In celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Beast Wars (and OzFormers! ), I've made this thread for anyone to come and share your fond memories and/or thoughts about this wonderful series. Everyone knows the story of how Beast Wars saved the Transformers franchise, so rather than ranting on about it again, allow me to simply illustrate it with this graphic.


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Beast Wars Transformer of the Week

Something else that this thread will feature is a BW TF of the Week. Each week I will nominate a BW TF and everyone else can chime and talk about your thoughts or feelings about this character and/or toy.

This week's BWTFOTW is: RHINOX


Toy

The original 1996 toy is just a magnificent piece which typifies why Beast Wars was so successful and managed to revitalise the Transformers franchise. While it's a standard feature today, at the time, I was amazed by the articulated robot mode, and self-contained weaponry. Rhinox has a sword and a buzzsaw that actually spins! And if that's not bad-donkey enough for you, the buzzsaw also has a pair of spiked balls on chains attached to it! You did not want to get into a fight with this guy. Phwoar! The beast mode was also among the first to implement gradual spray-painted colours, with a darker shade of beige blending into the lighter shade. Exquisite! I personally bought my Rhinox in a versus set with Shadow Panther in a department store in Ikebukuro, Tokyo.
In the toy-continuity, Rhinox did become a Transmetal. The vehicle mode reminds me of G.I. Joe's Snowcat (bear in mind that this toy came out 6 years before Energon Snowcat ). In robot mode, Rhinox poaches his own horn as a blade weapon.

Character

Beast Wars was the first TV series to give us highly toy-accurate models on the show. This was achieved by using a 3D scanner to scan the toys and then the CG models were based on those scans. This was pretty cutting-edge stuff for 20 years ago! As a result, what we saw on TV was pretty close to what we saw in the toy, and Rhinox is a pretty good example of this. And unlike the other Maximals, he's the only Maximal from the first season to keep his original form right up until the very end. He never upgraded to becoming a Transmetal on the show. The most drastic change that the animators made to the toy in the eyes of fans was to the buzzsaw weapon, which they modified into becoming a chain gun, then a pair of chain guns. It's become such an iconic part of the character that Hasbro saw fit to give the more recent Generations Rhinox a pair of Chain Guns.

As for Rhinox himself, he was to the Maximals what Beast is to the X-Men. A softly spoken intellectual who's more than capable of savagely beating down his opponents. Things got really weird for Rhinox in Beast Machines, as he suddenly - out of nowhere - developed a deep xenophobia towards organic life. Even after his Vehicon programming shell was lifted, Rhinox chose to remain a Vehicon and fought against his former-allies, and even attempted to usurp Megatron. Tankor now appears in the IDW comics, although it's not really known if "Fat Tankor" is Rhinox in this universe.

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So please share with us your thoughts, feelings and memories of Beast Wars, and if you like, Rhinox too.