Soundwarp watches Beast Wars

[GoktimusPrime]

So do you prefer the more mechanical looking Transmetal forms? They failed to capture the Japanese market who preferred more realistic looking organic beast modes (as they saw them as being better robots in disguise - a robotic ape isn't fooling anyone), and that's what they got in Beast Wars Neo.

From a toyline POV it was the beast concept that saved Transformers. Remember that Transformers was a near-dead toy franchise by 1995. G2 had dismally failed to restore the brand after the demise of G1. Hasbro's research indicated that animals were more popular with kids over vehicles, and decided to reformat the Transformers brand to capture that popularity. And it worked! We all know that Beast Wars totally saved Transformers from extinction and breathed new life into a dying franchise - it was the Transformers Renaissance! And remember that in 1997 Hasbro did test the market for vehicles again with Machine Wars - and that flopped miserably. In 1998 Takara also tested their own market with Beast Wars II, where the Predacons are vehicles (Maximals are beasts)... and while that wasn't a failure, their market indicated a stronger preference for beasts - hence reverting to beasts for the entire Beast Wars Neo line in 1999. It really wasn't until 2000-2001 that the market was ready for vehicles again (as seen with the popularity of Car Robot & Robots In Disguise).

From a story/canon POV, remember that a Transformer's alt mode is meant to allow them to adapt to their environment. Disguise is one reason amongst others. On 20th/21st Century Earth it's understandable that Transformers would be vehicles which they've scanned from that era. But in a pre-historic environment it would look odd (just look at the Predacons in BWII) and less plausible. With Beast Wars, these TFs are in four million B.C.E. - there are no cars or planes etc. for them to scan, only animals and fossilised DNA.

The same thing happened in G1 too - the Dinobots acquired dino modes because they were scanned from the Savage Land (where dinosaurs are a dominant life form). But even then, they're pretty poor robots in disguise. They look like robotic dinosaurs, not dinosaurs. Ditto the Predacons - they're not fooling anyone. And there's this conversation from the latest issue of All Hail Megatron about Ravage:
"Well I didn't expect a hell of a lot from a man who who thought a jaguar was a dog."
"That was a jaguar?"
lawl

The Beast Wars Transformers are from the future - a time where they are now able to better mimic forms that they scan and transform into them... animals, plants... you name it, they can transform into it. And it was technology that the G1 Transformers were working on, as witnessed with the Pretenders. Although unable to transform into organic forms, Pretender technology did allow Transformers to be encased with a partially-organic shell. Toywise Pretenders came about because Hasbro wanted a line of Transformers that could transform into humans, but Takara recommended keeping the Transformers as vehicles but putting them inside human-looking shells. Hasbro agreed, which I guess we should be grateful for because I'm not sure how organic looking alt modes would've worked in G1 1988. (-_-)

You might want to consider watching Beast Machines after you finish watching Beast Wars where organic and vehicular Transformers are at war against each other.