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Sabrblade wrote:

Ironhidensh wrote:I believe Cliffjumper is a licensing issue, but when he comes, if he comes, I expect a minor retool of bumblebee.

You do know that the real life Ferrari isn't nearly as super deformed as Cliffjumper's altmode, right?

Yes, but this is Takara we are talking about. With the recent push to cartoon accuracy, I expect a Bee retool.

Ironhidensh wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Ironhidensh wrote:I believe Cliffjumper is a licensing issue, but when he comes, if he comes, I expect a minor retool of bumblebee.

You do know that the real life Ferrari isn't nearly as super deformed as Cliffjumper's altmode, right?

Yes, but this is Takara we are talking about. With the recent push to cartoon accuracy, I expect a Bee retool.

They still maintain real life accuracy for the cars, though.

Sabrblade wrote:

Ironhidensh wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Ironhidensh wrote:I believe Cliffjumper is a licensing issue, but when he comes, if he comes, I expect a minor retool of bumblebee.

You do know that the real life Ferrari isn't nearly as super deformed as Cliffjumper's altmode, right?

Yes, but this is Takara we are talking about. With the recent push to cartoon accuracy, I expect a Bee retool.

They still maintain real life accuracy for the cars, though.

I hope you are right but we will see. I need a good Cliffjumoer, and the 3rd party market hasn't delivered yet.

Ironhidensh wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Ironhidensh wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Ironhidensh wrote:I believe Cliffjumper is a licensing issue, but when he comes, if he comes, I expect a minor retool of bumblebee.

You do know that the real life Ferrari isn't nearly as super deformed as Cliffjumper's altmode, right?

Yes, but this is Takara we are talking about. With the recent push to cartoon accuracy, I expect a Bee retool.

They still maintain real life accuracy for the cars, though.

I hope you are right but we will see. I need a good Cliffjumoer, and the 3rd party market hasn't delivered yet.

However, the discrepancy between how the Ferrari looks in real life and how Cliffjumper's altmode looked is probably why they haven't done Cliff yet. No matter what they go with, something won't look right to one person or another: If he's given a realistic altmode, then it won't look like how it looked in the cartoon; if he's given a cartoon-accurate altmode, then it will look scrunched compared to the real thing. It's a lose-lose situation.

But back to Cheetor:

Ironhidensh wrote:Do you honestly think that Takara won't straight repaint Tigatron?

With how slavishly beholden Takara is to the cartoon models (otherwise, they wouldn't have gone as far as they did with the extremely Mainframe-accurate designs of Primal's and Cheeotr's beast modes), I really can't see Takara being satisfied with MP Tigatron being just a straight redeco of Cheetor.

They certainly weren't satisfied with UW Scattershot being a mere straight redeco of CW Scattershot, and that's a character who was practically a footnote in his cartoons compared to the much more prominent (to his own cartoon) Tigatron.

Cliffjumper is a Porsche 924 Turbo, not a Ferrari. (Jazz is a Porsche 935 Turbo, wrap your brain around that!)

But yeah, the original Cheetor mold worked for Tigatron because it didn't look much like a cheetah in the first place (in fact it looks more like a tiger to begin with). The MP is very clearly a Cheetah in every way and no amount of white plastic and black stripes will make it look like a convincing tiger.

Plus I think we're long overdue for a good tiger figure. So many lions...

Emerje

Anybody have any news on the expected release of Cheetor? I know it was pushed back but Anime Export just emailed me saying:

We are checking availability
for this item. When restocked we
will notify you by email.
If unavailable we will refund you
in full.


Not sure how take that. Was it in stock at some point and I did not get an email requesting payment for shipping? Or has it simply not been in stock?

Seems something went wrong with Cheetor.

Did you really think New York Toy Fair was all we had this weekend? Wrong!

Wonderfest 2017 is currently going on and there are both a ton of new things being revealed, as well as a ton of new images for upcoming product. Among those upcoming products is Masterpiece Cheetor! Cheetor was given his own display alongside Big Bot himself, and can be seen from many different angles thanks to Twitter users tsukiryu@WF5-23-13, ひでΩ ☀(ｱﾛｰﾗの姿), くろさび, and 小山田（アドビ）. You can check out all the mirrored images below, and let us know what you think in the comments section!

Not too much longer now. Soon he'll be mine.

Ultra gear!

Now THAT'S gorgeous!

There he is, my little guy. There he is. My little guy. Isn't he cute?

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:Did you really think New York Toy Fair was all we had this weekend? Wrong!

Wonderfest 2017 is currently going on and there are both a ton of new things being revealed, as well as a ton of new images for upcoming product. Among those upcoming products is Masterpiece Cheetor! Cheetor was given his own display alongside Big Bot himself, and can be seen from many different angles thanks to Twitter users

Robo whiskers!

Packaging - http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10408498/10/1

It's so pretty. Wish I'd remembered to pre order it.

HLJ called, payment is made and shipped. be here in 3 to 5 business days. Interesting to note, Grapple dropped as well. These two guys together are costing less to ship than Primal was back in October.

Ironhidensh wrote:HLJ called, payment is made and shipped. be here in 3 to 5 business days. Interesting to note, Grapple dropped as well. These two guys together are costing less to ship than Primal was back in October.

HLJ rang here too. I'll probably choose cheaper and slower shipping when I pay but I'll have my first MP very soon.

Tons more in hand pics here - https://twitter.com/ZEAMTIGER/media





[img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5W0rK8VMAQH8Pd.jpg:large[/img

Those pics just make me want it more. Damn Anime Export, when are you going to ship it?

Anyway, gotta give props to the engineering team, that cheetah mode has very few robot parts actually showing and is thin as all heck.

And the robot mode really looks cool.

Not sure which Cheetah face I'll give him though.

Fellow Seibertronian Sabreblade has pointed us to a twitter page loaded with in hand images of the newly released Masterpiece MP 34 Cheetor. Here they are below, giving us the best look at this figure yet. You can see how well articulates it is and all the accessoried he comes with and the different display options they provide, like all those cheetah expressions.

We also get a sense of scale with him next to the generations Rattrap and Rhinox molds.

Enjoy!

Looks like the fake cheeta head is right behind the gut gun in cheeta mode. You can see the ears towards the front of that section. Also it seems the real cheeta is sucked into the robot torso, as was expected. The fact that these pieces are on opposite sides of the beast mode but are right next to each other in robot mode means this is going to be a very interesting transformation.
Also Cheetor should be here Wednesday! I couldn't help it, I chose the faster shipping.

While shots with Rattrap and Rhinox are appreciated, I'm extremely surprised there's no photos of Cheetor with MP Primal. Surely that would have been the most obvious one?

In any case, holy heck he looks great. I don't even like Cheetor as much as the rest of the Maximals but he looks absolutely delicious here.

Check out his Beast Mode eye articulation:

A beauty of a figure bar a minor quibble: not digging the half-tone patterning/style of his cheetah spots. It's really throwing me.

Also, the placement of Rattrap's gun in beast mode is unfortunate when he stands on his back legs... LOL

lowman_x wrote:A beauty of a figure bar a minor quibble: not digging the half-tone patterning/style of his cheetah spots. It's really throwing me.

There's a very specific reason for those spots looking the way they do.

They replicate the UVW map stretching that Mainframe used to create the cheetah spots on Cheetor's CG model.

That's right. Takara actually recreated 1996 television budget-level CGI techniques in physical 2017 plastic form. It is so OCD-absurd that I can't help but admire how far they went to achieve such meticulously-faithful perfection, warts and all, in plastic form.

Sabrblade wrote:

lowman_x wrote:A beauty of a figure bar a minor quibble: not digging the half-tone patterning/style of his cheetah spots. It's really throwing me.

There's a very specific reason for those spots looking the way they do.

They replicate the UVW map stretching that Mainframe used to create the cheetah spots on Cheetor's CG model.

That's right. Takara actually recreated 1996 television budget-level CGI techniques in physical 2017 plastic form. It is so OCD-absurd that I can't help but admire how far they went to achieve such meticulously-faithful perfection, warts and all, in plastic form.

Yeah, I'd figured that they were going for 1990s texture mapped realism, but IRL it's making me dislike the figure despite all of the really good aspects about it (of which there are plenty).

Sabrblade wrote:

lowman_x wrote:A beauty of a figure bar a minor quibble: not digging the half-tone patterning/style of his cheetah spots. It's really throwing me.

There's a very specific reason for those spots looking the way they do.

They replicate the UVW map stretching that Mainframe used to create the cheetah spots on Cheetor's CG model.

That's right. Takara actually recreated 1996 television budget-level CGI techniques in physical 2017 plastic form. It is so OCD-absurd that I can't help but admire how far they went to achieve such meticulously-faithful perfection, warts and all, in plastic form.

Well "spotted", my friend.

If MP-38 is any indication, they might end up releasing a toy-accurate version somewhere down the line - not to mention the likelihood of Shadow Panther and Tigatron redecoes. There's hope for the mold yet if you don't like how it looks here