website.