Beast Machines wasn't shown on Free-to-Air TV in Australia, only on Pay TV, and it was the days before sites like YouTube and other video sharing tools existed so a lot of people missed the cartoon. And with many negative reviews online from the US fans, it became easy to be unfairly biased against the show without even seeing it. I didn't see the show until the DVDs came out here locally many years later, and found it not as bad as I had been led to believe.

Because only kids (or collectors) with PayTV could watch it when the toy was, and PayTV was less common than today, it may have an impact on the toys not selling very well here (but the ugly Beast modes was also a likely a big reason too).