I said animated mini-series, not Animated mini-series. :/ It's what would be referred to as an OVA series in animé terms. It's far too late to change Animated now - that horse has already well and truly bolted. Tbh, I think Animated writers are trying to end the series well given what they already established in Seasons 1 and 2. The ending of Animated ought to be more well received than say the ending of Beast Machines! ;p

Quote Originally Posted by Vector Sigma 13
Maybe there is a reason there hasnt been anything similar to Beast Wars and Beast Machines- It doesnt make enough money/ doesnt have the following that the kids stuff does/did?
Beast Wars is the Transformers equivalent of the Renaissance! If you'll recall, by 1995 Transformers was a nearly dead franchise. G1 had flopped by 1993 and HasTak's attempt to resuscitate the line with "Transformers Generation 2" had effectively failed. G2 did give us some good toys with great engineering and giving birth to fully articulated robot modes, but it was toward the end of the line - by then it was too little too late. When Beast Wars rocked along the scene in 1996 it breathed new life into Transformers. The line was so popular that Hasbro commissioned Mainframe Entertainment to make the cartoon series; a series which won an Emmy Award for its 2nd season - the only Transformers series to have won an Emmy to date afaik. The series was popular among both kids and adults. It had plenty of action and light-hearted humour to for the kids, and a serious story arc and adult humour (including sexual innuendo) for adults. The story itself existed within the same overall continuity as G1 and G2, and picked up where G2 finished, and even served to further expand upon (and arguably enhance) the original G1/G2 lore.

And the toy line wasn't cancelled because it wasn't selling well - it was cancelled because Hasbro wanted to take the line in a different direction... that direction being Beast Machines - and we know how that turned out.

But Beast Wars proved that a TV series written for both kids and adults can work. A lot of other cartoon-toy franchises continue to demonstrate this such as Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Star Wars Clone Wars (also a Hasbro toy line), Spiderman et al. And one reason why a lot of G1 fans didn't enjoy the post-movie G1 episodes as much as the pre-movie eps is because in some ways, the maturity of the show had declined somewhat. Most fans like Buster/Spike and Bumblebee -- clearly that relationship continues to endure in the movie franchise with Sam and Bumblebee... yet most fans loathe Daniel and Wheelie (as illustrated in Trannies results).