Something I never got was why the Maximals and Predacons sometimes had fucked up faces. Yeah I know, interesting line of questioning. What I mean is, Rattrap has a rat face, teeth and all. Tigatron and Cheetor have cat faces. Waspinator and Tarantulas have bug faces. I know the larger toys (deluxe and up) were meant to have regular robot heads and alternate mutant heads. I get that, but in characters like Cheetor and Tigatron where they didn't go with the mutant heads, they still ended up giving the regular robot heads animal-like faces in their animation designs. And then there's the whole idea that the beast modes are just shells, fleshy covers for energon radiation. Well if that's the case why have faces like your alternate mode? That's like Bluestreak having a Datsun-shaped face. I mean, the whole thing behind Transmetals was that their superstructures were inverted, creating metalized beast modes and fleshy robot forms. But really if they already had features in their robot modes influenced by their beast modes it's not that brave a concept. I just think it's odd for guys like Silverbolt to have a literal dog face when in robot mode if he's going to transform into a wolfbird anyway. Am I the only one that never got why the faces of the robots had to change if they weren't even exposed in beast mode? "Maximize? I'm not even in beast mode!"
Well about the masks, this was done away with in the show, but the early toys still had em. Then when we get to the dog faces & whatnot, I think it follows a theme of establishing their alt modes as part of who they are, rather than just a disguise. That's really my main theory if you wanna call it that, and it's also something that the designers could've thought looked good. For example, I think it works. Also, many of the later robot modes (transmetals mostly) looked organic, while the beast mode looked robotic, so maybe Silverbolt's introduction to season 2 was also a timing issue for that. Quickstrike's robot mode head kinda looks like a bug, so yeah.
Because it looks cool and saves us from possible generic faces. However my personal reasoning is that it helps keep consistency of the character's features. In addition to the "part of who they are" of the above, since they all have, quite literally, two faces thanks to the beast modes, having them contrast so sharply could negatively impact how the audience relates to the character. By including these animal traits it helps recognise the robots as the same individuals as the animals and vice-versa. With some characters this wouldn't quite work as well, such as with Megatron who needs a dignified, strong face to reflect his character, and a T-rex talking all casual isn't immediately evoking thE proper essence.
I simply believed they all had generic robot faces until they scanned their respective beast forms and somehow, the elements of their beast mode faces became incorporated into their robot mode faces. Perhaps it displayed the evolution and the complex anatomy that Cybertronians have developed over time and their ability is exhibited back in their robot modes. Such as facial features, hands, or fusion of metal and flesh in robot modes. Thought that was explained in the first episode when most of the pre-scanned beast warriors had their faces in the shadows.
I thought the Beast Wars heads were fantastic for the most part. They were a lot better than the generic human like faces we saw in G1. Some characters had visors instead of eyes and some characters didn't have normal mouths. There were only a few faces I didn't like such as TM Optimus Primal's organic face.
I liked all the heads, at least they matched up to the show's heads - Granted, the shows' heads were modelled after their toys with Dinobot being the only exception. I remember getting G1 Slingshot as a kid and thinking: "He doesn't look like this?". (What age teaches us though eh? )
Personally, I preferred the g1 looking heads like Megatron and Terrorsaur. I love Silverbolt's character but the dogface just seemed silly. Rattrap's buckteeth look as stupid as the Twins from the Baymovies which also had messed up faces. Not a fan of helmetless Tf heads like Rhinox or Armada Scavenger either.
I always liked the animal faces. I like the more traditional ones on some characters, but for those who had animal faces, like Rattrap and Silverbolt, they worked.
Kids these days are spoiled with toys that actually look like their characters on tv. When I was your age, Ironhide was awesome on the cartoon but his figure was a window-faced brick monster that rode around on a Segway.
Hhaahahah... I remember getting a G1 Ironhide from my Grandma when I was little, and this one was even brand new. I opened it up, started putting things things together, wtf'd to myself when I couldn't find my head, so my dad got pissed & sent the robot half back to Greece with her. My guess is that he wanted my Grandma to find the missing parts & bring em with her next time or something, which of course never happened because that's how the toy was supposed to be. At least I got to pay with the back half base thing ahha though.
I get the feeling that everyone's ignoring the "in-universe explanation" to explain how the beast warriors gained the ability to reflect their beast facial features faces in robot mode... Looks like I was wrong about you, Mark. Still marking out and behaving like a Mark, Mark...
I think I preferred it when their robot mode heads just had a few small hints of their beast mode, like Cheetor, compared to out-and-out beastie robot mode faces like Silverbolt. Definitely I veered more towards liking less animally faces for robot mode. Then there was just weird shit like Quickstrike's robot mode face.
We could claim that Quickstrike's robot mode face was a side effect of the Fuzor Quantum Surge aftermath, merging elements of a scorpion and cobra facing into a robot mode face. Silverbolt had robotic feathers on his face at the cheeks to denote his Fuzor traits carrying over to robot mode.
I think generic faces fell out of fashion after the Pretender era. Skullgrin and Octopunch started getting all the chicks, so everyone started organicing out.
