Beast Machines: Transformers (toyline)

From MediaWiki
Revision as of 17:38, 24 September 2011 by Geewunling (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigationJump to search

Template:Nav-BM

Beast Machines was the toyline successor to Beast Wars, running from 1999 to 2000. It featured the Maximals as smoothly techno-organic beasts, pitted against the futuristic war machines of the Vehicons. Beast Machines signaled the full-fledged return of vehicular Transformers, after an absence of nearly four years.

Beast Machines continued many of its predecessor's elements, retaining the Maximal faction and a number of its main characters. Both factions tended toward unorthodox designs; the toys also made frequent use of translucent plastic and chrome finishes. Spark crystals appeared on most toys.

Several experimental sub-lines appeared during Beast Machines: the Beast Riders, vehicles to scale with the smaller figures that lacked a robot mode and instead converted into an attack mode; and Deployers, beasts that changed to weapons usable by the larger figures. The Dinobots subline appeared during Beast Machines', consisting of redecoed molds from both the Hasbro Beast Wars and the Takara Beast Wars Neo lines; it shipped in the same packaging assortments with the normal figures in the line.

In addition to the Dinobot subline, Hasbro also released new redecos of a number of Beast Wars toys, all characters who were featured on the cartoon series (reflecting Fox Kids' running the series prior to and concurrently with its sequel). All of these redecos featured a promotional tag indicating Fox's airing of Beast Wars. Like the Dinobot line, these figures were often shipped with the core figures of Beast Machines.

Overview

Freaks of nature

Aesthetically, the smooth, curvaceous designs of the Maximals is a further evolution of the earlier Transmetal and Transmetal 2 design styles, seamlessly blending the mechanical and the organic. Often the organic parts had hints of the technological (eg. Cheetor's purple, angular spots) or vice versa (the smooth, rounded "gauntlets" on Optimus Primal's forearm).

The Vehicons had emphatically Cybertronian vehicle forms, often with articulated "sensors". They likewise featured some unorthodox robot modes, often with inhuman faces, odd-shaped limbs, and unusual forms of locomotion such as Thrust's optional uni-wheel or Jetstorm's legless hover mode.

Beast Machines toys included a marble-sized spark crystal, embedded in a part of the body. Sometimes they had no real importance, though sometimes they played a large part in the aesthetics of the toy, such as Geckobot's eye piece.

Show-accuracy was widely variable across the entire toy line. Show production house Mainframe Entertainment apparently began animating the characters from early concept sketches, designs that of necessity changed a great deal during the translation into toy form. Thus many characters' toy and cartoon depictions bear relatively little resemblance to each other. Some toys were supposed to represent an "evolution" of a previously existing character and thus looked completely different (such as Night Slash Cheetor). The late-arriving Motorcycle Drone and Tank Drone toys, both highly show-accurate, may have been an explicit attempt to mitigate this.

The characters' show-based scale was likewise widely variable. While the relative scale of characters has never translated perfectly from toy to show in any Transformers line, Beast Machines is especially notorious for it:

  • Nightscream is the second-smallest Maximal on the show, yet his toy is a hulking Ultra, making him to scale with only the largest toys (Supreme Cheetor and, perhaps, Air Attack Optimus Primal—the latter of which was not even released 'til well after Beast Machines ended, and in a different franchise, to boot).
  • Silverbolt is the tallest show Maximal, but has the smallest toy.
  • Toy-Obsidian is a Basic-sized figure, dwarfed by the Maximals; his show portrayal has him as larger than most or all of them.
  • Tankor, the largest character of all, was only a modestly sized Mega.
  • Toy-Rattrap is larger than Blackarachnia, who should be twice his height.
  • Primal came in Deluxe and Mega sizes, with the more widely available Deluxe size being notably different from his show design, and neither reflecting his massive stature relative to the other characters.

The line's overall success was seemingly limited. Combined with Hasbro's financial troubles over excessive product glut in their Star Wars Episode 1 lines, it was decided to cancel the release of the last handful of toys which had been developed—Bruticus, Megatron Megabolt and Air Attack Optimus Primal—abandon plans for a sequel series, Transtech, and re-vamp the franchise from the ground up. The Japanese Car Robots series was quickly ported over as "filler" under the name Robots in Disguise, giving Hasbro and Takara the time needed to coordinate on the next series. Not ones to waste the effort put into the canceled figures, all three were eventually released as part of the Robots in Disguise toyline.

While Takara stamps are present on every Beast Machines toy, Japan did not receive anything relating to the line until 2005, as Beast Wars Returns, and in a very limited manner.

2000

Maximal

Deployers

Beast Riders

  • Che (cheetah chariot)

Basic

Deluxe

Mega

Ultra

Super

Supreme

McDonald's Happy Meal Toys

Exclusives

Vehicon

Basic

Beast Riders

Deluxe

Mega

Ultra

McDonald's Happy Meal Toys

Dinobots

Deluxe

Ultra

Exclusives

2001

The second half of the Beast Machines toyline featured the subtitle "Battle for the Spark", reflecting the storyline of the cartoon.

Maximal

Deployers

Basic

Deluxe

Mega

Vehicon

Basic

Deluxe

Dinobots

Deluxe

2005 (Beast Wars Returns)

Cybertrons

  • BR-01 Convoy - Blast Punch Optimus Primal
  • BR-02 Cheetus - Beast Machines Mega Cheetor
  • BR-03 Rattle - Beast Machines Rattrap
  • BR-04 Blackwidow - Redeco of Beast Machines Blackarachnia
  • BR-06 Nightscream - Beast Machines Nightscream
  • BR-07 Silverbolt - Redeco of Beast Machines Silverbolt
  • BR-11 Noble Savage - Redeco of Beast Machines Beast Changer

Destrons

  • BR-05 Megatron - Beast Machines dragon Megatron
  • BR-08 Vehicon Jetstorm - Redeco of Beast Machines Ultra Jetstorm
  • BR-09 Vehicon Thrust - Redeco of Beast Machines Motorcycle Drone
  • BR-10 Vehicon Tankor - Redeco of Beast Machines Tank Drone
  • BR-12 Megahead Megatron - Redeco of Robots in Disguise Megatron Megabolt
  • BR-13 Vehicon Strika - Redeco of Beast Machines Strika
  • BR-14 Vehicon Obsidian - Redeco of Beast Machines Obsidian

Post cancellation

The Universe (2008) toyline includes toys marked as "Beast Machines series".

Innovations and lasting effects

  • Beast Machines introduced the concept of subline imprints as a "refresher" for the later part of a long-running toy line (which, in today's economy, means "longer than six months"), in this case "Battle for the Spark".

Notes

  • The Deployers and Beast Riders were developed by Hasbro Direct, Hasbro's department normally devoted to store exclusives and other retailer-oriented projects, hence their rather dubious compatibility with the rest of the Beast Machines line.
  • On Takara's end of the design process, some design and engineering work was subcontracted out to the designer Junichi Akutsu, alias BEE-CRAFT.
Retrieved from "https://tfwiki.duckdns.org/index.php?title=Beast_Machines:_Transformers_(toyline)&oldid=640622"