Head Hunter

"We'll head them off at the pass!!"
"...'head them off at the pass'?! I hate that cliché!"
*BANG!*

Originally created to be terraforming tools, the three Head Hunters (ヘッドハンター Heddo Hantā, sometimes just Hunters) have instead become terrifying weapons in the war for planet Beast. Each of these ancient machines are powered by combination of a fusion engine and a "Psycho Brain", a device that draws out, amplifies and focuses the inherent Psycho Energy of its Beast pilot, allowing them to direct its unique powers. But their creators soon realized the flaw in their design, that the fusion-powered Psycho Brain could only be used so many times before it could potentially corrupt or break the mind of a pilot, unleashing incredible destructive power. Thus the three incomplete machines were sealed away on Beast's primordial surface, away from the planet's newest life forms, the subterranean Laser Beasts, with only vague hints to their locations left in the Beast Bible.

20,000 years later, the Beastformers, desperate having lost so much ground to the invading Laser Beasts, sought out the Head Hunters, and three champions used them to help turn the tide of battle... but can they truly control these monstrous machines?

The Head Hunters are:

• The Sheep Hunter, piloted by Rabbit Kid
• The Stag Hunter, piloted by Bombsheep
• The Tiger Hunter, piloted by Platinum Tiger

Fiction

Beastformers comic

The three Head Hunters were created long ago by the Three Wise Ones, designed with incredible power in order to re-shape the inhospitable surface of the primordial planet Beast. However, they soon deemed their power too dangerous, and hid them away. Legend of the Three Wise Ones

During the war with the Laser Beasts, Rabbit Kid and Bombsheep searched for and found the Sheep Hunter and Stag Hunter, which they brought back to the front lines and used to send the enemy fleeing.

Tigerburn, leader of the Laser Beasts, quickly set his soldiers to creating counter-weapons, the Battlecruisers and the W Battler. With these new war machines, the Laser Beasts managed to score a victory over the Stag and Sheep Hunters... but suddenly Platinum Tiger arrived in the Tiger Hunter, the most powerful of the three. He was able to rout the invaders, but Tigerburn had kept an ace up his sleeve, and arrived on the battlefield riding the Platinum Gold Battle Drill. Beastformers VS Laser Beasts

Legends comic

Rabbit Kid used the Sheep Hunter in the Beastformers' war with the Laser Beasts. LG51 Doublecross Prologue

Toys

Beastformers

The Stag Hunter, Graysharp not included.

• Sheep Hunter (1988)
• Stag Hunter (1988)
• Tiger Hunter (1988)

Available only in the Transformers-less 1988 Beastformers sequel series, each Head Hunter is a largish vehicle in the shape of a robotic animal head. Pulling them back activates a two-speed motor system that propels them forward slowly at first, then rocketing into a quick dash. The jaw of each beast is also geared to shudder up and down as it rolls forward.

The back of the Hunters can be pulled back to fit a Beastformer or Laser Beast in its "BF Connector" control space. Each side of the control area also has a pair of flip-up gray bars that can be used to transport two more warriors into battle by placing a Beast figure between them, with the bars under their arms.

Each Hunter also came with a specific Beastformer pilot: the Sheep Hunter came with Rabbit Kid, the Stag Hunter with Bombsheep, and the Tiger Hunter with Platinum Tiger. The latter two are identical to their previous releases, while Rabbit Kid got a tiny bit of retooling to shorten his ears and round out his tail for some reason.

• Beast Planet's Greatest Confrontation Set (Box set, 1988)

The Tiger Hunter was also available in the "Beast Planet's Greatest Confrontation Set" (ビースト星最大の対決セット Bīsuto-sei Saidai no Taiketsu Setto), unchanged from the prior release, once again with Platinum Tiger as the pack-in pilot.

This set also came with Golder and Yellow Giraffe (same as their prior releases), and the set-exclusive Skullgrotes, Kingbuster, Salmomancer, and a chromed-gold Battle Drill.

This set is particularly expensive on the secondary market, given the entire Laser Beast half of the set is not available anywhere else.

Notes

• The Head Hunters' packaging has virtually no information about the vehicles' fictional powers outside of the generic "sealed away for being too powerful" backstory, plus they lack "bio" cards. The Hero Special 12: Laser Beasts mook, which simply calls them the "Hunters", goes into far more detail on their powers and weapons.
• In the Hasbro Battle Beasts line, the "Battle Chariots" came with a semi-random{{#ifeq: ||}} selection of Beasts. Supposedly, this is the source of many of the rarer variants in the Hasbro line, like the pink War Weasel and Crusty Crab, whose decos match up with their Takara releases, but more carded samples of these toys would help confirm that.
• Speaking of Battle Beasts, the Takara-release Hunters' customer-applied decal sheets are the same as the ones packed in with the Hasbro versions of the toys, using the Battle Beasts logo and having "©1987 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved" on them.

Foreign names

• English: Battle Chariots