How do you review an icon? As a kid, Cheetara ruled in my books. I saw her in a store as a 6 year old boy as the 2-pack release with WilyKit, who is also my favorite character from the toon – tied for first with what I bet a lot thought her to be “mommy”. You can’t deny it, you also thought Tygra was WilyKat’s dad and that these 4 were a little family.
Fast forward almost forty years, and here she is again (sans WilyKit, who we’re all hoping will get her debut in Wave 7 of the Super7 ThunderCats ULTIMATES! line). Cheetara has so much baggage (or perhaps it sounds better on the tongue when we call it history) to unpack, that it’s best to get that out of the way first. When you go on holiday you unpack your bags as fast as possible to enjoy your destination, and trust me, she is the destination of choice!!
Her unexpected reveal at PowerCon 2020 brought additional life to a line that was taking too long to deliver. We all know by now it wasn’t really Super7 who was to blame, but some dinosaurs that got the red carpet treatment instead. We won’t point fingers. Cheetara’s appearance in Wave 3 was a welcome surprise. Not only did she finally make her long overdue arrival in toy form, she also completed the core 4 core adults from the first season of the wildly popular 80s cartoon.
Fan feedback was leaning towards an 8 out of 10. The critics and well-versed lore-lovers pointed out tiny issues: this sleeve was the wrong color, that wasn’t the right shade, blah blah blah. To be frank, sometimes feedback that is brought across with so much hate really spoils it for collectors who appreciate a product for what it is. Don’t make a mistake, they were correct. Those colors were off ever so slightly and could be improved upon. Once the feedback was collected like a child bobbing for apples in a drum of water, the team led by Brian Flynn took it to heart and corrected it. She finally went on preorder in April 2020 – mere weeks after the world collapsed around us.
If this wasn’t bad enough, Wave 1’s delivery was delayed (thank you dinosaurs!), and when it arrived it was full of problems that made the line look like it was doomed to fail. Pins, pants and purple is all that needs to be said about that. If you don’t know that story yet, ask your mother. It was then that Super7 announced they had pulled Wave 3 from that factory and moved it to their own. There was light at the end of what appeared to be a very loooong tunnel.
We waded through the pandemic like baby Lion-O crawling into the cave of time. It felt like forever. Then Wave 3’s first photos caused another storm in a tea cup – Cheetara looked like she required hip surgery. Feedback confirmed that this would be addressed. There had already been complaints about previous Club Grayskull female releases with similar hips. She just had to be perfect, right guys and gals?
Then a few months later Wave 3 was completed and on a boat. Cheetara would accompany Captain Cracker, Jaga and Slithe across the oceans to the warehouse where dreams are distributed from. But, and that’s a big BUTT (yes, one with an extra T), the dear icon still had hip dysplasia. And Super7 took the very difficult decision to pull her from release. In Brian Flynn’s words, “many people would have been happy with her, but she wasn’t perfect, and we want her to be perfect.”
That wave delivered TheFwoosh’s figure of the year in 2021 (it also bypassed Wave 2 in the release schedule, but that’s another story for another day). Cheetara stayed in the background for another couple of months while we caught up with Wave 2 and Wave 4 and enjoyed new waves of preorders to boost our collections.
Now here she is, out of the blue, jumping from “in tooling” to “in production” to “on a boat” within a matter of weeks on the Super7 Preorder Status Update page. I can tell you, the weeks since her departure from that far away land felt twice as long as the wait for Wave 2. And we all waited with baited breath. Will she be perfect? Will her face match that visage from our cartoon memories? So many questions, zero photographs. Did that mean that something was wrong with her???? Again? Well, that was the general comment from the gallery anyway. Up popped a video, followed by more hatred. Then an in hand photo taken on a cellphone made the rounds. More unhappy voices tried to drown out those who were thrilled. Was she pregnant? What about those derpy eyes? You know the way it always goes. Name calling and stone throwing deluxe followed.
A few days later I had the privilege to see her up close, courtesy of a video call of course. And come on, all those terrible comments while I’m seeing the perfect figure in front of me? I could tell that Brian Flynn was extremely proud of the way she turned out. And there was very good reason to be. She was freaking fantastic!
The next day my earliest memory of Cheetara graced my screen – it was the LJN toy version of this flashy diva from Third Earth, the one I saw as a crying begging lad who really wanted her and WilyKit. She boasted the same voluptuous shape as the new Cheetara, albeit toy-inspired. When she arrives next year I’ll be sure to comment on her again in chapter 2 of this saga. So now I had two different Cheetaras to regularly visit on my phone’s gallery whenever I wanted to daydream.
Fast forward another few weeks and the review sample, courtesy of Super7, arrives on my doorstep. Trust me the delays in getting her on this side of the waters were testing my patience. But now, having her in hand brings a flood of memories to the front. Many unpleasant at whom I can stick a tongue out too. Thankfully they’re behind us. Life finds a way (another dinosaur reference, sorry!) to bring balance to ThunDera’s inequality. Our collections are finally complete with that important quartet of adults. And she shines like a ray of light on a dark day. Who am I kidding, it’s like looking into the sun and getting blinded for a few seconds. Cheetara is THE figure we’ve all been waiting for. She really is.
Gone are those ugly hips. Faded are the worries of botchy make up and pursed lips. The curves that many boys and girls admired are there. She is NOT pregnant (really how could anybody even have thought that!????) The articulation we’ve come to know from this line is there in all its glory. There are no pins! We have a blast effect that was never solicited the first time round. We also have an extra “we’re-very-sorry-for-the-delay” GITD-eyes head. That’s a mouthful.
I am of the utmost certainty that 99% of collectors will be extremely satisfied with Cheetara. The other 1%, well, let’s leave it there. Do I have any nitpicks? Of course, I really wished her staff was yellow/orange and not gold. That would’ve been absolute perfection. But since we’re getting a toy colored version of her in 2023 I have the option of showing her off with her dark yellow bo-staff. These figures often do go through the “classicizer” and there is nothing wrong with her shiny mutant-smashing stick. It is part of the vision Super7 had for her right from the start, so there’s nothing new to surprise us or to be unhappy about.
Her staff is long enough that it doesn’t feel unbalanced. Do you remember that little lever at the back of the LJN toy that could make her move the staff up and down? You are no longer limited to that action feature and now, with the help of a variety of hands, you can pose her any way you like. Add the bonus blaze of light that just pops onto the end of the staff and you have a magical pose. It is a bit top heavy so be sure to balance her properly, or just have it explode from the bottom of the staff. You can also swop out her head with her running pose head; hair windswept and perfectly paired with open hands for that flashy race. Don’t forget to plug the short staff onto her arm while doing so. It is cleverly hidden and doesn’t detract from the figure whatsoever.
Looking at her other accessories you can’t help but call back to all the wonderful stories we shared with our alien friends from outer space. The locket of lies (available in both open and closed versions) is a one off artefact that echoes the mud fight of the Snarfs while the ThunderCats blindly followed a blinking light into Mumm-Ra’s trap. You can now have your own adventures in the back yard with it. The Magical Flute tamed Ma-Mutt and now that we have both, you can further explore his obedience in your display. Even the Mirror of Truth (which a cub version of our heroine found) is here to show you the true colors of evil hiding behind the false Lion-O’s visage. These are all tiny treasures that adds to the charm of this epic space opera.
To end, the ThunderCats’ return to New ThunDera may have been bittersweet for Pumyra and Tygra who got left behind on Third Earth, but her arrival on your shelf will only improve what is already there. Even if she’s the only figure of the entire line you wanted, she’s definitely worth it. Cheetara takes us right back to Third Earth, time-portalled all the way to 1985 without the help of a DeLorean. If that isn’t why Super7’s slogan is “nobody’s making what we wanted so we made it ourselves”, then I don’t know and just wasted half an hour of your time to read this. Several forces pulled together to revive ThunderCats, and the figure we all desperately wanted is here at last. And she doesn’t fail to impress. As Cheetara once put it: “I am – WOMAN!” You go girl!! Now the countdown continues to version 2…