Dave's Beast Machines Rant: Supreme Cheetor This guy's main selling point is that he's big. So I'll say right up front that he stands 18.5" (47cm) tall in robot mode. There. CAPSULE REALLY big. Nice gimmicks, but they can interfere with poseability. Simple transformation, top-heavy robot that has trouble standing. Mildly recommended. Sorry, but I'm not THAT impressed by size alone. $39.99 at Amazon.com, plus $6.70 S&H RANT MAXIMAL: Cheetor Function: Warrior Altmode: Supreme Cheetah Motto: "Act with quickness, and leave the enemy no time to think!" Cheetor continues to mature rapidly. He remains Optimus Primal's strongest supporter, and one of the most formidable warriors against Megatron's Vehicons. His beast mode provides him with cheetah-like speed and agility, matched with amazing endurance and enhanced vision. In robot mode, he becomes an impossible target thanks to a body surface that repels virtually all energy pulses without damage. Cheetor's expertise with his multi- function sword makes Vehicons keep their distance - if they can. STR 8 INT 8 SPD 10 END 9 RNK 9 COUR 9 FRP 6 SKL 8 Avg 8.375 Pretty well-written techspec, I just cleaned up the grammar a bit. The box says his transformation difficulty is between intermediate and advanced, so at least it's not just "Expert because it's expensive." And it's a big box, measuring 16"x9.5"x7" (41cm x 24cm x 18cm). There's a hole through the top so you can reach in and pull the lever activating one of the light and sound gimmicks. EIGHTEEN twist-ties hold Cheetor onto the cardbacking or keep his bits together. And these aren't the usual thin ties seen in other TF toys, they're thick as cooked spaghetti. Took me something like fifteen minutes to extract Cheetor from the box. Unfortunately, despite the fact that they could have put a huge sheet of detailed instructions in the box, they DIDN'T. The instructions are only slightly more detailed than those for a Basic, and there's a lot of unanswered questions, despite the relative simplicity of the transformation. So you'll be seeing a few "UF" markers in this review for my guess at an Undocumented Feature. Cheetor is a big beast, and heavy. He weighs in at about 2.5 pounds, or a little over a kilogram. Most of that mass is in his chest, and he's susceptible to twisting into a fall in both modes. Beast Mode: 19" (48cm) from snout to tail tip, 8" (20cm) high at the shoulder, I've seen housecats about this size, albeit with much larger heads than Cheetor has. He has a rather tiny head for his body, only about 1.5" (4cm) on a side. Cheetor is mainly yellow and transparent yellow plastic, with black spots, and red and green accents (some opaque, some transparent). Hip and shoulder joints ratchet, as do all the joints on his rear legs. His front right leg stays straight due to a gimmick's spring, but his left front leg is fully poseable. His head can swing back and forth on its own, or can be manipulated by a dial on his back. His jaw moves up and down as the head swings, as with the previous Cheetor. Finally, like the previous Cheetor, he has a hinge in his waist so that he can twist his spine back and forth. I suppose his tail can sort of wag, spinning in its socket. Cheetor has red "cuffs" above all four paws, and while they're free to move a bit, I don't see much purpose for them beyond breaking up the monotonous yellow. His general design is technoorganic, with both molded furry bits and machinelike patterns. Being four-legged, you'd think he'd be pretty stable standing. Unfortunately, there's just enough give in his joints that if you aren't at least a little careful in posing him, he'll twist over and fall. And while I'm covering flaws, the rearmost panel on his torso is only snap-on, and tends to snap off pretty easily. It really needed a pin to hold it in place. Now, on to the gimmicks. As previously mentioned, he has a dial (that looks like a turbine) on his back, and if you spin it, Cheetor's head swivels back and forth, his jaw opening and closing. This gimmick only works in beast mode. Pulling back on a loop of plastic behind the dial triggers Cheetor's main sound and light gimmick. The fur on his back rises (mechanically, it goes down when you let go of the trigger), red and green LEDs start flashing in his head and body, and there's a roaring sound effect. Well, sort of roaring. Almost more like scraping. The red LEDs only flash during the sound effects, about 3-5 seconds. The green LEDs keep going for another 25 seconds after this. It's also possible to just activate the greens by partially pulling the trigger, but it's very hard to do this, usually you end up setting off the whole show. Additionally, his eyes can do the normal glowing trick without activating the LEDs. The trigger for the LEDs is covered up in robot mode. Cheetor's left paw contains an extending claw gimmick. As soon as you straighten the paw out, the claws shoot out on a transparent yellow shaft. There's no trigger for this, so you have to keep the paw bent back to avoid launching the claw. The claws shoot out a little over 2" (5cm). Cheetor's right front leg contains a missile launcher. Bending the limb at the elbow all the way triggers an LED light and sound gimmick using just the red LEDs and making a sort of metallic launching sound. The missiles stored in his right foreleg fire one at a time, a sort of pump action shotgun gimmick. While this is certainly an interesting way of firing the missiles, it also pretty much prevents the limb from being posed any way but straight. A launch button would probably have been better. This gimmick is meant mainly for robot mode, but since it's usable here and impacts poseability here (Cheetor can't be posed in an "about to pounce" stance thanks to it), I mention it now. The spark is inside the left front shoulder, and looks really tiny. They should have made an oversized spark for this toy. Transformation: Pretty simple. Stand him up, straighten the legs, swap heads and fiddle with the torso plates. The lower one will almost definitely pop off and need to be replaced. There's some neat detail of rocket engines inside the other torso plate which is only visible during transformation. UF: There's some funky tabs inside the heels which serve to lock the feet into one range of motion in beast mode. If unfolded and flipped up, they sort of "platform shoe" Cheetor's feet, giving him more boot volume. The spurs seem to be purely decorative, despite the instructions showing them turning into heels. They simply cannot go down far enough to be useful heels, and they don't lock down anyway. I think they're mainly there so that this toy resembles the Mega Cheetor toy a little more. Also, the instructions say to shorten his legs, but it really doesn't make any difference if you don't. Robot Mode: 18.5" (47cm) tall with totally straight legs (if you collapse the leg extensions), about a foot of that is LEG. You can put him in a bent leg pose like the Mega Cheetor, sacrificing some of this height advantage, but I found that he's really hard to keep standing with bent legs, as the torsion forces take over. The straight legs look a little weird(er), but most of the forces are straight up and down, so he stays standing. Cheetor loses the waist poseability once you collapse his spine down for robot mode, but the fingers become useful. Each of his three finger claws on each hand moves independently on a hinge, and the thumb swings back and forth. This gives him a pretty firm grip on his sword, although his arm- based gimmicks prevent him from holding it in any good poses. It's easy to accidentally trigger the shooting claw and make him throw his sword to the ground. Heh...auto-surrendering mode. His right hand can make a very good fist, and also totally block the missiles from launching. This is a nice UF, as it helps avoid accidental launch. His knees only bend a little bit, although if you want posing you can use his "upper knees" as well. And any bent knee pose will fall over pretty quickly anyway. Cheetor's head turns around nicely, but isn't hooked into the dial gimmick. It has a lever on the back, though, which opens the mouth and makes the orange eyes turn green (green-painted areas are slid into view). The top of his head is clear light yellow with black spots, showing an orangey "brain" underneath. When the lever isn't pushed, his eyes glow orange under a strong light. The green eyes do not glow. Cheetor is a lot more stable in terms of things falling off or not in this mode, mainly because the problem panel in his abdomen is better braced by stuff around it. Cheetor's sword, formed from his beast tail, is somewhat disappointing. It has a clear yellow and red blade that swings out from the tail housing, but the end result looks kinda goofy, and swings back together on its own with little encouragement. Most of Cheetor's spots are on his back side in this mode (back of legs, back of arms, etc), so he looks a little bland from the front. Finally, there's rubber pads on the bottoms of his feet, which help a lot in keeping him standing. No worry of his legs sliding apart on the tabletop, just have to worry about the whole thing twisting around and falling. If it does start to fall and you grab the legs, the body will collapse around your hands in a loud ratcheting of limbs unable to handle the strain. Overall: Well, it's big, and has some nice gimmicks. But it's disappointingly simplistic yet also fragile for such a large toy. There's no alternate transformations like with a Vehicon, and this kind of size would have left a LOT of room for the imagination. Still, that's blaming the toy for what it isn't, rather than for what it is, and what it is has faults as well. It's not too bad, but there's a lot of things which could have been done better, especially in the arms. If you're a fan of size, you probably want to get this, but otherwise, there's better ways to drop $40. Like getting all the Digivolving Digimon. }-> Dave Van Domelen, had been planning to have his Whisper kitbash (12" tall Vehicon) grappling with Supreme Cheetor, but Whisper can barely even reach high enough to punch Cheetor in the...butt.