Beast Hunters!

Predacons Galore!

The funny thing about toy lines with promotional media tie ins is the ironic fact that the toys don't ever really have to match the media. Transformers Prime Beast Hunters is a perfect case study into this particular phenomenon. Disregarding all the internet hearsay which states that the entire premise of Beast Hunters was added on clumsily to the already successful Transformers Prime animated show and toy line to extend toy sales, the fact remains that almost the entirety of the Beast Hunters toy line has nothing to do with the show.

In the past, Transformers toys were released to coincide with the animated series. Literally, a character would be introduced and you could go out to the store and buy that character's action figure the same week. A perfect example would is Transformers Beast Wars. Arguably second to Transformers Prime in story telling and maturity, Beast Wars ran for 3 seasons like Prime. However, while Prime introduced re-imaginings of the core characters which did not appear in the show, Beast Wars redesigned the characters from events in the shows cannon. This logical action made it very easy for collectors to buy a second recolored version of the 
character or even buy the same character in a different rendition  
(regular, Trans-metal, Trans-metal 2).

Japan Only

Sadly, Beast Hunters introduced an entire line of figures which represent the core cast of protagonists and villains and a new host of beasts without any appearance on the show. This disconnect seems like it would be a disastrous. Some would argue for or against the results. I can only say that as a hardcore Transformers collector, I have only bought 2 figures (deluxe Smokescreen and voyager Optimus Prime) and I only intend to purchase 1 more in the future (ultimate Predaking). My own preference in collecting dictates I follow the fictional cannon of the show. I purchase the best representations of each character in the show, factoring in the scale of the toys to the show iterations. 

Non-Show Hasbro Figures
*Select Images Courtesy of Seibertron.com

That being said, the biggest question is why didn't Hasbro release figures that Takara Tomy did? Why would they create an entire line of fictional alternate modes for the core cast of characters for Prime and rename the show under the Beast Hunters banner when there was a perfectly good stable of figures that remain unreleased outside of Japan? Some suspect licensing issues or shared costs of the tooling and molds. Some say Beast Hunters was a huge marketing campaign which did not take into consideration the hardcore fans and toy collectors and instead focused on the Transformers brand and the casual consumer (parents who purchase toys for their children). 

The rational does not really make sense since Hasbro released some characters that were not found in the show including Hot Shot, Dead End, Rumble, Kup, Thundertron, or the early version of Ultra Magnus. Why wouldn't they release Breakdown, Unicron, Silas, Nemesis Prime, Jet Vehicon, and Vehicon General? All the before mentioned appeared prominently in various episodes. Then there is the horde of additional characters that were created by recoloring previously released molds. Some of these figures featured entirely new head sculpts, including Swerve, Lio Prime, and Wild Rider.

Wonderful World of Import Characters
*Select Images Courtesy of Seibertron.com

Regardless, there can be no argument that there are still a ton of figures that remain unreleased to the western market. Who knows if they will ever be made available. In the end, it may be too late as many like me turned to the grey market to purchase import products from Japan.