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No. 207084
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So, I'm just going to talk about the beast wars toyline for a while.
Basically, I have this thing where I want to collect one figure from every major North America Transformers line. While I'm currently only missing g2, rid, armada and energon, I also just like Beast Wars, So I've decided to view it as three separate lines for each major era of the toyline.
And now I'll break down my thoughts (NOTES: for non show characters I'm just going to say what animal they are, so as to avoid confusion. Also, I avoid giant sized figures, so I'm not considering dudes like transmetal 2 megatron)
YEAR ONE AND TWO: PLAIN ANIMALS
The beginning of the toyline is sort of rough, while you have gems like Optimus Primal, most of it hasn't aged well, with peicemetal animals and robots that have all of that animal hanging off of them, but the second year brought more refinement and you get guys like Inferno, who is fantastic even if his centre of balance is all fucked up. But the real winners are the year two basics, where they got rid of the line wide spring activated transformation and instead did figure specific spring gimmicks. The Earwig, the Squid, the Frog, they're almost all fantastic. So if you want a plain animal transformer, go for those. A bonus is that, with the exception of Airrazor, they're pretty cheap.
My pic: Clawjaw the squid
YEAR THREE: TRANSMETALS AND FUZORS
This is the part that fucked with me the most for quite a lot of reasons. First is that I never realized that the line was almost half fuzors (beast modes that are combos of two animals), due to the fact that ALL the small basic sized figures are fuzors. Second is that only show characters got Transmetals (all metal animals and robot modes with organic detail).
The fuzors look really strange but often cool, so I picked which fuzor I wanted and which transmetal I wanted, decided to buy them... and find out that both shatter with a light breeze. Transmetal Megatron and Torca (whale/elephant) both have a plastic defect which means the toy could break out of the package. Megatron has a japanese version that doesn't break, but costs a fortune and Torca got a repaint that is both rare and like, 200 bucks, so nope.
For Transmetals I ended up picking Terrorsaur and for Fuzors I ended up picking SkyShadow (lizard/dragonfly) But I haven't bought either yet, so take those with a grain of salt. Toys I know for a fact are good: Cheetor, Tarantulas, Silverbolt and Buzzclaw (praying mantis/lizard).
YEAR FOUR: TRANSMETAL 2
Another surprise was how many more Transmetal 2 there were than original transmetals. And these guys go odd. Which is actually great, they look like H. R. Geiger designs but with radical asymmetry. They look like no other toys. Downside: a lot of them weren't really built to manage all the small bits that the designs now have, so shit pops off everywhere. Another thing I liked was that, unlike Transmetals, some non-show toys from the original toyline got new versions (Shark, frog, frilled lizard) so if you want, they make for neat two-part collections. With this line, pretty much every toy is consistently odd, beautiful and covered in stuff that pops off, so there isn't many bad choices (except Cheetor, and Dinobot because he crashes into himself everywhere).
What I actually have IS a Cheetor, which sucks, and will probably be replaced, but some that I'd like to highlight as good are: the Stag Beetle, the Owl and the Ram.
YEAR FIVE: ...
Year five was just repaints and The Mutant line, which were toys that went from animal to animal. This line is very small, and was actually coming out while Beast Machines, the next major toyline already started. So while some look cool, I decided to skip them.
So basically, that's a fast breakdown of the toylines. Transformers fans are crazy, so their wiki is ridiculously expansive, including decriptions of every toy and either pictures, or links to pictures. So, if you find me full of shit you can judge for yourself without having to take my word for it. http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Beast_Wars:_Transformers_(toyline)
I may end talking about Beast Machines sometime, because I can write a novel about Beast Machines.
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