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| IGN Sea |
Beast Wars was definitely a 1990s revival of the Transformers franchise by Hasbro. There was the toy line and there was the television. The toys don't always match up with the television series such as G1 Megatron was released as a TANK when the 1980s series made him a handgun. Later, G1! Megatron's tank mode was used in future series such as Transformers Armada. Apparently, Hasbro makes the toys first before any series was made. I mean, try to think of the initial prototype of Beast Wars had the following...
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| Transformers Wiki |
The original toyline (as planned) had Optimus Primal as a bat (which is funny) and BW! Megatron as a crocodile. However, all that was changed in the TV series proper and later toys when Optimus Primal was a gorilla and BW! Megatron became a tyrannosaurus - an animal more befitting the Beast Wars. The toyline was born with a TV series. However, you may notice that a couple of toys NEVER made it into the original TV series at all. There were toy commercials I saw during the 1990s and I was excited to see them. However, a couple of them never made it. I even saw some of the toys (such as the combiners) and wondered why they never made it.
Apparently, the budget for the Beast Wars cartoon is rather high. The use of computer animation was probably still not yet subjected to economies of scale. Some characters were eventually removed such as Dinobot, Airazor, Terrorsaur, and Scorponok during the television series' run. I felt Terrorsaur's demise was too sudden instead of him dying at the hands of BW! Megatron. I also wished BW! Megatron got renamed Galvatron when he became a dragon during the Transmetals saga. New characters came in but why didn't all the toys show up? I guess the budget for CGI would go beyond the intended budget by Mainframe Entertainment and Alliance Atlantis. Otherwise, both of them would probably be at a loss having to pay Hasbro for the franchise royalties.
Now, I think about how it turns out that Beast Wars had a pseudo-sequel in Japan. Yup, we had the Transformers series in Japan by Takara and Toei Ltd. Takara, as said, was the creator of the toyline while it was Hasbro that brought their toys to life. Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo were pretty much Japanese-only sequels. Take note that the Takara Trilogy of Transformers is ignored in Beast Wars. Transformers Headmasters pretty much blew up Cybertron. The Japanese Beast Wars series was produced by Ashi Productions. So, pretty much we can forget the Japanese-exclusive lineage in this one and view these as Japanese-only canon.
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| WorthPoint |
It would be interesting that some of the combiners were brought to life in the Japanese-exclusive continuity. Both Magnaboss and Tripredacus were placed into the Anime-only continuity while they started out as toys-only characters. Interestingly, Tripedacus was turned into a MAXIMAL in the Japanese-only continuity while the toy was intended to be a Predacon. The two of them made their animated debut in Beast Wars II in Japan rather than the American cartoon. I wonder if the G1 cartoons budget (at that time) didn't allow for these two combiners to be placed into the cartoon? I guess the use of traditional animation for the Japanese-only continuity allowed more characters to show up by the budget.
For more in-depth appearances - here's the best compilation I found though be wary as Wikipedia can be edited by just anyone! It'd be amazing that some characters didn't make much of an appearance outside of the toyline. Was it because these toys didn't sell as much and adding them would cost another budget? Was it a result of poor coordination between Hasbro and the studios behind the adaptations for the toylines? Hmmm... that leaves room for a lot of thought!
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