I originally had no plans to collect any of the reissue Beast Wars toys (I have nearly a complete collection and most of them are still in fine shape), but these two price points went on clearance at Walmart, so I figured what the heck. (Optimus Primal and Megatron are still full price, so I'm not sure if I'll end up getting them or not. Fifty bucks seems like a lot of money to spend on each of those toys.)

So, a quick history lesson. The original Beast Wars toys first came out in 1996, effectively replacing the Transformers: Generation 2 line that had been selling, albeit poorly, up to that point. The toys were divided into the five-dollar Basic price point, the ten-dollar Deluxe class, the fifteen-dollar Mega Beast assortment, and the twenty-dollar Ultra Beast price point.. They were, at the time, a radical departure from what Transformers had been, up to that point, but they proved enormously successful. The fact that they pulled inspiration from other popular franchises like Jurassic Park and Batman and The Lion King probably didn't hurt, either.

CHEETOR

Cheetor was originally conceived as a Beast Wars version of the Autobot Prowl character, hence the similar prong design on his helmet. Notably, Cheetor was absent from the initial debut wave of Beast Wars toys, most likely because they were reworking his weapons (the final version, with a folding tail, is different from the version pictures in 1996 cross-sells, which shows the character holding the weapon by the tip of the tail). He is the only Beast Wars toy to be made available in his original color scheme three separate times, each time with a different eye color (original Cheetor had blue cheetah eyes and gold robot eyes; the repack version had red cheetah eyes and gold robot eyes; and the 1997 release had green eyes in both modes).

So, this release is actually a mash-up of sorts, since it's got green cheetah eyes like the 1997 release, but red eyes in robot mode. The deco is relatively faithful to the original toy, but the shade of yellow used is a bit more bright, and the shade of blue for his robot parts is not nearly as vibrant. It's closer to the shade of blue used for the FOX! Kids redeco from 1999.

Fans who are only familiar wiht the CGI version of Cheetor as he appears on TV, or subsequent releases like the Masterpiece or Kingdom editions, may be surprised to discover that he's missing key details. The robot face doesn't have any freckles, and the front cheetah paws on his back cannot do the criss-cross-applesauce thing that they do in the show.

Also, the cheetah mode is a bit of a chonker. Obviously, the boys at Kenner had to strike a balance between robot-mode aesthetics and beast mode aesthetics, and they leaned towards the robot side of things, with the cheetah legs and body being a great deal thicker than normal. More recent versions of Cheetor have veered in the other direction, making the beast mode extra lanky, but at the expense of the robot form looking the same way.

Cheetor comes equipped with two weapons, the detachable tail weapon and the "gut gun" with a working bellows that can squirt water. All the Deluxe-level toys back in the day had at least one built-in gimmick that came standard, and it was awesome. You just don't see that much these days. (Jetstorm the dragonfly had three, if you count his water squirter and both his spring-powered launchers!)

Cheetor's mold was later revisited for Tigatron (who also has a reissue currently in stores) as well as Shadow Panther for the Japanese market.

Cheetor's arguably one of the definitive early Beast Wars toys, and I think it's great that he was made available again for fans who missed him the first time. It still makes me feel super old when these toys are described as "vintage," though, considering I was an adult when they first came out!

RATTRAP

The design for most of the early Basic-level toys was a carryover from the autotransformations created for the Generation 2 toy line. (We didn't actually see any of these auto-transforming G2 toys until they were incorporated into Machine Wars and Car Robots/Robots in Disguise.) The idea was that you pulled a piece, often the animal tail, and it unlocked the transformation, with a spring-loaded gear assembly unlocking the robot mode. It was simple but effective, sometimes requiring a little finessing to finish the robot mode.

The original Rattrap is about midway between the Kingdom Core-class toy and the Generations Deluxe-class toy from 2014 in terms of size. In beast mode, his body is about four inches in length, with the tail adding two more inches. The pink color for the feet is a little washed out on the reissue as compared to the original 1996 release. Aside from that, though, he's pretty authentic.

All you have to do to transform him is to pull up the tail section, which unhooks the spring assembly that keeps him locked in place. This causes the rat's head to fold down to form the robot chest, and shifts the robot pelvis and legs downwards. It also opens either side of the rat body, which end up on his back. (The backpack is huge on the actual toy; it was shrunk down considerably for CGI animation.) The robot fists are designed to plug into the sides of the beast mode to keep them in place, so you can unplug them for robot mode. The two halves of his weapon are stored inside either half of the beast mode (another idea pioneered for G2) and they snap together to form his gun.

Rattrap later got a redeco as Packrat, the blue-colored exclusive for BotCon '97.

Unlike G1, which featured a wide range of media characters at various tiers of popularity, Beast Wars had a large percentage of toys that never made it into the TV series at all. Either they were an important show character, or they were a nobody. There was no middle ground. With that in mind, we could theoretically get reissues of some of the other original toys (Terrorsaur, Tarantulas, Rhinox, Dinobot, etc.) if the molds are still viable, but it seems extremely unlikely Hasbro would ever try to reissue any other toys who never made it into the cartoon series (Razorbeast, Wolfang, B'Boom, etc.) because they're not nearly as well-known characters, especially after spending the last 25 years fading into obscurity.

Zob (Beast Wars Scorponok was the first-ever toy I bought online, along with G2 Roadblock)