Damn it, I made the hint too easy. Yep, here we go:
#22 Big CatsLions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Actually, screw the bears. There's...what, two, three different bear molds, and neither Hasbro nor Takara ever thought to turn them into a panda? The easiest and most awesome repaint in the world? Seriously HasTak, make it happen.
It's like HasTak hates money...
Anyway, this is the category for the serious kitties: lions, irons, Zion, tigers, ligers, tions, jaguars, porsches, panthers, panzers, speed of the puma, leopards, cheetahs, snow tigers, lynx, manx, sphinx and spanx.
As It's Walky will happily remind you, the first character to speak in the first Transformers story was Ravage:
"Wavage! Wavage is wot bwings us togeder tooday."
In the early stories, Ravage was incredibly awesome, being part ninja, part Inspector Gadget (his claw has a mini-claw for grabbing keys!!!) and part mute. He was a vital part of the 'Con forces. In the comics he was more verbose and thoughtful. Then he fell down a well! Also at one point he blackmailed Wheeljack, and was confident he could take down an exact clone of Megatron. He was pretty damn tough.
His toy may have made him look more like a greyhound, but he was awesome.
(NB. For anyone who wants to suggest that Jaguar is not his Alt Mode but his main mode, my response is A) Why is it that the other TFs kept their robot modes and changed their car modes, and Lazerbeak and (presumably) Ravage kept their tape modes and changed their beast modes and B) Why are your mad nitpicking skills being wasted here when Wikipedia needs you so much more?)
"I...still...function! Despite...being...full...of...Arcee pr0n!"
"JESUS CHRIST IT'S A JAGUAR GET OUT OF THE CAR >:3"
"I shall call him...Mini-Me."
Even when it wasn't Ravage, big cats were still popular in G1:
Aslan had finally had too much.
Yep, two-fifths of Predaking (and two-thirds of the members of Predaking that were actual predators) was pure kitteh goodness.
"Yes, yes! You can has as many cheezburger as you want!"
"No energon and no TV make Rampage...something something..."
The Predacons are a great bunch of toys and these two are the cream of the crop. Gotta love these guys.
"A robot made of metal, covered in an outer shell, wearing a helmet. There's no way I'll be easily killed in the comics!"
Yep, Catilla was a robot who turned into a cat, who then got dressed up in a cat suit, and then put on a mechanical helmet. And people say the Pretender era was stupid!
After that...I don't remember any more big cats for a while. But I'm sure someone will remind me of what I missed (ie. Steeljaw) But then: the Beast Wars.
"Beast Wars...maybe there's gonna be some Beasts in this."
Time to get serious for a second. Back in the early nineties, when internet access wasn't half as common as it is now, Transformers was coming to a slow halt. Generation 2 had come and gone, and it seemed like Transformers was finished. Power Rangers had taken the Giant Robot crown from them.
At the time they had vanished with such a whimper rather than a bang that I barely even noticed. I realised there were a few figures I'd missed, but ultimately, life went on. For kids and teens nowadays who have never seen a Transformer-less year it must seem unimaginable, but it really felt like the whole shebang was over.
Then it came, hidden away in a catalogue that came with, perhaps a Batman toy. Some robots that turned into animals. My eyes must have passed them by first time but I looked again and realised. I remember clearly looking frantically at the scraps of information. Scorponok? Dinobot? Megatron? Optimus
Primal? BEAST WARS
TRANSFORMERS?!? YES!!!
It's easy to complain about any new series or change in dynamic or style the franchise takes (for example, it was
incredibly easy to complain about Beast Machines) but I won't forget that time. That time when I was grateful just that the thing I'd devoted my childhood to wasn't over. I owned the original cast of 10 in short order and a ton of other figures besides.
Anyway, back to the list:
Yep, it was time for the cats to come out in force. First up was Cheetor:
"DAMNIT HASTAK I SAID NO MORE BEARS! Oh wait, that's supposed to be a cheetah. Oh, never mind."
What could be a more potent metaphor for impetuous youth than a cheetah? And what could be a more ridiculous name than "Cheetor"? And what could be worse than people spelling "ridiculous" with an "e"? This figure was not so bad, though its beast mode lacked articulation and looking-like-a-cheetah-ness.
"Kid-appeal
and black repaint? You know you love me!"
"Has Bayformer Bumblebee beaten my record yet?"
Yep, this guy sure had a lot of toys. Indeed, the first character to be introduced in the show outside of the original 10 was a repaint, specifically Tigatron. I don't own this mold but the Hasbro and Takara versions both look very pretty in very different ways.
Just then, all fanwank broke loose:
"I'm not sure if this accent is right, I borrowed it from a shop."
Yep, just to cement the fact that the writers had figured out that they wanted Beast Wars to be a continuation of the G1 cartoon (or the comics, or something...) Ravage made an oddly-accented return that made G1 fanboys wet their pants and made HasTak repaint every Cheetor they had black.
Blurrz already said everything that is to be said about the smashing Lio Convoy; and his own Mini-Me, Prowl, is pretty cool too.
A few years later, the next kitty entered the scene:
"When 800 repaints old you reach, look as good, you will not!"
I've managed to get this far without owning a single iteration of this mold so I couldn't possibly comment on it. But, and here's the important part,
he hasn't been repainted as Ravage yet."Let's see, Ravage, Steeljaw, Lazerbeak, Ramhorn and...Horri-Bull? Do it, E-Hobby!"
Anyway, that's the end of this chapter. Sorry about the delay. And since my last hint wasn't opaque enough...
My first is in Mountain, but not in Sea
My second is around somewhere
My third is...oh, sod it.
by SJ21 » Thu Feb 04, 2010 11:37 am 
. Yet all this talk of Ravage, and no Battle Ravage? It's technically the only Ravage that has a cat alt. mode! But I do have a bit of a soft spot for the figure. He was one of my first figures I got when I "officially" started collecting, and I love all the Energon Terrorcons(and Omnibots).
