With how RID01 basically has beast era like characters both show and toy wise with the Predacons being a good example of this does that technically make it part of the Beast Era despite it not being in canon with the previous timeline at least in America's end? If so how?

 

I would say it was a transitionary period between two distinct phases. It's got elements of both Armada and Beast Wars, and is mostly comprised of figures drawn from other, earlier lines in order to cut costs (I'm looking at you, Ruination).

 

Beast era is part of G1, so this would make Car robots part of G1.

 

It's complicated:

"Thus, Car Robots/Robots in Disguise is in the unique position of being simultaneously part of Generation 1 and completely separate from Generation 1... depending on which side of the globe you're looking at."

Personally? I say its a micro continuity (and probably my overall favorite TF continuity) and leave it at that.

 

Is your question pertaining to fictional issues or production of Toy issues?

If we’re talking fictional then it really depends on East or west

 

RID just doesn't want to forgo preds I guess, and Car Robots, probably. With some head cannoning you could say that the predacons were a uprising faction (Con is cool for uprisings I guess) and the autobots hadn't made the change. It would explain some of them not being animals.

 

Wait....all the Predacons in that series were animals .....if your talking about the vehicles they were reprogrammed autobot protoforms

RID wise

 

It's complicated...

In terms of continuity, no. The Beast Era is part of the G1 Continuity family while RID1 was set in a totally different continuity totally disconnected from G1. Among the many things that don't work...

1. In G1 Optimus Prime tries to give Ultra Magnus the Matrix in the movie and Magnus doesn't even want it saying "I'm just a soldier." In RID1 Ultra Magnus' entire character motivation is centered around the fact that he hates Optimus because he wanted the Matrix. Obviously these two can't be the same character.

2. Beast Era Predacons are much smaller than Decepticons and Autobots. RID1 Predacons are about the same size as Decepticons and Autobots.

3. It's mentioned by Sky-Byte in the episode the Decepticons first appeared that if one of the pods had scanned an animal instead of a vehicle that he would of come out as a Predacon instead of a Decepticon. In G1 and in the Beast Era there was never any such distinction made as Decepticons were often Beastformers and there are also Predacons most notably in Beast Wars II who all transform into vehicles.

4. Decepticons came first in G1. The original Predacons actually were just a Decepticon sub-faction before they eventually became their own faction that would eventually replace the Decepticons in Beast Wars. In RID1 The Predacons existed first and the Decepticons were created by them.

Most of what I just said is specific to the American dub and doesn't apply to Car Robots but I don't know enough about the Japanese version to talk about it.

All that said the toy line is considered to still be part of the Beast Era. Mainly because a lot of the toys released in the toy line were repaints of Beast Era figures and it also included straight up Beast Era toys that were intended to be released during Beast Machines.

I'm not going to go over every single repaint but I will mention the three brand new molds that came out during RID1 which were intended for the Beast Era.

Bruticus was originally going to be called Cerberus and would of been a Beast Machines Maximal rather than a RID1 Predacon.

Megatron Megabolt was originally intended to be a toy version of the floating fortress Megatron from season 2 of Beast Machines. Though the spider legs and robot mode are totally inaccurate to the show the head design is most obviously Beast Era Megatron. I should also mention that in Japan this mold actually did make it into the Beast Wars Returns toy line which was their version of Beast Machines. There's also a repaint simply called Megabolt which may have been retooled specifically to work with Brave Maximum. (I didn't even realize it was intended to do this, I thought it was just a fan mode but while researching I discovered that this feature was actually intended.) Not sure why a toy from Beast Machines was designed to interact with a toy from G1. It never came up in either of these shows but now I kinda wish Megatron had dug up Fortress Maximus' body and taken it over during Beast Machines. Or if Megabolt was an actual character in RID1 who could take over Brave Maximus instead of Scourge having that role. Not as a head but because humans can command Brave Maximus and Scourge is technically part human because the driver of his vehicle mode also got into his scan. The giant head thing controlling Brave Maximus instead of Cerebros would of been a lot better than that whole humans control him sub plot.

Air Attack Optimus Primal obviously based on the Beast Machines design was released in RID1 toy line. This one specifically even showed up in advertising for the Beast Machines toy line but was never released due to the early cancellation of the toy line. They were far enough along in production that it ended up being shoved into RID1's toy line instead.

I'm also going to mention the Megatron/Galvatron mold. Unlike the other toys this one appears to actually be new to the toy line but it does have similar features of a Beast Era figure like the spark Crystal in the chest and it seems weird to me how almost every figure is a known repaint or repurposed of an existing Beast Era mold except this one. I can't prove it for certain but I've always suspected that this mold may of had a previous life before Car Robots due to the Beast Era design traits it shares and every other toy in this line being from that era.

The same can not be said of the Vehicles... while this line did also reuse G1, G2, Machine Wars and BM Vehicon molds for the Majority of it's Autobots and Decepticons Optimus, Magnus, the Autobot Brothers, and all the combiners (with the exception of Ruination who is obviously G1 Bruticus, the others...) have a level of engineering that is far above anything from the 80's and none of them have that style unique to BM Vehicons to suggest that they aren't original molds. Though the combiners could have been intended for Machine Wars which also seemed to be a toy line that was cut short. I almost forgot Machine Wars was even a thing. They still have pretty blocky looking designs though which makes me think even though Machine Wars uses ball joints that the Autobot Brothers wouldn't have been designed for Machine Wars. They kinda have a very unique style which doesn't match anything prior and suggests they really were new molds.

It's only really that Megatron/Galvatron mold that looks so much like a Beast Era figure that I can't be sure if it's really a Car Robots original or a previously unreleased Beast Era design. The fact that Car Robot/RID2001 is mostly known to be a bunch of repaints and previously unreleased figures makes me very suspicious of the few molds that are supposedly new. But the three I mentioned before are the only ones that can truly be confirmed as previously unreleased Beast Era toys.

 

depends on perspective.

toywise, absolutely, it carried on the engineering style of late beast wars and even included beast wars molds in the main line

fiction, debatable. it can either be its own thing or it can be linked to bw and g1 via some continuity fudging

another consideration is that the expanded toyline that utilized repaints ended up eventually evolving into universe 1.0, which is definitely part of the beast era

 

In the west, we do sort of look at it as a kind of transitional series, going from the CGI of the Beast Era to the anime of the Unicron Trilogy, but viewed within the Japanese context of the time, it's hard to say it's not part of the Beast Era. From a toy engineering perspective, it's certainly just a continuation of everything the Beast Era was doing (particularly the Japanese-original Beast Era toys), before Armada hit a hard reset, and taken in the context of the other Beast Era cel-animated Japanese shows, it completes a sort of thematic trilogy; BWII was beast-mode heroes vs. vehicle-mode villains; BWN was beast-mode heroes and villains; RID/CR was behicle-mode heroes vs beast-mode villains.

 

From the Hasbro perspective: no.

From the Takara perspective: yes, because everything Transformers from the original series to at least about 2006 are one continuity.

 

In Japanese continuity, Car Robot(s) fits in the same timeline as G1, the Beast shows, a bunch of other stuff. Takara has created and made public a detailed timeline of how everything connects and where everything occurs in relation to each other (even if it takes a little squinting and forgiveness on the part of the viewer). Car Robots is as much part of the G1 continuity as Headmasters (to which it directly connects), Masterforce, Victory, etc.

But in the West, none of those things are part of the G1/Beast era continuity. RiD '01 doesn't connect to G1, but neither does Headmasters, Masterforce, etc.

On a side note, what a fantastic toyline. Seriously, how many figures from that long ago hold up as well as Fire Convoy?

 

I think taking about how the show fits "in continuity" misses the point of the question. The first-year Beast Wars bio-cards aren't part of the cartoon continuity, but they're still "part of the Beast Era." It's not about the specifics of "continuity," it's about whether the CR/RID franchise should be grouped with the Beast Era when determining a real-world period of the brand's collective history.

 

Does anyone care about grouping other than in terms of story? Why should the CR/RID toyline be grouped with anything else? Please don't bring up "continuity families".

 

Personally I say yes. The engineering has more in common with beast wars than anything else and technically the beast era as a period of time didn’t technically end until universe was over (though there was some overlap with the unicron trilogy)

The beast era name is less a qualifier of continuity and more a description of an actual time period

 

Why does the OP have a news credit?

 

All true. And the Takara Legends manga retcons Black Convoy (RiD Scourge) and the Combatrons (RiD Commandos) as hailing from the G2 era of the JG1 continuity as Autobot protoforms, which is the in-universe reason why they have upside down G2 Autobot symbols. As for the Destrongers (RiD Predacons), they seem to hail from some point after the Japanese version of BW, as they are described as "a rapidly evolved branch of the Destron race of Transformers, who as a whole are scattered across the whole universe and other dimensions." (FYI: The BW Predacons were never referred to as such in JG1. They were still referred to as Destrons.)

And as Southtown Kid said, none of this applies to the American version of Car Robots, which is of course Robots in Disguise. That is its own thing.

 

at the same time, some of it can apply if only taking the toons into consideration since in the dub there was an added line about vehicon drones, implying that at least the predacons were from the time of beast machines (granted that is a leap that only applies if you catch the reference) and as you said, rid is its own thing officially in hasbro canon, thanks in part to the storyline of universe 1.0

 

I'll take your word for that, since I've only seen Car Robots, not RiD.

 

Yes, this. Listen to McFeely people. He is wise.

And why is this so difficult for people to understand? Can we stop thinking so much about whether things are in continuity with each other? Beast Wars is really not even in continuity with G1! It has elements of both the G1 cartoon and the G1 comics as well as it's own ideas, that are all fairly contradictory. Can someone show me the version of the G1 story that precedes the Beast Wars cartoon?

So, yes, I do think Car Robots/RID should be considered part of the Beast Era, just as BWII and Neo are. Definitely a closer type of anime to BWII and Neo then Armada. Same engineering as Beast Wars, very different to Armada. And it has Predacons.