Beast Wars Telemocha Series Tigatron

All things considered, mold reuse was not especially common in Beast Wars... at least, not in the sense of repainting one character into another. Even in those cases, it wasn't repainting one species into another. Reusing Cheetor's mold to represent a white tiger - which tend to be native to Bengal, while Tigatron patrolled the arctic zones in the Beast Wars TV series - seems strange, although it's suggested that he was intended to be remolded slightly.


Beast Mode:
It's actually quite amazing how the different paint job makes the same model look completely different. The white tiger's face seems wider somehow, and with much more muscular neck, despite being absolutely identical to Cheetor's mold. The bulky body actually suits Tigatron better, too, since tigers tend to be heavier and more muscular than your average cheetah.

The paintjob on this version is far better than that of the original - more extensive, more detailed and more natural-looking. While Cheetor looks a bit crap in beast mode, Tigatron looks every bit as powerful and majestic as the character from the TV series.


Robot Mode:
Sadly, while the tiger is slightly more convincing, the robot is every bit as bad as Cheetor. The cool, almost minty colourscheme seems a lot more uniform than Cheetor's mixture of bluish silver, gold and orange, but that doesn't help a great deal.

As mentioned, there were plans to remold Tigatron slightly, certainly giving him a new beast head, but possibly also altering the crotch plate, foot details, and weapons. Strangely the mutant head was going to be left identical to Cheetor's, but who ever uses the mutant heads?


I'm not sure I can explain why but, while I feel Cheetor was rather weak, even with the reissue's improved paintjob, Tigatron is pretty excellent. All the excess bulk that didn't suit the former works perfectly on the latter and, while he still suffers from the 'enormous animal head sticking out of chest' issue, even that kind of suits Tigatron.