Transformers: Beast Wars (Japanese toyline)
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Transformers: Beast Wars (トランスフォーマー ビーストウォーズ) is the overarching title given to Takara's Japanese release of the Beast Wars toyline, omitting the more ostentatious title "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers" given to the dubbed version of the accompanying cartoon.
Beast Wars would not hit Japan until over a year after its Hasbro-market debut, most likely due to waiting for the full first season of the show to finish production so it could be run in its totality in a single stretch, as is the norm for Japanese kids media with toy tie-ins. The show's long production time also resulted in the need for "filler" after that first year, resulting in two Japan-original cartoons and associated toylines before the line returned to the Mainframe show setting. However, even though those two series were given their own titles, "Beast Wars II" and "Beast Wars Neo", those brandings never appeared on the toys' packaging. Instead, similar to how Takara's Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers version of the Transformers toyline maintained its title for six years despite constantly changing cartoon titles, the Japanese Beast Wars toys were all branded simply Transformers: Beast Wars for three years, until 1999 saw the toys adopt the Beast Wars Metals branding given to the dubbed version of seasons 2 and 3 of the American cartoon.
1997-1998 (Beast Wars)
[edit]Starting in summer 1997, the Takara Beast Wars toyline began very similarly to the Hasbro version, with only a handful of minor color differences appearing in the first wave of product. However, by wave 2, several toys had considerably different decos, as well as an all-new villain character (created to fill out the VS-packs evenly). On top of that, several of the first-wave toys got more "show-accurate" running changes in January 1998, though the level of "show accuracy" varied pretty wildly. But as the back end of the line began and Takara started bringing over non-show-character molds, most of the releases returned to being nigh-identical to their Hasbro counterparts.
| Wave 1 (July 1997) | Convoy VS Megatron Whiteclaw VS Scorpos Cheetus VS Waspeeter |
Dinobot VS Tarans Rattle VS Terrorsaurer Convobat VS Megalligator |
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Wave 2 (October 1997)
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Wave 3 (November 1997)
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Wave 4 (December 1997) | Wave 5 (January 1998) | |||||
Wave 6 (February 1998)
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Special Editions
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Playset
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Keychains
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Exclusives
[edit]| BotCon Japan 1998 | Comic BomBom
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TV Magazine
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Toys"R"Us |  |
1998 (Beast Wars II)
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The first of the two Takara-"original" Beast Wars line-ups, the toys collectively associated with the title Beast Wars II were released beginning in March 1998. It is a very strange beast, so to speak; an eclectic mix of already-existing sculpts that had previously not been used in Japan yet, which not only included more toys from Hasbro's Beast Wars line, but also Generation 2 vehicle-bot figures that had never before been sold in Japan (and some that had previously never even been released by Hasbro!), plus a few figures scavenged from the original Generation 1 toyline, many of them redecoed and retooled (some of them extensively so), plus a few supplemental toys apparently intended for release in Microman. Ultimately, only three characters received new toy sculpts: Moon, Lio Convoy, and Galvatron. We'd like to say it all fit together cohesively, but... no, not really. It's weird.
The toyline was backed up by a cel-animated anime series and a short-lived monthly manga in Comic BomBom, though neither one exactly set the world on fire or helped move many toys.
As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, the toys related to the Beast Wars II fiction were not actually sold under that banner, but were branded with the normal Beast Wars logo... despite the complete change in packaging design and the use of Beast Wars II on checklists.
Wave 1 (3-??-1998)
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Wave 2 (4-23-1998)
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Wave 3 (4-30-1998)
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Wave 4 (5-21-1998)
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Wave 5 (5-25-1998)
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Bigmos VS Autostinger Powerhug VS Autocrusher Tonbot VS Autojetter Mantis VS Autolauncher |
Wave 6 (7-??-1998)
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Wave 7 (8-??-1998)
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Wave 8 (9-??-1998)
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Wave 9 (10-??-1998)
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Wave 10 (11-??-1998)
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Special releases
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Puzzle pack-ins
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Role Play | Playset |
Exclusives
[edit]| Comic BomBom | Toys"R"Us |
1999 (Beast Wars Neo)
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The second of the two Takara-"original" Beast Wars line-ups, the toys collectively associated with the title Beast Wars Neo were released in 1999. Takara put the time saved by the previous year's rampant recycling of existing sculpts to good use, as the follow-up's biggest feature is the fact that it is positively heavy with all-new sculpts, plus a handful of retools, and only a very small number of straight redecos. Some of these toys would later see release in Hasbro markets, while most remain unreleased in Western markets to this very day.
The "Cybertrons" (i.e. Maximals) kept the mostly-mammals theme, while the "Destrons" (i.e. Predacons) had a theme of dinosaurs and other big scary prehistoric animals. Per the Takara designers, the theme boiled down to "friendly zoo animals versus dinosaurs," as both had been largely neglected by the main Beast Wars line at that particular time<ref>Transformers Beast Wars: Beast Generations, p. 125</ref>. Almost every new mold has a third "attack mode", weapons for the Cybertrons as a sign of teamwork or traps for the Destrons as a sign of deceit, though quite often they can be simply described as "pile of animal parts with a gimmick sticking off it".
The Neo line-up is also notable for being extremely short-lived at retail, with the majority of its product released over the span of a mere five months, quickly making way for Beast Wars Metals. Supposedly, this is related to the fact that these toys did not fare well sales-wise. Japanese fans at the time cited the overly-complex toys being too difficult for the younger age group Transformers had been traditionally aimed at in Japan. Despite the Japanese Beast Wars media being aimed at the lower single-digits ages, these toys were notoriously complicated for that age group, with even grown adults finding the transformations utterly frustrating, as they require multiple panels on ball-jointed struts to be positioned precisely right for the beast mode to lock into place. On top of that, several of the toys are infamous for being "shellformers"—Break, in particular, could have all of his beast-mode panels/parts removed and still leave a fully functional robot mode behind! Hisashi Yuki cites the fact that no one red-flagged the complexity of Tripredacus and Magnaboss as giving the design team the (unfortunately false) impression that kids were ready for that level of difficulty, and the reliance on beast mode "shells" was an effort to completely conceal the robotic nature of the figures with an animal mode that could be convincing from any angle.<ref>Transformers Beast Wars: Beast Generations, p. 126</ref>
Unfortunately, the "zoo animals versus dinosaurs" theme backfired since the Cybertrons mostly had benign, not-exactly-combat-ready beast modes which lacked appeal to kids, and likely why Hasbro left most of those molds alone. Reportedly, Neo sold so bad it actually poisoned the well for the incoming Metals line, as kids largely left Transformers alone... which would force Takara to make some drastic changes a little later on.
Like Beast Wars II, Neo had a cel-animated cartoon and Comic BomBom manga to shill the toys. Despite this, the toys were still just branded Transformers: Beast Wars, even though the packaging was redesigned again. For whatever reason, the packaging rendered the faction names "Cybertron" and "Destron" as "Cybertoron" and "Destoron".
| Wave 1 (01-??-1999) |
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Wave 2 (02-??-1999)
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Wave 3 (03-??-1999)
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Wave 4 (05-??-1999)
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Wave 5 (07-??-1999)
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Canceled | Role play |
1999 (Beast Wars Metals)
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With seasons 2 and 3 of the Mainframe Beast Wars show finally wrapped up, Takara was able to send the show out as a full season with accompanying toyline. Metals was a smaller line than its predecessors, sticking entirely with characters who appeared in the show (even if not in Transmetal bodies). The first wave of toys had different, more "show-accurate" decoes and, notably, name tampographs were replaced with generic "CYBERTRON" and "DESTRON" markings. However, toys in later waves were functionally the same as Hasbro releases (other than minor changes to Optimal Optimus/Powered Convoy). The line also included a Takara-only retool of Transmetal Cheetor into Ravage (a character that appeared on the show in that design), which was quickly a very sought-after item outside Japan.
Of particular note are the character bio cards that come with each toy. While bio cards had been in all previous Takara Transformers toylines (and were part of most toylines for many years after), for Metals the card fronts were three-stage lenticular-printed, showing the characters' robot, beast, and pre-Transmetal beast modes.
Along with the show, Metals got a Comic BomBom manga that is... kind of insane, having little to nothing to do with the show outside of some very broad-strokes story elements, but it does feature all the characters in their toy-Transmetal bodies, at least.
Unfortunately, despite the initial Beast Wars line being very popular, the return to that cast and cartoon could not overcome the sales that had been slumping ever downward over the previous two years. As such, this line was incredibly short-lived, a mere four months long, plus Takara opted to pass on the Hasbro sequel series Beast Machines in favor of their own original followup line, Car Robots, that hewed more closely to classic Transformers... mostly, at least. Though, Beast Machines would eventually get a limited release in Japan, several years later.
Wave 1 (September 1999)
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Metals Convoy VS Metals Megatron Silverbolt VS Metals Rampage Metals Cheetus VS Metals Waspeeter |
Metals Rattle VS Metals Terrorsaurer Metals Rhinox VS Metals Tarans Metals Airazor VS Quickstrike |
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Wave 2 (October 1999)
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Wave 3 (December 1999)
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Related releases
[edit]Takara imports
[edit]To combat their dwindling supply of domestic Beast Wars product (which sold like hotcakes) at the end of 1997, Takara resorted to importing toys made for the American market and slapping localized stickers on their packaging, although this resulted in prices double that of domestic product. And some misspelled names. This would be done again for some of the Transmetals 2 subline, with some sold at theaters and the rest at Toys"R"Us. Notably, three toys sold in theaters have minor paint variants not found in mainstream releases (which were identical in both Takara and Hasbro markets)—Depth Charge, Cheetor, and Dinobot.
| Imports (1997) | Theaters (1999) | Toys"R"Us
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Hasbro imports
[edit]Magmatron was released by Hasbro in the United States as a Target exclusive. The toy itself was mostly unchanged, but put in Beast Machines Dinobots packaging that also featured the Japanese Transformers logo, Magmatron's own name in Katakana, and text taken from his original Beast Wars Neo packaging.
Additionally, Hasbro imported several other Japanese Beast Wars toys and made them available via their "Hasbro Collectors" website. Unlike Magmatron, these were just existing stock in their original packaging. All of them could be bought at a bit of a markup... though ultimately, they would end up being blown out at half-price.
| Cybertron (Maximal) | Destron (Predacon) | VS sets
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Sonokong Beast-War Korean series
[edit]In South Korea, Takara licensee Sonokong released a selection of Beast Wars II toys, under the title Transformers: Beast-War (트랜스포머 비스트-워 Teuraenseupomeo Biseuteu-Wo). Subsequently, some of the Beast Wars Neo toys were released under the title Beast-War Neo (비스트-워 네오 Biseuteu-Wo Ne'o), leaving out the "Transformers" part of the title from the previous line.
Beast-War
[edit]Each of the figures sold in the Beast-War toyline came with a minimum of two cardboard "rock paper scissors" (gawi bawi bo) cards in place of the Japanese bio cards. Each card is printed on a single side with a picture of the character (usually just a straight reuse of the packaging art) and has either a rock, paper or scissors symbol printed in the top right corner. While the packaging and instructions give no explanation as to what this feature is for, a rough estimate would suggest that each card indicates which figure is stronger than the other, based on either of the three symbols. Additionally, there are unique dice rolls on each of the cards which suggests that a die must be used to play the game—whatever that game may be.
Some figures have been known to come with more than two cards—and in some extreme cases—the two cards that are supposed to be packaged with the respective figures are not included at all.
Cybertron
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Destron
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Beast-War Neo
[edit]Unlike the previous line, the Beast-War Neo figures include actual bio cards made of a similar material to that of the Japanese cards, rather than a piece of cardboard with a single side printed. For whatever reason, each of the figures in the line include a handful of randomly selected bio cards; meaning you could end up with multiples of the same character's card or none of the respective characters included in the box itself.
| Individual figures | VS sets |
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Notes <references group="A"/>
Post-Beast Wars releases
[edit]As Beast Wars—at least the first phase—was a big seller for Takara, they've dedicated ample space in later toylines for returns to those characters. For the same on Hasbro's side of things and post-brand unification toys (barring Masterpiece), see that toyline's corresponding article.
Beast Wars Reborn (2006)
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In celebration of the upcoming 10th anniversary of Beast Wars, Takara released a set containing the original Ultra Class Convoy and Megatron toys with new, show-accurate heads and cartoon-based decos under the Beast Wars Reborn banner. Those toys were accompanied by a four-part text story serialized in Figure Ō magazine.
Beast Wars Telemocha Series (2007)
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Takara's Telemocha line (a combination of the words "television" and "omocha", the Japanese word for "toy") was much the same concept as Hasbro's 10th Anniversary line, being spruced-up versions of the original molds packaged with DVDs of key episodes. However, not only did Takara really slather on the paint, but they made some odd additions to the line, including a couple of characters from Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo, as well as an entirely new Predacon named Wolfang (pronounced "Volfang").
Beast Wars Again (2023)
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2023 saw a sudden revival of Japan's Beast Wars franchise as TakaraTomy sought to ensure children knew what the heck a "Beast Warrior" was ahead of the Beast Wars cast's big screen debut in Rise of the Beasts. The toyline was composed of meticulously screen-accurate redecoes of the Beast Wars figures from the earlier War for Cybertron: Kingdom toyline.
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