Cheetor (Jungle Mission 3 pack)

Cheetor is the reason I wanted the Jungle Mission 3 pack to begin with. Fortunately the entire set was pretty great. As of this writing, I haven't seen the movie yet (but will have by the time you read this). I know enough going in that this toy is not based on his character design from the movie. A few of Cheetor's toys were made from an earlier working design that's closer to his original Beast Wars character. This is giving us some variety in cool cats, but probably confusing a few folks. To be fair, this has happened with prior movies (and even a few regular line) toys. While I enjoy his movie design, the BW fan in me is overjoyed. There's a fair amount of tech detailing that really adds a cool twist on the classic design.

Of course Cheetor turns into a cheetah, and while the robot mode was classic BW, this has a Transmetal vibe. I dig it. For the record, I do not have a bad thing to say about this toy. Cheetor is one of my favorite Transformers characters and I love getting new toys of him. The more mechanical parts in his beast mode break up the main yellow of the cheetah body with some brown in the hind legs. This is an odd color choice that I wouldn't have made on my own. However I do think it looks good. While it's a different big cat, the colors make me mentally think Tiger Force from GIJOE. I love how these toys are making me come up with all these mental comparisons. The metallic blue Maximal symbol is also a nice touch. It contrasts really nicely against the yellow. I've always like blue and yellow together.

Cheetor transforms fairly easily and everything goes where you'd expect it too. I did find myself struggling here as it is a slight bit different from prior Cheetah toys and my fingers went into full muscle memory from the Kingdom mold. I guess with the multiple different versions of that toy, my mind just assumed it was another one. A lot of people have mistaken this for a remold of the Kingdom one and to be fair... it'd be easy to do so from pictures alone. However it is a much different toy in hand. Things work and joints move differently. Just as visually, engineering is a different take on a similar design.

Cheetor has a variation of some of his classic weapons. A laser gun stores from his abdomen similar to the classic toy's 'gut gun' and the beast mode tail once again becomes a melee weapon. This time a sword similar to the original Beast Machines toy. It's really neat how this toy is as much of an update of prior ideas as is a new take. I really like it. Score one for this cool cat... I'll never not say that.