Fox Wars

 

I obviously love Beast Wars as do a lot of folks. It's this great period in Transformers history that's been pretty hard to recreate. Though I do appreciate the return of sorts it's had lately. A particularly fun time during the beast era often goes by without a lot of talk. I don't know if that's slowly getting lost to time... or maybe just meant more to me than others. That would be the Fox Kid's Beast Wars. Beast Wars was originally a syndicated show. Beast Machines, it's follow up, was on Fox Kids. For a while during this time, Fox Kids also ran older Beast Wars episodes. For me this was pretty great as I wasn't able to watch every episode during the shows original run. However now these reruns fit my schedule better and I managed to catch the ones I missed. Honestly, it was aired at a particularly sweet spot for me that I never missed an episode and watched the series in it's entirety over and over until the eventual end of the run. That was great.

Fox Kids Beast Wars wasn't just reruns to supplement Beast Machines either. Hasbro/Kenner re-released some of the toys in great new colors as well. I liked Beast Machines, don't get me wrong, but I vastly preferred Beast Wars. So I was really happy to see the figures on shelves a little longer. This was still during the time where older toys had a longer shelf life. It wasn't uncommon to still find something like an Inferno or B'boom in 2000. In fact, as I was starting to have a disposable income, it wasn't until then that I was able to get some of these great toys. 

Those Fox Kids Beast Wars toys themselves were something special. Like I said, they were released in fun new colors. If you didn't already have a character, there was another chance. If you did already have a character, maybe you'd like it in fun new colors. Initially these recolors were listed as powered up versions of the characters. Energon Surge Rhinox, Live Wire Dinobot for example. However they were released as their normal names. The Fox Kids toys ran for about the same length as the show aired on Fox Kids with the later figures sharing cases with the Mutants. It's not often that reruns get their own figures or can be partially credited for expanding the toy lines shelf life. But, these did. I'm not sure anyone at that Walmart I'd frequent remembers the kid in a Static-X t-shirt and a grubby hoodie late at night buying these. But 22 years later, I still look back at it fondly. It was pretty great.

Trick Or Treating With The Beetleborgs

Beetleborgs and Halloween seem like a pretty natural fit right? I mean, half of the cast is a haunted house full of monsters led by some cocaine fueled Jay Leno ghost. It's only natural Fox Kids would run a contest to go trick or treating with the Beetleborgs right? Unfortunately they instead ran a contest where you'd win a chance to go trick or treating with the Beetleborgs and said cocaine Jay Leno ghost. 

 

Israeli Robots in Disg...that's G1

Wait. So... I was expecting 2001 Robots in Disguise footage in Hebrew and instead was given clips of G1 with... Axel F? That's kinda amazing. I'm not sure if the Israeli version of RID was just a repackaged G1 or if this was just some neat commercial package made for Fox Kids there. I tried finding some info on the wiki, but nope. I do have to say, I absolutely LOVE that logo.

Beetleborgs Halloween Bash

I don't know if going trick or treating with Flabber would be such a great idea. After 20 minutes of that voice you'd be figuring out how to ditch him somewhere. Though it'd be pretty great to go trick or... Anyone else just want to win the toys? I mean, sure, going trick or treating with the Beetleborgs sounds cool and all... but kinda hoping to win a figure. Of course it's going to take me a few viewings of this commercial to get the address written down.

That darn cat bot

The other day I was playing with my Spark Armor Cheetor. It's a pretty fun little toy and for a Beast Wars fan it's nice to buy a Cheetor at Target again. It's not uncommon for my mind to race through potential repaints for the mold. There's the obvious Ravage (I'd go nuts for a Shadow Panther version) and Tigatron. That's always going to come up. Then my mind went to CatScan and Panther, which is a little more under the radar, but something I'd be all for. Though something I'd love would be a homage to the Fox Kids Transmetal Cheetor.

Beast Wars was a syndicated show here in the US that later aired on Fox Kids. New releases of some of the toys were made available to go along with the show now getting seen by a new audience. These Fox Kids versions had different paint jobs to differentiate them from the prior versions. Some a lot more extreme than other, like Transmetal Cheetor. Now in a darker red and black scheme dominating the toy, Cheetor looked like someone else.

It's a lot different than you'd expect Cheetor to look. Despite the weirdness of it, I've always liked the repaint and just thought it looked great. Spark Armor Cheetor, while looking more like the original Cheetor toy, is pretty angular and I'd like to think could pull these colors off pretty nicely. I'd be pretty happy with a million recolors of the toy in a million different cat bots. It's a great figure and one I'd love to see homage random versions of... Hey, you know what would also look great? The Armada one!

Set your DVR to beast mode

*sigh*

There's a song called, 'you're going to miss this' about how the little things that may annoy you later turned out to be the good things you miss later in life. And man it's true, even though I was broke and sick of it at the time. Tired of juggling school, work, and social woes,  I miss watching Beast Wars on tv. It came on in the afternoon here, and when they started showing it afternoons on Fox Kids, it directly lined up with my school/work schedule and I got to watch it every day without the occasional missing an episode. It was my own little personal moment of zen that nobody but the march of time could take from me.

X-Men Japanese intro

Whoa