Collector's Club Cheetor Toy Review

Individual Review

Name: Cheetor
Series: Collectors Club Exclusives
Allegiance: Autobot
Alternate Mode: Sports Car

Thanks to Kristofferer for loaning me Cheetor for this review

Height: 3cm Length: 14.5cm Width: 6.5cm

   A very sleek spotted yellow sports car, Cheetor has black windows & tyres along with red taillights & transparent green headlights. There's a red Autobot logo on his hood and red rims on his tyres - the front tyres also feature silver hubcaps. The rear tyres lack no wheels - rather they have a hole in the middle. These colours are based on Beast Machines Cheetor rather than his Beast Wars colours. These colours work well enough, and really the main cues to the BM inspiration are the head & taillights - either way he'd be yellow and black. It's a bright colour scheme, but one that makes sense for the character.

   Cheetor was the fastest land mammal and now he's a car that looks built for speed. It's very sleek, the front fenders are long and pointy, while all four fenders extend past the main body of the vehicle which works to mimic the front paws of a cheetah in full gallop (perhaps not intentional - he is a repaint of Animated Blurr). This car is well designed with attractive curves (I mean that in a non-suggestive way), side mirrors and fenders that hug the tyres nicely. The only shortcoming is a distinct hole at the back of the cabin - don't look at Cheetor from this angle.

   There's a gimmick built into the hood - if you press the Autobot logo a transparent green blade pops out. It's a nice idea and a fairly unobtrusive one, although it needs more room than his ground clearance allows, so you have to hold him and leave space for it to unfold. The front tyres roll although the rear tyres are false with strips inside that roll. It's a moot point anyway since the chest underneath will rub against the table.

   An attractive car mode and one that fits the character well (apparently Blurr was inspired by an abandoned Cheetor concept!), and while the colours are a little garish, they match the BM toy's colours so work well in context. He's very sleek and looks fast, which helps with the homage here. The blade gimmick is nice although the poor rolling is a shame. It's a solid car with an excellent tribute.


   Pull the front fenders out to the sides slightly, detach and set aside the hood. Unclip the rear fenders and fold down to form legs. Pull the doors out and pivot the doors/front fenders back to form arms. Swing the legs into position, straighten them, flip out the feet (taillights) and heelspurs. Clip his arms into the chest, rotate the forearms and give him the hood as a shield/weapon. Fold back the panel behind his head, rotate the head to reveal his face.

Height: 19cm Width: 7.5cm

   A yellow robot with black spots on his chest, forearms and thighs - all robot only parts. Blurr has an orange chest with another stamped Autobot logo, a silver face with light green eyes and some more light green on his kneecaps & waist. He's very tall and lanky - again this toy works well for the character (well, the Beast Machines version of it, anyway). The colours aren't especially unified, but they're fairly accurate to BM - so while aesthetically it's messy, he's an accurate tribute.

   As is often the case with Animated toys, Cheetor's robot mode shape is quite unusual. His limbs are long and his torso also quite narrow, and the retooled head fits into this theme, with a long crown on top of his drawn out face. The theme is unified - not always the case in this line - and the crown on his head fits in. I have to admit I don't like the look, but that's a personal thing. His legs aren't straight - the boots slope outwards, which looks really awkward and I _am_ critical of this aspect. Overall it's a solid theme. The retooled face has a distinct jaw, not dissimilar to Cheetor's jaw in Beast Machines.

   Cheetor's play value is decent although his height coupled with the immobile feet hurt his poseability. His head is on a ball joint, his shoulders are restricted ball joints while the elbows are ball joints which effectively function as hinges so they included rotators above (which is a great touch). His waist rotates while the hips are restricted ball joints and his knees are hinged with rotators just above the ankles. His feet and heelspurs are on ball joints, but they only work for transformation. Cheetor can be posed, but the range of stable dynamic poses is small, and many of those will look awkward thanks to the bent legs. The shield can plug onto the outside of either forearm and the blade weapon can be deployed. You can plug the shield into holes on his back if you like (thanks to Lee for this info).

   Well it's a good Beast Machines tribute, but it's something of an ugly robot mode. The colours work for the tribute but aren't pleasing to the eyes otherwise. His bodyshape is weird and reminds of Beast Machines in a bad way - the notoriously difficult to balance BM toys are equally lanky. The shape of the legs is awkward although the weapon is simple yet effective. His poseability is quite limited, rounding out a somewhat disappointing robot mode.


   None that I'm aware of. As mentioned, Cheetor is a retool of Animated Blurr, sold exclusively through the Transformers Collector Club. As such he was likely produced in a single run, making variants unlikely.


   A clever tribute that definitely uses the right mould, but that mould's robot mode conspires to remind us of the massive design flaws of BM Cheetor. The tribute does work well, but the colours are, well pretty bad, really. The vehicle mode works quite well mind you, it's just as appropriate for the tribute, but with far less baggage. The play value is respectable, but I don't think this is enough toy justify the effort to track him down on the secondary market. This is one for BM enthusiasts, really - 5/10
