Cheetor's been one of two Maximals to get a lot of attention in Transformers lore up to this point; much like how Optimus Primal made a comeback in the mediocre Prime Wars Trilogy, Cheetor would pop up in Season 2 of Cyberverse and make a surprisingly sad sacrifice at the beginning of Season 3 before their more traditional iterations returned in the shitty Netflix trilogy. And we now know Cheetor is going to be a main character for the upcoming Rise of the Beasts movie, with fans being surprised that we got two iterations of the character (as was the case with Airazor and possibly Rhinox, judging by the altered merch in the toyline). We saw an earlier Deluxe figure present the character in a more traditional Season 1 look, but this guy, a Voyager, is the more official look that the Studio Series line represents as it better resembles the concept art that was used to make the toy. We'll see if this more Beast Machines-esque figure wins fans over.
Here is Cheetor's backdrop, which depicts the Maximal hideout that will likely put the initial conflict between both factions before they work together to stop the Terrorcons and possibly Decepticons and Predacons. This'll be a lot of Cons. But yeah, it's an alright backdrop that also got used by Airazor.
Here is Cheetor in his beast mode, which is a more caramel beast mode rather than a bright yellow that one would expect from the toyline. I think this was done in order to depict the Maximal in-between the standard color and the "realistic" color scheme one would have expected for the CGI model if it was gray like the Dinobots. While the Dinobots being patina made sense, I feel happy that we have a compromised color scheme that makes him feel somewhat like the normal Cheetor in terms of beast mode. It's a lot more mature of a design rather than the youthful look that his old BW iteration has in the past. Mot of the beast mode is sculpted decently, though it could use more paint apps to make said sculptwork pop better; in addition, some of the hinges of the transformation do make the figure feel a little more broken up than it should. At the very least, the anatomy works well for this guy. His articulation is admittedly worse than the Kingdom offerings of Cheetor and Tigatron. His forelegs (but not the shoulders) move front and back while the legs have a little more range (though the lower legs are mostly meant to be bent that way. At least he has a bit of tail articulation as well as head and jaw articulation.
The weapons he has can be stored on the back, though they are meant to be stored as such in robot mode.
For a size comparison, here he is next to Bumblebee, recreating the scene of the two kid-appeal characters charging into battle. Yeah, Cheetor's a big cat, though I feel that's not quite scale-accurate because of the size class Cheetor is in. I'm kind of surprised Hasbro did a Voyager for Cheetor since he's more commonly known to be a Deluxe.
Transformation is honestly pretty basic, with the typical catformer approach that makes him unimpressive considering how it's a case of stretching the limbs to be humanoid and hiding the beast head to have the robot head out instead. At the very least, the robot mode is not a design that I expected them to make since one would have initially believed the Beast Wars design would be used rather than the Beast Machines design, but it turns out that the latter is what we're going with. I do like that decision, honestly, as I don't feel we really give much attention to the Beast Machines series given how fans saw the show as being inferior to Beast Wars. I feel like the sculptwork and paint apps stand out better on this figure than on the beast mode, especially since it appears that the robot mode had a lot of attention put into it as an action figure while making the beast mode a little more in second-place of priorities. So that's why the beast mode feels half-baked in articulation (and of course, the front paws being robot hands). I like the muscular design and the techno-organic trait of Cheetor serving as a Beast Machines homage, but I can't say for certain that the figure would be the most mind-blowing thing of all time.
Head sculpt feels very interesting as it feels like a mix between Transmetal II and Beast Machines in terms of details, though I wonder if that is supposed to be a faceplate or a mouth. We'll see later on, as it does look as confusing as Jackie's faceplate. His articulation consists of a ball-jointed neck, shoulders that move front and back as well as in and out (with shoulder pads), biceps swivel, elbows bend, wrists swivel, waist swivels, hips move front and back, in and out, thighs swivel, knees bend, and the ankles pivot. You can pose him with stubby Wolverine claws if you want.
His weapons are two slightly different melee weapons that makeup being so-so by connecting together as a spear he could hold with a single hand and utilize better articulation if you ask me. While the handles are a little shorter than I'd like, they at least work well when they're tabbed together as a staff.
According to earlier concept art, this is what Cheetor looked like before receiving the final redesign. It's not too bad, and in some ways, this design does work better than the Voyager, not because it's closer to the classic Cheetor look, but because it feels better engineered. I like the more complete beast mode and the transformation having a little more going on with it. The brown legs do make him look like he's wearing brown pants, but otherwise, this would probably be the best non-SS Deluxe figure in the line.
For a robot mode size comparison,he is taller than fellow Maximal Airazor, but he isn't towering over her too much since she got a bit of a size increase compared to the regular Kingdom Airazor that the Studio Series mold took inspiration from.
Overall, Cheetor is an average figure with a cool design added to him. I can't really say that he's a must-have since he doesn't really wow people all that much. He's not a terrible figure, but I wouldn't really say he's going to be as good as figures like Scourge or Bumblebee. I think even Airazor ended up being cooler than him since he feels less imaginative with his transformation than Airazor borrowing the engineering of another figure. I like the Beast Machines influence, but I feel the Beast Wars-styled Deluxe would be more interesting in terms of engineering.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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