Beast Machines Night Slash Cheetor

Guest Review by User Kamen Rider

Robot Mode: Cheetor is, in my mind, one of the best characters ever created in the whole Transformers universe. In the beginning of the Beast Wars he was a total rookie (and the best-selling figure of this toy line), and later on in Beast Machines he was an experienced warrior (and the only good design in this toy line), who also occasionally led his comrades while his leader Primal mutated into a religios fanatic. This figure was produced shortly before the toy line ended.

Upon first look this figure seems nearly perfect, the neon-orange cheetah pattern on the night-blue body looks extremely cool and mysterious, and there are also some highlights in metallic light-green on his ankles, wrists, and his jaw. This version of the Cybertronian wildcat also has a lot of details all over his body. Just look at his torso and you can already see more details than on most other Transformers. He has many technical devices on his chest and a muscular stomach, which gives him a strong technological and biological touch. If you look into his eyes, you can see pupils in there, just like they looked in the TV-series (you can’t see it in my pictures because of the bad quality of my digi-cam). THere are a lot of details on just about every part of his body, in his face, on his arms, on his legs. You find some nice little details wherever you look. Even when you open his clear-orange chest armour the details don’t stop. You can see some organic-looking decorations in there. Also under the armour, in the middle of the chest, is a half-completed gimmick, but more on that later.

Beside the cool colours of Cheetor, there is one more thing that catches the eye: His trademark Beast Machines super-long legs. This feature makes something evident: Night Slash Cheetor is a stand-alone figure and not, how some might think at first, a repaint of the original BM Cheetor. His legs are thicker than the ones of the original design, and he has bigger feet, which gives him a much more solid stand.

If you look at his back, you find a jetpack under the Maximal spark crystal, which brings to mind his jetpack back in the days of his first Transmetal form. Cheetor's head also got some changes, it's much longer now (did he envy the guys from Alien...?), but it doesn’t damage his overall great look. The design of this action figure is great, did I say that yet? You’re getting a great version of an awesome character, and you haven’t even bought the same figure twice, just in another colour. That’s really a big plus for him. He’s cool, but what else? How does the rest of him measure up?

Cheetor was sold with a weapon what looks like a weird fusion of a laser gun and a whiplash, it became his tail in beast mode. Unfortunately mine broke, but it didn’t look that good. His second gimmick is much better than that. When you press the two buttons on his shoulders his swords are flipping out of his shoulders directly into his hands. Because of this mechanism, he can’t hold them horizontal, but you can’t loose his weapons now, either. Gimmick number three is a real action-figuré classic: When you push the Maximal crystal on his back, his two hands perform a karate-style attack, I guess it's meant to copy Cheetor's sword-dances from the TV-Series. Like I said, it’s a classic, but not more than that.

A bit earlier I mentioned a never fully realized gimmick within Cheetor's chest. When you open his armour, you can see a silver hole directly in the middle, inside of which is a silver-red pin. It does nothing and hasn’t got any purpose. I read on the net that Hasbro planned a new feature for the toy line of the series after Beast Machines, and they also gave the last figurs of the BM line the basics, so they could also use it. But that series was cancele, and we will probably never know what this new feature should be.

Posability is one of Cheetors weak points. The gimmick in his arms didn’t make it possible to give him ball-jointed shoulders, and the springs in the shoulders are also causing problems when you want to pose him, because his arms don’t stay at the place where you put them. Even with the better legs Cheetor has problems standing and as his ankle joints aren’t that good, you can’t pose him well, either.

There aren’t any other problems. You’re getting a new version of an awesome character with a near-perfect design and also lots of fun to play with some features. The only real problem is the posability of his shoulders, it drags this toy down a bit because you can’t copy Cheetor's cool sword-battle-poses from the TV-series perfectly.

Alternate-Mode: Well, there’s a proverb that says: "Nobody is perfect." Where the robot mode was really good, we now have a really bad beast mode. Nothing was changed there, Cheetor stil transforms into a cheetah, but this version of it doesn’t even look like one. He also surely holds the record for the easiest transformation sequence of all Transformers figures ever made. Change the head around, press his thumbs to the side, and put his heels into his foot, that’s it. Three mini-steps change an awesome robot into something pretty bad. It should be an animal, yet even a baby can easily see that this thing is a robot on his hands and feets.

It seems as if the robot mode was the main point of this toy, there can’t be another explanation for this mess. Cheetor doesn’t even actually stand on his hands, because his wrist joints are like the ones from a human, and not of an African wildcat. Cheetor doesn’t have any gimmicks or extras here, either, they’re all reserved for his cool Robot-Mode. You can search as long as you want. You won’t find anything.

When you look closely at his cat-head, you can see a spring, on which the upper part of his head sits, connected to his jaw. I think that this was part of a gimmick for this mode, so Cheetor could have chewed or something, but it has also never gotten fully realized. Also, this cheetah's head doesn’t have that much details compared to the rest of the body, which gives him really a bad mark.

Conclusion: At first glance Cheetor looks like a perfect Transformer, which was also the main reason why I bought him some years ago. Some nice gimmicks, a lot of details all over, and one of the best colour-design-schemes I've ever seen. He is a really good incarnation of this great TV character and he is also a totally new figure, not just a normal repaint that was shipped to the shops some months after the original version came out (but this figur was later repainted into the red-and-white coloured Wreckers member Cat-Scan, but that’s another story.)

They also improved him with his new legs and feet, both of which caused many problems for the first Beast Machines Cheetor figure. Now, it's a whole lot easier to give him a solid stand for some awesome poses. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the first (and only?) Transformers action figure that has pupils in his eyes, which makes him pleasant and unique to me.

But alas, this figur isn’t perfection. His alternate mode looks as if it were just a forced extra and not ful mode in itself. The missing ball joints in the shoulders drags this figure down a lot. Him being the toy version of a great character saves him from ruin despite having such a great robot mode.

So when you’re searching for a Transformer with a superb robot mode, then you can’t do anything wrong by buying Night Slash Cheetor. But if you want a figure that has a good robot AND a good alternate mode, then you should think twice about adding this version of Cheetor to your collection. If the designers had done a bit more for his beast mode, then it could have been one of the best Transformers ever produced.

I hope you enjoyed my first guest review here on Transformers-Universe, even though my English is a bit rusted as well. (PHILIP S: I did give it a bit of a once-over, no worries) It’s crazy what happens to knowledge when you don’t use it often.

I give Night Slash Cheetor the following ratings:

Robot Mode: A+
Beast Mode: E
Total Rating: B-

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