Dave's Titanium Series Rant: 6" Series 6 War Within Fallen Cheetor (Beast Machines) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/6Ti6 This is the first wave to be pretty much only available online and in specialty shops...months after their release I still haven't heard any major retailer sightings. I got mine from hasbrotoyshop.com, which unfortunately is already out of stock (mind you, these arrived just before the big movie rush, so they sat in a box for nearly two months before getting reviewed). [Update: Apparently at least one Wal-Mart got these in.] CAPSULES War Within Fallen: Decent general design, but some ugly jointing and unacceptably floppy panels. Good color scheme (mainly talking about the internal fire effects, not the None More Black). Main attraction, though, is that it's likely the only toy that will ever be made for this particular character. Mildly recommended. $15 price point, but don't expect to be able to find it for anywhere near that. Cheetor: Nothing too flashy, just a good solid show-accurate representation of Beast Machines Cheetor that looks good in both modes. Recommended. Ditto on the price. RANTS 6" Titaniums are, as I type this, dead. Nothing after wave 5 has even hit stores other than specialty shops, and while BotCon showed a few more waves of recolors beyond what's in the catalog included here, plans for new molds of Cosmos, Arcee and Shockwave never made it past the hand-made prototype stage. Stores just didn't like 'em. I managed to get this wave online, and War Within Megatron from wave 7, but that's probably it for me. G1 Ultra Magnus is total scalper bait and I doubt it'll be worth the markup, and I'm not interested in any of the recolors. Kinda sad about Magnus, it's his first non-repaint toy in a long time, after piles of Prime recolors, and it's not hitting stores. Ah well. Packaging: Standard 6" Titanium boxes, each with the other in the co-sell spot. Has a new catalog featuring 6" waves 4-8 (wave 7 is G1 Ultra Magnus and War Within Megatron, Wave 8 is pure recolor, with War Within Ultra Magnus (WWi Prime) and Sunstorm (WWi Thundercracker)) on one side, and 3" Assortment 3 (including the as yet unreleased Soundwave, Sunstreaker (Alt Sideswipe recolor), Cliffjumper (G1 Bumblebee recolor) and Nemesis Prime (WWi Prime recolor)). My guess is that we're not going to see the unreleased 3" figures, or at least not for a while, since the line has shifted to movie characters. The twist ties continue to be the really nasty tough and skinny ones that feel like they're cutting into your fingers if you try to undo them by hand. THE FALLEN Unique Feature: Invulnerable to almost any damage. WAR WITHIN FALLEN forgot his eral name long ago. It didn't matter. It was a name given to him by his creator - the one he betrayed. It was a relic of the time before he had come to see the truth. The truth of UNICRON. Created as one of the original 13 TRANSFORMERS to serve as a protector of CYBERTRON, FALLEN has always been a creature of chaos and degradation. His original purpose was to oversee the stately running down of the universal clock, the ordered tick of universal balance from energy to entropy, the slow and total collapse that heralds a new creation - for what are creation and life without dissolution and death? He knew his purpose only too well, and became obsessed with the end of all things. Intrigued by the dark sciences, he came in contact with UNICRON, and fell under the evil planet's thrall. He exists now for one purpose alone: the destruction of the Seal of Primus and the release of UNICRON into the universe. He lives only so that one day he might witness the last star in the universe wink out, and eternal ending fall. STR * INT * SPD 9 END * RNK 10 COUR 10 FRB 10 SKL 10 Avg * * - infinite I like that he got his own faction symbol, based on the design of his head, with flames coming out. The symbol is both on his nametag and on the packaging. On the tag, the symbol is in black lines with eyes and head flames that shade from slightly orangey yellow to canary yellow. His instructions have red as the highlight color, not purple. Major tangle of barbed wire holding him in. Three go through to the back of the inner cardboard tray, five more only go to the blister tray, and two more hold the backpack pieces to a secondary tray. The inner ones are, naturally, snipped off really close so they CAN'T be undone without pliers or, better yet, wire cutters. You know, the people who are responsible for the 6" Titanium twist-ties really hate all humanity with a burning passion that the Fallen would respect. Main Weakness: Man, where to start? I suppose the worst problem is the tank tread panels, specifically the rear third of each panel, which is totally floppy and has no way to secure, in EITHER mode! The panels also pop off when you try to transform back to robot mode. Other weaknesses include the shoulder joints, which are just pegs. [Update: A few layers of clear acrylic varnish on the panel hinges does seem to have done the job, more or less.] Robot Mode: 6" (15cm) tall at the head, 7.5" (19cm) at the top of the backpack. Cleverly, the tread panels of the backpack have flames molded and painted on them, so it looks a little less like a backpack from the front. 11.75 ounces (332g). The chest, shoulderpads and boots are die cast. Everything else is black plastic (soft on the head, hands and guns, othewise rigid). Gunmetal gray paint is on the gun barrels, faceplate and "tiara", toes, some gun details on the shoulders and shoulderpads, abdomen grates and the guns atop his backpack pieces. He has yellow shading to orange flame coloring on his eyes, the grilles on the chest, thighs, kneecaps and left shin, plus on the flames molded into the front of his backpack pieces. The "internal furnace" effect is very well done, and this generally looks very good so long as you look only from the front. The head turns, the waist ratchet turns (45 degrees per click). Universal shoulders, also 45 degrees per ratchet click both ways. There's molding that looks like an upper arm swivel, but no actual swivel (and forcing it to make sure made the arm fly off energetically). Smooth hinge elbows, smooth swivels below the elbows and smooth swivel wrists. Universal joint hips (45 degree clicks foreward and back, 18 degree clicks out to the sides), ratchet swivel above each knee (45 degrees a click). The knees ratchet either forward or back one click, about 20 degrees. The toes point for transformation, but it's not a useful point of articulation. There's a second "waist" that's locked in robot mode, but gives a little wiggle room. His two guns are meant to be held as pistols, but can also peg onto the forearms (where they go in vehicle mode), although they're hollow and look bad unless you swap which side they go on. Okay, the waist is just a peg too, and pops off if you try to bend both legs at once. The joints that hold the bottom panels of the backpack on are made of a different, slippery plastic. Presumably for ease of assembly, since they have to be snapped into place, but it also means they really don't hold position worth a damn. Transformation: Fold backpack down into treads, turn legs around 180 degrees at waist, fold legs back between the tread panels (and put waist back together if necessary). Pegs on the panels lock onto the boots, but there's only nubs between the boots for minimal stability, no actual pegs. Turn the head 180 degrees and fold down. Arms come together behind the back as Vehicle Mode: 5.25" (13.5cm) long, the turret is nearly that long, being made of his arms and torso. The turret is a little gappy at the shoulder joints. The turret rotates on a ratchet with 30 degree clicks, but does not elevate. Most of the flame details are hidden in this mode, but the chest grates become, oh, backblast vents for the guns in the turret or something. There's gunmetal paint on the false wheels of the tread panels, as well as on the quad-barrel cannons at the front of each tread. There's real black plastic wheels in the tread panels, it rolls along okay, but the floppy rear panels hurt a lot. The right rear panel has a printed "faction" symbol in silver and yellow-to-orange with a silver border. Again, it looks decent, if you don't have to touch it. Overall: While it's cool that a character who only appeared in a couple issues of a comic from a defunct company got a toy, and the color work is excellent, the actual engineering is horrible. I'm not sure this can even be kitbashed into shape. A pity, too, since I've grown to like the toy so much as a character in Insecticomics. MAXIMAL: CHEETOR Unique Feature: Focused particle acceleration bursts generated by high speeds. Like every young AUTOBOT and MAXIMAL speedster before and since, CHEETOR was once a study in naivete. Years of bitter experience in the BEAST WARS have left him hardened, without the bright-eyed curiosity that cuased him and the other MAXIMAL warriors so many problems. Seeing CYBERTRON under the thumb of MEGATRON and its population enslaved has left him grim, nearly crushing the former good humor out of his spirit. He has turned every bit the predator, and focused all his energies on the liberation of his fellow robots. The conversion of OPTIMUS PRIMAL into some kind of strange religious figure by the Oracle has done nothing to help. CHEETOR believes in his friend and leader, but the word of a mythical computer is not enough for him to go on a crusade. For CHEETOR, the liberation of the sparks of the citizens of CYBERTRON is all that really matters. While OPTIMUS PRIMAL is distracted by prophecies and spirit-quests, CHEETOR is forced to step into the unlooked for role of leader in the hope of bringing about the salvation of his kind. STR 8 INT 7 SPD 10 END 9 RNK 7 COUR 9 FRB 6 SKL 8 Avg 8 Heh. So the Beast Wars killed Cheetor's innocence. You get the impression that the bio writer didn't much care for Beast Machines, though. Like the Fallen, he gets a new faction symbol mold for his nametag, in this case the Beast Machines Maximal symbol, in red on the tag and in green on the box. His highlight color in the instructions is green. Only one through-tie, four more just to the blister. At least these weren't snipped off, and I could remove them by hand. Little shields are rubber banded around the hands to keep the swords in place. Main Weakness: None. Oh, it's not a perfect toy or anything, but its faults lie in perhaps not trying hard enough, not in any failures. Robot Mode: 5.5" (14cm) tall, a bit puny for this line. Also kinda light at 6.25 ounces (178g), although he feels heavier thanks to a higher percentage of metal. The upper body, the upper arms and the thighs are primarily metal. Everything else is metallic golden yellow plastic (soft on the swords and tail, otherwise rigid) or bright yellow plastic (some of the joints). There's green, purple, black and red paint accents, and a good golden yellow match on the ZAMAC parts. The claws are purple, as are the cheetah spots, and the eyes (both modes) are red. A red Maximal symbol is painted on the abdomen. There's some kibble, mainly the beast neck and head hanging down the back, and the forelegs sticking behind the upper arms, but it's not too bad. Frankly, it's the most show-like robot mode for Beast Machines Cheetor, beating both Mega and Supreme. (Night Slash Cheetor is a better toy than this in general terms, but is a major departure from the show model.) Articulation is pretty good, if limited in range. Head and waist both turn smoothly. Hips and shoulders are slightly restricted ball joints. The elbows are hinged, but because there's not a separate hinge for the beast forelegs the arms can't straighten all the way. The knees are ratchet hinges but only have a range of two clicks ("almost straight" to about 90 degrees bent). The feet are double hinged (toe and heel spur independently). None of the joints is loose, and despite the restrictions on many of them, a wide range of dynamic poses is possible. His twin scimitars are rubbery plastic, with blades 2" (5cm) from root to tip, green paint around the hilt and red at the tips. The can either be held in the hands or attached to pegs on the hips. Transformation: Head tucks into chest and is covered by beast head. Arms fold up all the way, closing the shell on the lower arms over them. Heel spurs become rear paws, legs swivel around. Cheetor transformations tend to be like that. :) Beast Mode: 5.5" (14cm) from snout to tail tip. A little linebacker-y for a lithe cat, but the robot mode was clearly the priority here. Still, looks pretty good. It can't hold the swords in its mouth (well, okay, it can hole one sticking straigh out, but I mean both at once, sticking out to the sides). Not a lot of useful joints in this mode. The four hip/shoulder joints are still there, but no other joints in the forelegs. The positioning of the rear legs doesn't allow them to make much use of the knee or ankle joints. The head turns and can nod up and down a little on a very restricted ball joint. The tail's not articulated, but it is soft plastic. Overall: Nothing too fancy, but BMac Cheetor did have one of the simplest designs of any Cheetor in terms of transformation. The real strength here is that it looks good, looks right. It took them the better part of a decade, but we finally got a transforming show-accurate BMac Cheetor. Worth picking up. Dave Van Domelen, still waiting for the varnish to dry on his Fallen fix (try two...first attempt didn't do enough).