Animorphs

This article is about the toyline based on the book series and television show. For the organic beings empowered with the ability to "morph", see Animorph.

Fortunately, there were no sexy brooding vampires to be found.

In 1999, Hasbro released a small toyline based on the popular Animorphs book series by K. A. Applegate. The line was released under the Transformers brand name, though the two franchises have no relation to each other, story-wise. Animorphs toys were stocked on shelves alongside Beast Wars Transmetal 2 toys, and their presence may explain why the Transmetal 2 series was so small (only 17 toys.)

Fan Reaction

For the most part, the Animorphs line was, politely speaking, poorly received by Transformers fans for a variety of reasons:

1. The franchise was totally unrelated to the Transformers universe, and many felt that Hasbro was trying to milk the brand name by using it on the Animorphs line.
2. Because the main characters were organic beings and not robots, instead of drastically re-arranging their body parts, the Animorphs "transformed" by fluidly morphing from one state to the other, i.e. a human's hands and feet would become hooves while morphing into a horse. This, of course, was impossible to recreate in toy form, so they fell back on the Transformers' method of rearranging the character's body parts. As such, the "human" modes often had animal kibble hanging off them, if not still blatantly visible in both forms, and many of the animal forms required separate pieces that slid over the human hands to turn them into paws or claws. Some fans found this design approach sloppy unaesthetic.

Toys

Animorphs toys featured a small cast of human characters that transformed into various animals. Most figures also had a third "mid-morph" mode that represented a halfway point in the morphing process. There were also 2 alien "Andalite" characters, one hero and one villain. The villain, Visser Three, had 2 figures.

As the line trickled to a close, two of the later figures (Marco/beetle and Ax/panther) became fairly rare and difficult to find. Another pair of figures, (Jake/stingray and Taxxon/Battlebeast), never saw release in the United States at all, though a few fans were able to get their hands on foreign versions.

With the cancellation of the line, a series of planned animal-to-animal toys were retooled and released under the Beast Wars banner as the Mutants.

1999

Deluxe

(Each Deluxe toy came packed with a small Yeerk figure in either orange, purple, or red translucent plastic.)

• Ax (human/panther)
• Cassie (human/wolf)
• Jake (human/tiger)
• Jake (human/bear)
• Marco (human/gorilla)
• Marco (human/beetle)
• Rachel (human/lion)
• Tobias (human/hawk)

Mega

• Ax ("Andalite"/scorpion)
• Visser Three ("Andalite"/"inferno creature")
• Tobias (human/hawk)

Ultra

• Visser Three ("Andalite"/"Hork-Bajir"/"inferno creature")

Super

• Tri-Rex (combiner)

• Cassie (human/Tyrannosaurus rex tail)
• Jake (human/Tyrannosaurus rex head)
• Marco (human/Tyrannosaurus rex body)

No US release

• Jake (human/stingray)
• Taxxon ("Taxxon"/"Battlebeast")

External link

• Animorphs at Wikipedia