As I continue to dredge up strange and interesting figures from the past I am often reminded that the Transformers have take some very weird turns. Here is one such turn. Mutant Beast Wars This sub-line of the Beast Era only contains four figures and they were released during the Beast Machines toy line leading to some confusion. Originally these guys were ment for the very short lived Transformers Animorphs line and when that line died out the figures were retooled and brought into the Beast lines. The gimmick was that they did not have robot modes but transformed between two different beast modes. Odd I know. They each have a couple of common features: a robot head hidden somewhere, flip-up panels underneath their Mutant insignia(though Razor Claw lacked this feature for some reason), a different class of animal for each mode and the animorphs logo hidden somewhere on there body. Another odd bit is that technically Beast Changer from the Beast Machines toy line is, technically, considered a Mutant but that figure appears in the main line while the rest of the Mutants are a similarly carded subline. Canonically no one is sure where these guys fit into the fiction. According to the packaging these four were Fuzors who had unintended reactions to Megatron's anti-conversion virus. In the comics published by 3H they worked alongside the Dino-bots and the Wreckers to fight Cryotech and the Quintessons. And finally in the IDW-verse there are transformers who's stasis pods were so badly damaged that when they were reformatted things went a wee bit bonkers. So now that we know their backstory let's take a look at the figures. RazorClaw Mutant - Razor Claw - YouTube PoisonBite Mutant - Poisonbite - YouTube IceBird Mutant - Icebird - YouTube SoundWave http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b45awFOkzc0
I still have the Scorpion/barracuda one. I have never seen the Bat/Croc in my life though. He seems to be the most rare despite being the ugliest/poorly engineered one.
