Tora

The Tora is a cat-shaped mech developed by Red Storm and originally released in A.Y. 6732. the Tora was unique in that it's Arcotype was created by copying the nueral pathways from an actual, living tiger. In the marketing information, Red Storm claimed to comb the deepest, darkest jungles, in search of the meanest, fearcest wild tigers in the verse. This of course had animal rights activists going nuts, especially when it was made public that the process killed the tiger, so in order to build a single mech, a tiger had to die.

Very few Toras were actually built in this way, in a series of different models. A rival mech company, Black Wind, was also producing a mobile suit called the Tigger at the same time, which was essentially viewed as a cheap copy. By A.Y. 750, Black Wind had gone out of buisness.

Despite being an extremly popular mobile suit, the Tora was a financial disaster. Red Storm would eventually go bankrupt.