Before Kingdom brought back a good majority of the Beast Wars characters in the same Maximal and Predacon factions, Transformers shows made after the Beast Era would usually bring in one or two characters based on mostly the Season 1 crew. Rhinox made a small cameo in Armada, Blackarachnia and Waspinator were new takes on their Beastie counterparts after being originally non-organic, Optimus Primal showed up in Power of the Primes to tie in with the Optimal Optimus Fan Vote toy, and Cyberverse brought in Cheetor himself. His role was pretty much a better handled version of Primal's role in POTP, as Cheetor practically guarded the Allspark after it was long separated from Cybertron, and he adopted a feline alternate mode that helps in towing the gap between familiarity and new iteration. He may not be the Maximal rookie, but the new role is quite nice to have for a character like him, and I loved seeing him be an additional teammate alongside Bumblebee and Hot Rod. In honor of his sacrifice in the beginning of Season 3, let's see how his long-awaited Deluxe figure turned out!
Here is Cheetor in his beast mode. It is a very mechanical design that has an organic silhouette to it. The animation style of the show helps make the design feel more consistent than had it not received the full-on organic beast mode nor a fully mechanical beast mode that's more on-par with Ravage or Laserbeak. The color scheme mostly consists of cheddar yellow with black spots and some light brown parts here and there, most prominently on the forelegs and jaw. They may not be 100% accurate to the coloring of the show, but they at least do add a good amount of color breakup that looks somewhat natural (well, as natural as a beast mode can be in this design). The rest of the beast mode looks fine even if the back has the normal robot mode legs hunched up. The articulation consists of an opening jaw, forelegs that move front and back as well as in and out somewhat, bends at the elbows, hindlegs that mostly move back, straighten at the knees, and pivot at the ankles. The tail has some articulation, which is kind of rare because it usually has to partsform except here, where it doesn't. I'm covering the articulation because it's a little more restricted with the attachments on. You can slide the claws over the front paws, attach the swords around the inner part of the shoulders, and a mask that slides over the face. It's a little reminiscent of the Beast Machines design, what with the inclusion of green in some areas.
For a size comparison in the alternate mode side of things, here he is in-between his vehicular friends. Bumblebee and Hot Rod. I have to say that he might fit in with the size if we're to consider that he'd have to be in a good size for his robot mode, so I'd say it works.
Transformation is very much in a vein similar to the Kingdom figure of the Beast Era guy, which consists of the cheetah head going onto the chest, the arms folding out from the stomach, the beast legs being on the back, and the hind legs becoming the robot legs simply by straightening them out. It's nothing too new, though the cheetah head does have a tendency to detach at times if you're not transforming him right. The resulting robot mode is much more accurate to the character model than the other toy was, but the deco itself isn't 100% accurate. It's not awful, but I should mention that in the show, the back of his hands, the biceps, the upper parts of his shoulders, and one trim of the back of his cheetah legs should have blue. Even without the deco, it's not 100% terrible and still looks good either way. The design of the figure looks proportionately accurate otherwise, and he doesn't have any of the oddities that the smaller figure had. The back does have hollow legs, but it's otherwise fair for a figure with this budget. By the way, is it me or does Walmart have this figure at a lower price than the norm? Most have the same price as a WFC Deluxe, but this figure is like $14 give or take.
Head sculpt is very accurate to the design, which is pretty reminiscent of the Universe Deluxe face in terms of it being more feline than youthful. The green eyes are decently applied, but the blue face should be a darker shade like in the show. His articulation is pretty good overall, with ball joints at the head, shoulders, wrists, and hips, swivels for the biceps, waist, and thighs, and hinges for the elbows, knees, and ankles.
You can display him with his swords with no problem since those were a regular form of weaponry that he had, but that can be taken even further with the armor, giving him shoulder pads and the tiger head as a shield of sorts. As a result, the figure is mostly armored from the top, but I think that apart from the head, the shoulders add a bit of extra color that doesn't clash too badly, and the design of them is reminiscent of the claw shoulder pads of Thundertron. Very nice attention to detail.
For a robot mode size comparison, he's taller than both Bumblebee and Hot Rod. I haven't messed with the latter two for a while, but I must say that Bumblebee's still a pretty solid figure and I grew to like him even more. Hot Rod's still got some issues for the deco and design, though. But yeah, this trio definitely makes me want to revisit Cyberverse in spite of the ads being in the way, but Cheetor himself makes for a pretty neat entry in the line. After the mixed bag of Wave 3 Cyberverse Deluxes in the form of Prowl, Starscream, and Soundwave, it's nice that Cheetor has not only been made even after his death but that he's also a well thought out figure that doesn't feel compromised even with the intended budget. I'd say get him if you can because he's a release with spotty distribution (no pun intended).
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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