Dave's Beast Machines Rant: Cheetor Tankor(r) Yep, the toy is Tankor on the box, but Tankorr in earlier promotional materials, and also on the instructions. My guess is that someone had the bright idea of making both Megas end in "-or" and dropped the extra r from Tankorr. Since this is just a transliteration from the original Cybertronian, either form is acceptable. }-> CAPSULES Cheetor: Big. That's the main thing this cat has going for it. But also spindly and suffering from joints either too stiff or too loose. Transformation is better than expected, but still not great. Ambitious design, but it doesn't quite work out. Very mildly recommended. $14.76 at Wal-Mart. Tankorr: Bulky but kinda short. Transformation is pretty simple, but there's loads of gimmicks. Recommended. $14.76 at Wal-Mart. DISCLAIMER Okay, I've said it lots of other places, but I think it's necessary to say it here, and in every review where I cover toys that are of "show characters." Hasbro's (Takara's) design teams came up with finalized designs for the toys first, then gave them to Mainframe to work from. Mainframe then modified the designs to fit their own aesthetics, often completely changing the toy around. Thus, when a toy and the show don't match, blame it on the animators for ignoring the toy design. The only blame that can really be laid at Hasbro's feet in this regards choice of colors, since colors can be messed with very late in the production. So they chose to go with designs not quite "show-accurate" for the color schemes. But everything else is a case of the show not being "toy-accurate." RANT: Packaging: Megas are packed in the same size box as the BW Megas, twist-tied to a cardboard backer that continues the blue and white pattern that dominates the outside of the box. Cheetor's bust adorns the front and top of both boxes. The techspecs continue to use photos of the toys, but in this case the text is wrapped around a larger picture than with the Basics. A touched-up CG picture of each character is also on the back of the box, although Tankorr's pic is mostly covered up (probably to keep from pointing out the discrepancies between show and toy). MAXIMAL: Cheetor Altmode: Cheetah Function: Warrior Motto: "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 [well, he does for a couple of episodes, anyway]. His beast mode offers cheetah-like speed, agility and endurance [note: cheetahs have pretty lousy endurance, they're sprinters]. 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. [And he has a sword too, eh?] STR 8 INT 7 SPD 10 END 9 RNK 7 COUR 9 FRP 6 SKL 8 Avg 8.25 Twist-tie count: 8 connecting it to the package, plus 2 more keeping the torso together. Beast Mode: A freakishly elongated figure. In a reasonable crouch, it's 7" (18cm) long from snout to rear heels, and 4" (10cm) tall at the shoulder. Mostly yellow with black spots, clear and chrome green accents, and gold chrome accents, plus some bits of red (eyes and faction symbol). Red spark crystal is protected behind a clear colorless plastic hemisphere on his right front shoulder. Cheetor comes mistransformed in the box. His rear paws have spurs that come down for heels in robot mode, but they need to be moved out of the way in beast mode. To do this, point the toes and try moving the toes and spur away simultaneously. The toy is a mass of joints, not all of which do anything useful. Several of the ball joints are heavily restricted in range (like TMII Cheetor's elbows), and most of the ball joints seem to be non-spherical. In other words, they "settle" into some preferred positions, making it hard to move the affected parts without setting other looser joints moving as well. The tail is hinged but designed to be curved...straightened out it doesn't look so good. The waist (which is made longer by pulling bits apart) is universal-jointed, but turning sideways doesn't help too much. The beast mode has three main gimmicks. One is light-up eyes, which is nice but gives him a red "scalp." The second is a little tab under his jaw so that when you move his head from side to side, the mouth opens and closes. Finally, his left front shoulder is a lever that makes that foreleg swing around about 180 degrees to the outside. Not so much the promised "slashing action" as a dismissive swipe. The spinning joint has four stable positions, 90 degrees apart, which limits poseability a bit. Despite being quadrupedal, Cheetor has a lot of trouble standing up, even in this mode. The weird mix of loose and tight joints means that to adjust one part that final bit, you risk throwing half the figure out of whack. And the limited range of some of the joints makes a lot of natural poses impossible. The rear feet are supposed to be locked into place by little tab and slot bits where the legs extend, but this feature doesn't work, leading to a pigeon-toed cheetah. Transformation: Stand it up, adjust the feet (pull them down and bring the spurs back down), collapse the waist and turn it 180 degrees, flip the arms around...and then do a LOT of fussing with the torso. Basically, what you do is rotate the upper torso to hide the beast head and bring out the robot head, but it involves a lot of little moves...push one thing out a bit, then rotate some, then push something in a bit, then rotate more, then in more, rotate more, etc. This does succeed in making what could have been a boring "stand up and swap heads" transformation more interesting and gives a totally different-looking torso (chrome plates cover most of the beast bits), but it can be more frustrating than it's worth, and I bet the chrome's gonna peel from the beast head like gangbusters pretty soon if I keep transforming this toy. One note on a part that has confused some people. On the back of each robot leg is a little yellow tab. This tab can be pulled out with a knifeblade, and may even stay out. It's not actually supposed to be pulled out, as it's the ratchet for the extending legs. However, in the fully pulled-out position, its back end acts as an acceptable replacement ratchet, so function is retained. Robot Mode: Big. At 9" (23cm) tall at the head, this is the tallest Transformer in ages. Even leaving the legs unextended, he's an impressive 8" tall, able to stare down combiner teams and play basketball with Optimal Optimus. However, it's (pause to pick him up off the floor in a moment of irony) hard to get him into a stable standing pose. Not only is he on stilts, but the upper joints of the legs are limited mostly to angles that keep him from standing (d'oh) and the ankle area contains some of the loosest joints in the toy. I think if there were a little more range of motion in the hips and knees, though, it'd be rather easy to keep him standing, as the heel spurs do give him an effective foot length of 1.75" (a little over 4cm). One other joint problem is his waist. It's loose, and Cheetor's upper body tends to sag to one side or the other. On mine, one knee bends a little more than the other, so he always sags in that direction. As appearances go, the animators apparently kept most of his robot look for the show, although they toned down the freakish proportions of his beast mode. However, there's no place on this toy to hide twin swords, so the animators had his tail vanish into Prime's-Trailer-Space and brought in the twin blades. However, all hope is not lost for those wanting a show-accurate weapon. The swords from the old Ultra Optimus ape are very close in appearance to Cheetor's in the show, so just paint 'em yellow. He can hold them, although not very tightly. Finally, his gimmicks. He has the glowing eyes and moving jaw tricks on his robot head as well, which is kinda nifty. And the swinging arm action looks a little better in this mode, but the fact that he can't hold his sword out in a thrusting position makes the slashes more of a parry move. Mind you, that's most of what he does with his swords in the show anyway. Overall: Ehh. I'm not too big a fan of putting lots of joints on a toy and then restricting their range so much that they might as well not be there. The action gimmick's not horrible, but it's not worth the problems it causes. Barely worth it if you're already interested in the line or the character...save your money otherwise. VEHICON: Tankor Altmode: Tank Function: Predacon General [oops] Motto: "Among the winners, there is no room for the weak." A giant power-tank Vehicon, Tankor exists only to crush everything under his treads that he doesn't blow up first. Simple-minded, Tankor is unquestionably [I think they mean unquestioningly here, too] loyal to Megatron - or so he wants everyone to think. In reality, Tankor hides his intelligence, playing the Vehicons and Megatron off each other so that he might someday take sole control of Cybertron. He wields a flamethrower in tank mode, while head-mounted energy blasters top off an assortment of heavy weeaponry in robot mode. One of Megatron's three generals, Tankor is in charge of the powerful tank drones. STR 9 INT 7 SPD 6 END 6 RNK 8 COUR 9 FRP 10 SKL 7 Avg 7.75 Twist-tie count: 3 securing to package, 2 more (one with a cardboard block on it) wrapping around the body to keep it together. Vehicle Mode: The basic tank body here is similar to Machine Wars Soundwave, and is 6" (15cm) long and 3.5" (9cm) wide. Colors are grey, red, black and silver, making Tankorr the least garish of the lot. The only real incongruity in this mode is that his robot mode toes just sort of stick up at the middle of his treads. He's loaded with gimmicks. The simplest is his red spark crystal, hidden behind a false entry hatch. Then, if you pull down a panel in the back of the turret, it lets light in so that the eye in the turret can glow. And this eye has Cylon-visor action! Turn a knob atop the turret and the eye moves back and forth. Next, if you spin a knob at the back of the tank, first the eye will move, and then the whole turret will spin in the direction the eye is looking. Of course, what's a turret without a gun? The gun looks like Shockwave's kid brother, and fires a single "flame" missile about a meter. But there's more! As you roll the tank, you may notice a strange whirring sound. That's the sawblades. Pulling some panels in front aside and opening up the bumper brings the blades to bear. Drive up to something up to an inch wide (like a leg) and it gets fed into twin rotating sawblades. The tank has less stability with these panels open, however, as only a couple of weak tabs almost hidden under the turret keep the front half together now. Transformation: One warning...look carefully at the toy as you transform it to robot mode! There's some subtle bits involving the clear orange panels that are a pain to figure out from scratch, and as always, the instructions don't really help you with reverse-order transformation. Forward transformation is a fairly simple matter of pulling things out and rotating a few parts. The rear treads become the legs, and you can't pull off a "tread leg" show-like version. Robot Mode: A stocky figure, just a tiny bit over 6" (15cm) tall at the head, and nearly as wide. It's clear the animators did take inspiration from this toy, although they modified the look a lot. For instance, the head is about the same as the cartoon Tankorr's, but they made it a lot wider on the cartoon. (Hmm, here's a thought...Tankor is the toy, Tankorr is the cartoon, just to keep things straight?) Tankor is decently articulated, although the lack of any ankles makes it hard to stand him in any odd leg poses. He has claws for grabbing and saws for cutting, plus the cannon comes up over his shoulder nicely. The Cylon-Optic effect is retained for the robot mode, which is very cool. While his jaw doesn't move automatically like Cheetor's, it can be moved, and can cover up his glowing eye if you want. Overall: A little short for a stormtrooper. It's kinda odd that Cheetor's hips are as high as Tankor's face (and yes, there's loads of cheap innuendo possible in that). But it's a good solid toy with lots of fun extras to it. The Mega level has historically been pretty disappointing (Polar Claw, Scavenger, Cybershark II, Blackarachia II, etc), with ideas that wouldn't actually work until Ultra level. But Tankor works as a Mega, and is a nice solid toy. Dave Van Domelen, now to do the Deluxes....