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This article is about the real-world franchise. For the historical event within the fiction, see Beast Wars (event). For a list of other meanings, see Beast Wars (disambiguation).

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Beast Wars: Transformers is a franchise that began in 1996, following the end of Generation 2. It was a massive reinvention of the Transformers brand, featuring robots that changed into realistic, organically styled animals instead of the traditional vehicles and mechanical beasts. The accompanying cartoon was another visual break, being the first fully-CGI Transformers series. It also did the seemingly unthinkable and replaced the original factions of Autobots and Decepticons with complete new ones called Maximals and Predacons. Though originally decried by fans, Beast Wars dramatically reinvigorated the brand after flagging sales in the Generation 2 franchise.

"Beast Wars" is also frequently used as a catchall term for the overall Beast Era in which Beast Wars and other series occur.

The Beast Wars franchise features the following primary components:

• A toyline — (1996–2001)
• A cartoon series — (1996–1999) called Beasties in many Canadian markets to appear less violent (Ha!).
• A video game for PC and PlayStation based on the first season of the cartoon.
• A video game for the Nintendo 64 based on the Transmetal and Fuzor versions of the characters from the cartoon's second season (and some from the toyline).
• A video game for the PlayStation, with the same name and general concept as the N64 game, but significant differences.
• Several comic series that were produced both during and after the franchise's original run.

Overview

Beast Wars marked a revolutionary point in Transformers history, with all new factions, radical new toy developments, and (at the time) cutting edge computer animation.

From 1992 to 1995, Hasbro's attempt to revive the Transformers brand with Generation 2 proved to be not as successful as originally hoped. Facing the reality of cancelation, Hasbro was left with the decision of either ending Transformers for good or trying something dramatically different to breathe new life into the brand; ultimately, they chose the latter. The major change in direction followed organizational changes within Hasbro. The company had previously acquired rival toy manufacturer Kenner as part of their 1991 Tonka acquisition. In 1995, they transferred their boys' toy lines from the Hasbro headquarters in Rhode Island to Kenner's offices in Cincinnati, Ohio. Kenner was tasked with revitalize the brand with new ideas and, in 1996, Beast Wars was the result.

Lead designer Chris Gross inadvertently kicked off the Beast Wars concept when he proposed a stylistic change from hard-edged, blocky robots to Guyver-inspired "organic" machines. The "mutant heads" on the first few Beast Wars toy designs were conceived of as a way of easing the transition from traditional Transformers into Beast Wars by showing that there was a robot within the beast, not just an animal that transforms into some kind of monster. The Beast Wars line title was inspired by a past toyline of Kenner's, namely the Future War line of Terminator toys, which was chosen based on the idea that it portrayed a "visceral conflict". The show would not have been made unless a drastically new concept from the original Transformers was created, as Generation 1 was considered a stale property at the time.

To promote the new toyline, an animated TV series was created by Canadian production company Mainframe Entertainment, who had pioneered in computer-generated imagery with the success of their first animated series ReBoot. Television writers Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio were brought in to serve as the series' story editors. Having never worked on Transformers beforehand, the two brought a fresh perspective to the series, and created a whole new world and lore from the ground up. Voice talent for the show was based in Vancouver, British Columbia, with such actors as Garry Chalk, David Kaye, Scott McNeil, Richard Newman, Venus Terzo, and more, first joining the Transformers voice acting legacy through Beast Wars. Many would even return to Transformers to lend their voices to the casts of later animated series, such as those belonging to the Unicron Trilogy of the mid-2000s.

By mid-1999, Beast Wars had spanned three-and-a-half years of new toys and three seasons of the TV series, with new developments and new innovations constantly brought to the table year after year. While the cartoon ended that year, the toyline crept along passed its formal lifespan with a few final releases just making it out to retail stores and fan conventions in both 2000 and 2001.

Japanese release

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In Japan, the first season of the North American cartoon was aired in 1997 with what was basically a gag dub, striking a markedly lighter tone full of adlibs and pop culture references added to the dialogue, meant to up the humor and appeal to a much younger audience than the English version. This dub was accompanied by releases of the concurrent toys, but only about half of the ones released in the West (mostly just those of the in-show characters). Because the second and third seasons of the show were only 13 episodes each (half the length of the show's first 26-episode season), the second season was deemed too short to span a year's worth of Japanese television, and thus its Japanese release was held off until production of the third season was completed.

In the meantime, two Japanese-original cel-animated series were created to fill in the void, with each receiving their own accompanying toys and manga series. These were 1998's Beast Wars II and 1999's Beast Wars Neo, respectively. While both of these series used cel animation, the toys' box art was rendered in a CG style similar to the original Mainframe cartoon (whereas the Western releases of the toys were the opposite, featuring hand drawn box art). Once both of these had finished their original broadcast run, the remaining two CG-animated seasons of the Mainframe series, along with their accompanying toys, were finally released in late 1999 under the name of Beast Wars Metals. Like the first season, the Metals dub was just as light-hearted and littered with adlibs.

Reception

Beast Wars was the first complete reinvention of the Transformers brand, discarding the previous setting, characters, and factions to create a brand new story. Transformers in the Beast Wars cartoon were much smaller (often human-sized) and initially transformed into "fleshy" or "scaly" non-robotic animals, before the second season introduced new concepts like the Transmetals. Initially met with outrage by many fans (for a variety of reasons), Beast Wars would eventually win over most of its detractors and become highly regarded, largely due to the exceptional quality of the cartoon series. It is now not unusual for even longtime fans of the 1980s Transformers to consider Beast Wars to be their favorite of all Transformers franchises. This is perhaps best shown by the fact that, about fifteen years later, the first two fan-voted characters to enter the Transformers Hall of Fame were Beast Wars fan-favorites Dinobot and Waspinator, and again in 2017 when Optimus Primal won the Power of the Primes fan poll.

Sequel

A direct sequel series followed Beast Wars in the form of Beast Machines. In contrast to its predecessor, while it kept the heroic Maximal faction, Beast Machines brought back vehicular altmodes for the enemy faction, replacing the Predacons with the Vehicons. It also utilized a more futuristic "alien" aesthetic, with the Maximals turning into "technorganic" beasts (a molecular fusion of the organic and the technological), while the Vehicons turned into "living" vehicles with robotic heads in place of the driver's seats and cockpits. Beast Machines also received a cartoon series that continued the lives of the Beast Wars cast on their home planet of Cybertron, but took a much more cerebral approach to its story that yielded a far more polarizing reception from the fandom.

Expanded universes

The lasting popularity of Beast Wars went on to ensure its place as a poignant and memorable part of Transformers history. The popularity of the cartoon alone resulted in numerous continuations, spinoffs, and other addenda. Several additional storylines that tied into both the Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons were produced both during and after the Beast Era ran its course, mostly in the form of comics. While these "expanded universes" all contain the same events of the two cartoons—which are understood to have occurred exactly as had been portrayed onscreen—the context of said events differs with the inclusion of "extra" stories taking place "just offscreen" of the cartoons' episodic events. While each of these expanded Beast Wars universes are contradictory to each other, they all coexist as separate realities within the greater Transformers multiverse. The most notable of these include:

• A series of comics, text stories, script readings, and toy bios/profiles created by 3H Productions from 1997 to 2004, which include such series as Reaching the Omega Point, The Wreckers Primeval Dawn, and Universe. Throughout 2005 to 2016, Fun Publications published a number of Beast Wars-related comics and text stories also set in this 3H Beast Wars continuity, including "Dawn of Future's Past" and "Theft of the Golden Disk" among others.
• The sprawling Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity that first began in 1985, which included the Japanese dubs of the Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons, as well as the two Japanese-original Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo series, and so much more.
• The Dreamwave Generation One continuity that launched in 2002, in the form of multiple comic series and profile books published by Dreamwave Productions. Several concepts first introduced in the Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons were integrated into the Generation 1 setting of these comics, which also featured occasional references to the two cartoons meant to further reinforce their connection. 2004's Transformers: The Ultimate Guide further fleshed out this universe and treated it as the "one true" Transformers continuity that also included the Beast Wars cartoon. A Beast Wars miniseries set immediately after the final episode was also planned, but only released a preview story before cancelation. A few related prose stories for both the Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons (and for the Dreamwave comics) were also published in the Transformers Legends anthology book.
• In 2006–2008, IDW Publishing produced two Beast Wars comic miniseries and a set of profile books. This continuity is notable for including characters and events from the two Japanese Beast Wars series, with said events repositioned as backstory content set before the American cartoon, while the two miniseries themselves occur during the cartoon's third season. In 2016, a prequel story titled "Dawn of the Predacus" was published to (at least, in theory) help bridge the gap between Generation 1 and Beast Wars.
• From 2009 to 2014, Fun Publications also created Transformers: Wings Universe, a nearly unaltered version of the North American Generation 1 cartoon that also worked in the Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons with its own original stories set in and around all three cartoon series.

Continuity

Before 'toon began, there was... the comic!

Over the course of its roughly three-and-a-half-year run (and even long after), the continuity of the Beast Wars franchise underwent a rather shifting evolution, with numerous changes and retcons made to it along the way by multiple disparate parties.

Relationship with Generation 1

Gradual developments

In the very beginning, when the toyline debuted in 1996, the line presented itself as a complete reinvention of the Transformers brand, but one that was still set on Earth in the present day. Numerous references to "Bio-Genetic Engineering" being the source of the Maximals' and Predacons' organic beast modes were given in the toys' packaging blurb, in a short comic included with the very first Optimus Primal and Megatron toys, and in many of the toys' bios. Combined with the bio for that first Optimus Primal toy closely paraphrasing the motto of the original Optimus Prime toy from 1984 ("Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."), the original implication was that Beast Wars was simply another continuation of the first two iterations of the Transformers brand, with the Maximals and Predacons merely being genetically-enhanced Autobots and Decepticons, and Optimus Primal and Megatron being the very same individuals as their Generation 1 namesakes.

Granted, the line wasn't explicit about this connection at the time, but there was no reason not to think so. Plus, the 1997 release of the Maximal Grimlock toy featured a bio that made it abundantly clear that he was, indeed, the very same Autobot Grimlock of old, which further reinforced these implications. But after the cartoon took off and cemented itself as the dominant Beast Wars fiction, the toyline gradually shifted away from its original continuity to one more closely resembling that of the cartoon. A number of 1997 toy bios mentioned "energon crystals" (a prominent part of the cartoon's first season), while Drill Bit's bio referred to the Beast Wars setting not as "Earth" but instead as "the mysterious planet" (as it was known in the cartoon's first season). By 1998, the original toy continuity was practically dropped entirely, with the packaging blurbs for the Transmetals, Fuzors, and 1999's Transmetals 2 directly mentioning events specific to the cartoon's second and third seasons.

When the two-part pilot episodes of the Beast Wars cartoon premiered in April 1996 (five months ahead of the rest of the season as a preview airing), the two episodes showed that the cartoon had completely ignored what the toyline had originally established, continuity-wise, and created its own completely new universe from the ground up. Story editors Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio were new to Transformers at the time and, at first, paid little heed to what all had come before, fiction-wise, giving the cartoon pilot the initial impression of seeming like a new rebooted continuity unconnected to Generation 1. The only direct references to past Transformers lore in the pilot were a mention of Cybertron as the Maximals' and Predacons' home planet, and the onscreen presence of energon (but which was reimagined as naturally-occurring crystals instead of the artificially-created liquid fuel substance that it had been in prior appearances).

The surprise reappearance of the Autobots and Decepticons was the final key that firmly connected the Beast Wars cartoon to Generation 1.

One particular nugget of lore from the first episode that caught fans' attention was a mention by Optimus of a past event known as the "Great War". Originally, Bob Forward had thrown this in as a nebulous bit of history to vaguely explain why the Maximals and Predacons were presently in conflict with each other. But as the passionate fandom was wont to do at the time, it took that reference to more specifically refer to the civil wars that had been fought between the Autobots and Decepticons in previous Transformers fiction. Forward and DiTillio got wind of this fan-initiated idea and completely embraced it, with every later mention of the "Great War" in the show unquestionably referring to the Autobot-Decepticon conflict of Generation 1. And even as early as the third episode, an Easter egg cameo appearance of the Decepticon Starscream was inserted into a dream sequence.

As the first season continued, more references to Generation 1 were added in, such as a mention of the Decepticon Shrapnel in "Dark Designs", or imagery of Unicron in both "Possession" and "Other Voices, Part 1". But arguably the biggest example came in the aforementioned "Possession", wherein the ghost of Starscream actually guest-starred in person, directly calling back to events from the Generation 1 cartoon's third season and movie. Said episode even confirmed that the Autobots and Decepticons of Generation 1 were the ancestors of the Maximals and Predacons. And by the end of the Beast Wars cartoon's second season, said ancestors were finally seen alongside their descendants aboard the crashed Autobot vessel, the Ark, showing that the Maximals and Predacons were practically human-sized compared to the giant-sized Autobots and Decepticons, and solidified the fact that the Beast Wars cast had indeed traveled back in time from the future to ancient Earth long before the 1980s setting of Generation 1.

The "cartoon vs. comics" debate

Starscream's ghost from the Sunbow cartoon, but with a Marvel comics-colored blue face.

A question often debated by the fandom was, exactly, which version of Generation 1 the Beast Wars cartoon was meant to be in-continuity with. At the time, the two major continuities of Generation 1 were the Sunbow cartoon and the Marvel comics, both of which were strongly defended by their respective fanbases as to which was considered the "true" version of Generation 1. Across its three seasons, the Beast Wars cartoon made references to both the Sunbow cartoon and the Marvel comics (though, admittedly, more from the former than the latter), resulting in a unique continuity that was more like a mixture of the two.

But, said references had mainly been gleaned by Forward and DiTillio from online interaction with fandom rather than direct exposure to the source material. The two were actually more interested in creating their own brand new canon for Beast Wars; the references were merely sprinkled in to add flavor. In a 1997 interview, DiTillio even stated, "In a sense I treat Transformers like the King Arthur tales. It's one vast canon, with a lot of variations..." This abstention from picking one continuity over the other was likely to give the Beast Wars writers more creative freedom, unrestricted to either version of Generation 1 (and likely to avoid upsetting any fans who favored one over the other).

That said, additional media external to the cartoon written to tie into it would make their own decisions about which G1 continuity the show was a part of. In 1999–2000, 3H Productions published a multi-part story for the official Transformers convention BotCon. Titled Reaching the Omega Point, it was written by Marvel Comics writer Simon Furman (who would also write the final episode of Beast Wars) and tied directly into the cartoon's third season. More relevantly, Omega Point also made blatant use of the Marvel continuity (plus the events of The Transformers: The Movie) as its Generation 1 backstory, in an attempt to fully and strictly connect Beast Wars to the Marvel Comics continuity. Two other stories Furman also wrote for Transforce in 2000–2002 even sought to close the gap between the Marvel Generation 2 comics and Beast Wars, with Furman even once declaring Beast Wars and Omega Point (but not Beast Machines) to be fully part of the comics universe (in his mind, at least).

However, when Beast Machines started up in late 1999 and carried on the world of the Beast Wars cartoon, it too made references to Generation 1, but only from the Sunbow cartoon and none from the comics. What's more, 3H's next BotCon storyline, Transformers: The Wreckers, was both a direct tie-in to Beast Machines and a direct follow-up to Omega Point. But like Beast Machines, The Wreckers used the Sunbow cartoon (plus Marvel's Primus/Unicron myth) as its Generation 1 backstory, despite following the more Marvel-based Omega Point. And yet, the back-up series for The Wreckers, Primeval Dawn, used the Marvel Generation 2 comics' depiction of the Swarm as the backstory of the Beast Wars cartoon's Vok aliens. And then the next series, Universe, made prominent use of the Marvel character Primus and the Sunbow character Alpha Trion together as close associates. As a result, this made the combined continuity of Beast Wars, Omega Point, Beast Machines, The Wreckers, Primeval Dawn, and Universe an altogether mixture of Sunbow and Marvel lore, just as Beast Wars had originally been on its own. And when the Dreamwave Generation One continuity, the 2006 IDW Beast Wars comics, and the Wings Universe all created their own Generation 1 backstories for the Beast Wars cartoon, each of them likewise combined elements from both Marvel and Sunbow.

Over in Japan, meanwhile, there was no such contention over which G1 continuity Beast Wars (specifically, the Japanese-dubbed version) was a part of. Since the Marvel Transformers comics had not been formally released in Japan during their original run in the West, the Sunbow cartoon's Japanese dub had long since been established as the primary Transformers continuity in Japan, with nearly all Japanese Transformers material released up to that point having had some relation to the cartoon. When Beast Wars was introduced to Japan, it had always been considered part of the sprawling Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity, since there was no other major Transformers continuity in Japan at that point. This perception even extended to the Japanese guidebook Beast Wars Universe, which focused squarely on the original English version rather than the Japanese-dubbed version, and was written from the perspective that Beast Wars took place solely and specifically in the Generation 1 cartoon continuity instead of the unique Sunbow/Marvel mixture universe that it actually was.

Prehistoric setting

To be Earth, or not to be Earth. That was the question.

The planet's identity

With the Beast Wars cartoon ignoring the present-day Earth setting of the early toy bios and pack-in comic, the cartoon's setting for the Beast Wars was initially an uncertain one. The first episode noted that Megatron's crew of Predacons had intended to travel from Cybertron to Earth, but also included a line from Dinobot stating, "It's all wrong. This cannot be Earth." While the planet certainly resembled a primitive version of Earth, it had two moons. This initial ambiguity largely stemmed from what went on behind-the-scenes of the show. Forward and DiTillio were originally unsure if the series was going to be set on Earth in the past or on just a similar but still completely different planet. At the time, they assumed it was going to be Earth, but added a second moon to make it less obvious.

Since Hasbro's marketing department was equally unsure of just what to do with the show, Forward and DiTillio were given mostly free reign to do whatever they wished with it. Ultimately, they decided to reveal the planet as Earth after all, with the second moon blown up in the first season's finale, and the planet's identity confirmed in-show just two episodes later. With this revelation also came further developments to help flesh out the prehistoric setting of the series, such the introduction of humanity's unevolved ancestors in "Code of Hero", and the second season finale uncovering the ancient Autobot starship, Ark, that had crash-landed on Earth four million years ago in the Transformers fiction of the 1980s.

Dating the Beast Wars

Once the planet was established as prehistoric Earth, there still remained the question of just how long ago in the past the events of the cartoon were set. When, exactly, did the Beast Wars happen in the history of this fictional universe? The discovery of the Ark in "The Agenda (Part III)" led several characters to make casual comments about there being "four million years", "the next couple million years", and "a few million stellar cycles" until the awakening of the Autobots and Decepticon aboard the Ark in 1984, which suggested the Beast Wars took place not long after the Ark had first crash-landed on the planet.

Outside the cartoon, the various Beast Wars tie-in media attempted to provide more precise dates for when the show's events were set:

• The first was given in 2003, in the fifth chapter of the Japanese Micromaster prose series. In this story, artifacts of the Beast Wars found by Autobot Micromasters in the early 1980s were dated to have first arrived on Earth "three million years ago."
• In 2004, the second and third chapters (both written by Simon Furman) of Primeval Dawn—a short-lived comic series printed as back-up strips for the 2001–2004 Transformers: The Wreckers series, set not long after the final episode of the Beast Wars cartoon—provided a most specific date for the time period of the Beast Wars, that being "180,000 Years BC".
• From 2006 to 2008, IDW Publishing's two Beast Wars comic miniseries, The Gathering and The Ascending (also both written by Simon Furman) both took place during the third season of the cartoon, and dated the Beast Wars to "70,000 Years BC". However, the glossary entry for the Nemesis found in the back of the collected edition of the Beast Wars Sourcebook claimed that the ship was found during the Great War "millions of years later" from the Beast Wars, leaning more towards the cartoon's original statements. But the glossary's entries for Optimus Prime (G1) and Megatron (G1) both reflected the comics' timeframe by stated they awoke on modern-day Earth "thousands of years later" from the Beast Wars.

While these different dates remain contradictory to each other, they each belong to a different expanded-media continuity for the Beast Wars cartoon (see "Expanded universes" above); respectively, the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity, the Beast Era continuity created by 3H Productions, and the IDW Beast Wars continuity.

Future setting

Apparently, the future is neon-lit.

Distance from the Great War

As the Beast Wars cartoon continued its worldbuilding, once it became clear that the Maximals and Predacons were not only the distant descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons, but also originally from a future time set long after the age of said ancestors, questions arose about just how far into the future they originally came from. The show never actually addressed when the Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons ended, but did provide some hints about how long after the war the future era of Beast Wars was set.

In the first season, the first episode stated that the Maximals and Predacons were currently at peace, and had been "for centuries." In the episode "Dark Designs", it was offhandedly stated that the Maximals and Predacons hailed from a future set "three centuries" after that war. And in "Law of the Jungle", it was said that only "hundreds of stellar cycles" had passed since the Autobots and Decepticons first began the Great War. Collectively, this presented a relatively short time span (for a race with lifespans that can stretch up to millions of years) between the age of the Autobots and Decepticon and that of the Maximals and Predacons.

HOWEVER, outside of these first-season references, the rest of the show would instead imply a much greater gap of time since the end the Great War. In the series' production bible, the backstory written for the series notes that knowledge of the Maximals and Predacons descending from the Autobots and Decepticons came from "Cybertron Mythology" In "Possession", the Autobots and Decepticons were described not only as the Maximals' and Predacons' "ancestors", but specifically their "ancient ancestors", And in the same episode, despite the guest-starring Decepticon Starscream having garnered quite the infamous reputation in 1980s Transformers fiction, Optimus Primal, Blackarachnia, and Dinobot were the only ones among the cast who had ever heard of him. And much later, in "The Agenda (Part III)", upon first locating the Ark, the Maximal Silverbolt revealed that he thought the ship's existence was only a legend.

In the sequel series Beast Machines, other Generation 1 elements (namely Vector Sigma, its Key to Vector Sigma, and the Plasma Energy Chamber) were all likewise regarded by the characters as mere legends before their existences were fully realized. The original story treatment for the series even claimed "what little is known" about the Autobots and Decepticons is known mostly from legend, and that the era of the Maximals and Predacons was set a whopping "millions of years later". And when both Optimus and fellow Maximal Nightscream stumbled upon the ruins of the Autobot city Iacon, in "Sparkwar Pt. II: The Search", it was stated that the Great War had ended not "three centuries ago" (as originally given in "Dark Designs"), but rather "eons ago", which fits much better with the amount of time needed for the vast Autobot/Decepticon history to have all faded into myth and legend by the time of the Maximals' and Predacons' future setting.

And yet, despite all of that, the more miniscule time gap of "three centuries" is the one that more people have taken to heart in the years since, making its way into other licensed works and even creator commentary. 3H Productions' Apelinq's War Journals (which was set both right before and during Beast Machines gave the specific future date of "316 AU", as in "316 stellar cycles" into the future. Issue #1 of The Wreckers (which was also set both during and right after Beast Machines) clarified that this was "some three hundred years after the destruction of the Chaos-Bringer, Unicron." This was in reference to The Transformers: The Movie, which was set in 2005. The previous Reaching the Omega Point story "Covenant" had also referred to Unicron's defeat in 2005, so it matched up. The Wreckers #2 also reiterated the "over three hundred years" time gap, while both Issue #3 and the unpublished Issue #4 together actually claimed that the amount of time passed in the future between the disappearance of Optimus Primal's crew and their return to Cybertron from the Beast Wars was a total of two stellar cycles.

Beast Wars Universe, an interview with Larry DiTillio on the Rhino Entertainment DVD set of the Beast Wars cartoon's first season, and Transformers: The Ultimate Guide all likewise mentioned the span of "300 years". Meanwhile, IDW Publishing's The Gathering, The Ascending, and Beast Wars Sourcebook gave no timeframe for how long after the Great War the future era of Beast Wars was set, but in promotion of the standalone prequel story "Dawn of the Predacus", author John-Paul Bove had tweeted that the story was set "30 years after The Battle for Autobot City, 300 years before The Beast Wars".

Distance from the present day

With most Beast Wars media accepting the "three centuries" claim, there still remained the question when in the future these three centuries occurred. As stated before, the cartoon never said when the Great War ended, so other related media opted to provide their own different answers. Reaching the Omega Point introduced a dark alternate future ruled by a tyrant named Shokaract, which "Terminus" stated was set in the 32nd Century. A preceding story, "Schism", stated that this dark future was set "two hundred years" after the first chapter of Omega Point, "Covenant", which itself was set during the normal future setting of Beast Wars and Beast Machines. Logically, 200 years before the 32nd Century would place said normal future setting in the 30th Century, which would then place the end of the Great War three centuries earlier in the 27th Century. The related apocryphal story "Alignment" even seemed to support this notion with its own events being set "several hundred years" after the destruction of Unicron.

However, as noted above, the Omega Point sequel series The Wreckers explicitly and repeatedly placed the future setting of Beast Wars and Beast Machines "some three hundred years" after Unicron's destruction in 2005, which would be the 24th Century, essentially retconning away the 30th Century implication. Although, in the second issue of the next series, Universe, the inside-cover recap of the first issue's events instead claimed this future setting was in the 23rd Century (but this was likely an error). The Wing Universe story "A Common Foe" saw the civil wars between the Autobots, Decepticons, and all other related parties finally brought to their formal conclusion in the year 2013, so three centuries later from then would again be the 24th Century. Likewise, IDW Publishing's "Dawn of the Predacus" featured its own take on the end of the Great War, which the aforementioned tweet by John-Paul Bove dated to thirty years after 2005 and three hundred years before the future setting of Beast Wars, placing that story in 2035 and the future once again in the 24th Century.

Aside from these, there was one thing that initially did not adhere to the "three centuries" notion, that being the Japanese version. In the Japanese dub of "Dark Designs", the specific line of dialogue from the English version was not retained, instead changed to pop culture reference joke. And when the first Japanese-original spinoff series Beast Wars II started up, it was originally billed as taking place during the same future setting of the American Beast Wars cartoon. The main setting of Beast Wars II was the planet Gaia, which was all but stated outright to be a post-apocalyptic version of Earth. In its thirty-sixth episode, it was revealed that Gaia's ancient inhabitants (in other words, humankind) had abandoned the planet "several tens of thousands of years ago", a significantly greater time gap than just "three centuries ago".

At first, there was no contradiction, since, as mentioned, the "three centuries" line was left out of the Japanese dub of "Dark Designs". But when the theatrical feature "Lio Convoy in Imminent Danger!" and the sequel series, Beast Wars Neo both came along, a number of contradictions arose between both them and the American Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons. To rectify this, when TakaraTomy began to properly assemble the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon timeline in the mid-2000s, they opted to acknowledge the "three centuries" mention from the English version of "Dark Designs" and use both it and the "several tens of thousands of years" mention from Beast Wars II to relocate both it and Beast Wars Neo to take place many millennia after Beast Machines. Also, vintage Generation 1 and Generation 2 media released in Japan had also placed the end of the Autobot/Decepticon wars in the 21st Century, so once again, the future setting of Beast Wars was placed in the 24th Century.

And finally, another exception was given in Beast Wars Universe, which treated the end of the American Generation 1 cartoon, "The Rebirth", as the last known event of the Great War in the book's chronology for Beast Wars, titled "Chronicles of Cybertron". It also claimed that the full amount of time between "The Rebirth" and the future setting of Beast Wars was estimated (by the Beast Wars series' staff) to be "about 300–500 years", with the Great War having apparently gone on for another two centuries after "The Rebirth", before reaching its end in the 23rd Century, which would place the future of Beast Wars in the 26th Century. But, none of these staff-related statements have ever been realized in any canonical fiction, so they remain only pseudocanon at best.

Anniversaries

10th Anniversary

2006 marked the tenth anniversary of Beast Wars, and many parties sought to celebrate the occasion in different ways. From Hasbro came Beast Wars 10th Anniversary, a small line consisting primarily of reissues of eight toys from the original 1996 toyline, redecoed in more show-accurate color schemes. Six of these reissues were Deluxe class toys and included both a packed-in DVD containing a single episode from the cartoon (each episode being one themed around the character whose toy they came packaged with) and an all-new build-a-figure of Trans-Mutate, a show-original single-episode character who had never received a toy beforehand. Additionally, two brand new Deluxe class molds of Optimus Primal and Megatron were released as part of the line, and had built-in compatibility with the Cyber Key gimmick of the then-contemporary Transformers: Cybertron line.

For BotCon 2006, Fun Publications created what is, arguably, their most famous and well-received set of BotCon exclusives, "Dawn of Future's Past", a set of mostly Cybertron toy molds redecoed/retooled into most of the main cast of the Beast Wars cartoon in forms representing the Cybertronian bodies they had before they first came to Earth and scanned their beast modes. An accompanying comic story of the same title was published that served as an immediate prequel to the cartoon, telling the story of what all happened right before the first episode. The following year, an additional prequel to that prequel was released at BotCon 2007 in the form of an animated short titled "Theft of the Golden Disk", which even had David Kaye reprise his role of Megatron.

TakaraTomy also celebrated the anniversary with two new developments of their own. First was Beast Wars Reborn, a special two-pack release of the original Ultra class Optimus Primal and Megatron toys in new show-accurate colors and tooling. A four-part Beast Wars Reborn prose story, set after the events of the Japanese dub of Beast Machines, was published in issues #97-100 of Figure Ō magazine from March to June, 2006. In 2007, the tenth anniversary of the Japanese release of Beast Wars, TakaraTomy released Beast Wars Telemocha Series, a proper line of Beast Wars reissues very similar to Hasbro's Beast Wars 10th Anniversary line, complete with pack-in DVDs and show-accurate redecos (even more accurate than those of the Hasbro line).

20th Anniversary

After the attention Beast Wars had received from Hasbro for the tenth anniversary in 2006, as well the bombastic celebration for the Transformers brand's 30th anniversary, the Thrilling 30, which Hasbro threw in 2014... the fandom waited with bated breath to see how Hasbro would handle 2016, the 20th anniversary of Beast Wars. Alas, there was little fanfare from Hasbro proper, who opted to instead focus their attention more on the 30th anniversary of The Transformers: The Movie. The one nod to the Beast Wars anniversary from Hasbro was the Platinum Edition release of the Year of the Monkey Optimus Primal, which did sport a celebratory logo (pictured right), but said release was more of a Hasbro Asia initiative rather than Hasbro proper. All in all, it was a rather lackluster showing from Hasbro for the line which reinvigorated the brand.

For BotCon 2016, Fun Publications paid more heed. Much like 2006, the convention was themed around another Beast Wars prequel, with a majority of the exclusive toys representing Beast Wars characters in pre-beast bodies they had on Cybertron before the Beast Wars. The convention comic, "Dawn of the Predacus", was made by IDW and tied its story to both their 2006–2008 Beast Wars comics and Fun Publications' "Dawn of Future's Past" comic from 2006. Throughout 2016, Fun Publications also produced several prose stories for Beast Wars: Uprising, a completely different, dystopian-themed Beast Wars series that was largely unconnected to the TV series. One of these prose stories, "Intersectionality", even included its own Chilling 20 anniversary logo (pictured left) as a joke.

TakaraTomy also released a bit of Beast Wars-themed product in 2016. Exclusive versions of Rattrap, Rhinox, and Waspinator were made available at Transformers Fes2016, as part of the Legends toyline. These three were show-accurate redecos of their Generations toys originally released during the aforementioned Thrilling 30 range. TakaraTomy also released a Masterpiece version of Optimus Primal for October 2016, which led to several more Beast Wars characters receiving Masterpiece toys in the years to come. E-HOBBY also released Legends Convobat in December 2016, a reuse of the Titans Return Mindwipe toy as a modern update of the original bat Optimus Primal toy from 1996.

25th Anniversary

The twenty-fifth anniversary in 2021 was met with significantly more fanfare from Hasbro with the debut of Kingdom, the Beast Wars-themed third chapter of the War for Cybertron Trilogy toyline and cartoon. The success of the Kingdom toyline led to releases of more Beast Wars characters continuing into the subsequent Legacy line of 2022. 2021 also saw the release of a brand new ongoing Beast Wars comic from IDW Publishing, which served as a complete reimagining of the 1996 cartoon's premise, setting, and characters, and whose issues sported a 25th anniversary logo (pictured right). The then-upcoming film Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which featured new live-action interpretations of a few Beast Wars characters, was also announced this year. Both the film and its heavily beast-themed toyline were originally scheduled for release the following year in 2022, but delays pushed back both to release in 2023 instead.

Notes

• In Issue #1 of G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers: The Art of War, a glimpse of Optimus Primal is seen in the memory banks of the Decepticon Soundwave, suggesting that a version of Beast Wars also happened in the G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers continuity.
• A number of other events bearing the "Beast Wars" name have also been known to exist, unrelated to either the original Beast Wars toyline/mini-comic continuity or the Beast Wars cartoon continuity. For more information on these "other" Beast Wars, see the "Beast Wars (event)" article for all the details.
• On April 4, 2019, Lorenzo di Bonaventura listed a live-action adaptation to Beast Wars as a potential future entry to the live-action film series. This would eventually manifest as Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.

References

[[Category:Beast Era]] [[Category:Beast Wars| ]] [[Category:Franchises]]