Battle Beasts

Battle Beasts (ビーストフォーマー, Bīsutofōmā) is a line of small 2" tall action figure toys, in the form of an anthropomorphised animals with body armor and a unique weapon. Several figures have their left hand replaced by a weapon of some kind. Battle Beasts were created and largely produced by Takara and distributed by Takara in Japan (under the name BeastFormers) and by Hasbro outside Japan, beginning in 1987.

History

Battle Beasts were created by Takara of Japan in 1986 Tomy Co., Ltd., aka K.K. Takara-Tomy, still owns the worldwide rights to the property. The heyday for the toyline came during the period in which it was licensed to Hasbro for distribution outside Japan when Hasbro marketed the toys in America and many other parts of the world. Although in the Japanese market Takara branded the toys as a spin-off of Transformers and even named the toys "BeastFormers," their tie-in to the Transformers universe was not part of the Hasbro story or marketing.

As part of the Takara strategy, many of the Battle Beasts appeared in the episode "Rebellion on Planet Beast" of the Japanese Transformers cartoon series Transformers: The Headmasters. The Battle Beasts reside on the planet Beast.