Titanium Cheetor

Series: Titanium
Allegiance: Maximal
Year: 2007

Like every young Autobot and Maximal speedster before and since, Cheetor was once a study in naiveté. Years of bitter experience in the Beast Wars have left him hardened, without the bright-eyed curiosity that caused him and 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 humour out of his spirit. He has turned every bit the predator, and focused all of his energies on the liberation of his fellow robots. The conversion of Optimus Primal into some kind of strange religious fanatic 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.

Robot Mode: In robot mode Cheetor closely resembles the character we saw on Beast Machines, though the figure looks a little more muscular and solid, especially his legs. Being partially made from metal, Cheetor is quite heavy and his looks mirror that. There are very few straight lines to be found, adhering to the techno-organic nature of the character in the series, so he looks sleek and powerful. His posability is quite good, though the arms are somewhat limited by the transformation demands, but his legs make up for that.

Cheetor carries two swords as weapons. These can be clipped to his tights when he needs his hands free. Once again this closely resembles Cheetor as he appeared in the TV series, he had two swords there, too. Due to the limited posability of his shoulders and elbows he can't wave them around quite as much as he did on the screen, but the blades still look cool. The Cheetor figure also comes with the standard Titanium podium, with his name and faction symbol inscribed on the front.

So overall there is little to complain about here. The posability could be a bit better and I wish they would have done something with the tail hanging down between his legs (can't be folded away or anything), but those are minor things. So bottom line, a very good robot mode.

Alternate Mode: I had some problems the first time I transformed Cheetor into beast mode, or rather the first time I tried to transform him back. What the manual doesn't really say is that you have to press his robot mode head all the way in before you flip up the beast head, otherwise you'll have a lot of trouble getting it back out when you transform back to robot mode.

If his name didn't clue you in, Cheetor transforms into a cheetah, the fastest runner in the animal kingdom. Unlike past incarnations of Cheetor this beast mode actually looks a lot like the real thing when you're talking proportions. The cheetah features a huge chest, a very slim waist, and powerful legs. His head could probably be tad bigger, but that's the only thing I can think of. In this mode Cheetor is very posable and he can deploy his blades from his rear legs. It's not really all that useful to have them point upwards, but it does look very cool.

All in all there is very little wrong with Cheetor's beast mode. Granted, it doesn't look all that different from the robot mode, but keeping in mind the series' theme of blending the organic with technology and so on, that actually made a lot of sense. So thumbs up for the beast mode.

Remarks: Titanium brought in characters from all over the Transformers franchise and Cheetor represents Beast Machines. Now whatever you might think of the series, Cheetor as a character remains the best example of character development ever seen in all of Transformers, changing from a young naive speedster at the beginning of Beast Wars to a seasoned leader in the final episodes of Beast Machines. As such he truly deserves being reincarnated in Titanium.

The figure, which I got as a present from my beloved wife, is a good example of what Titanium is good at: Delivering sleek, polished, great-looking figures of classic Transformers. Sure, the transformation is pretty simple, the number of gimmicks is pretty much nonexistent, but who really needs all that? What you have here is a classic character incarnated in a very good toy and if you are a fan of Cheetor, Beast Wars, Beast Machines or Titanium in general, there is absolutely no reason not to get this figure.

Rating: A-