Does anyone have a headcannon solution for the existence of the identical Godmaster and Powermaster characters?

 

I know Ginrai's transtector was a new body for Optimus Prime that got intercepted by Devil Zed in shipment, but I dunno about the others. I think they were just brand new suits in Masterforce canon.

 

I prefer to just accept that G1 branches off into two separate continuities starting with Rebirth and Headmasters. Nightbeat, Siren, and Hosehead exist in US G1, and Go-Shooter, Minerva, and Cab exist in JG1, and same for all of the Power/Godmasters, Pretenders, etc.

 

Yeah, you really do. In all honesty, it's kind of nice to have two options for the g1 cartoon continuity. You can either go with Sunbow's open-ended conclusion or go "for the rest of the story" with TOEI's Japanese run through Zone.

 

What characters are identical? Why can't Nightbeat/Siren/Hosehead exist in the same timeline as Cab/Goshooter/Minerva? The only one that really shares a name across the Pacific is Overlord.

 

The keyword being Powermasters. The Headmaster Juniors are fine, but what about Getaway, Joyride, the Dreadwing Bros. etc?

 

The Powermasters are Lightfoot, Ranger... and someone else I forget. The Dreadwings are Buster and Hydra. They're all separare characters too.

 

The Autobot Powermasters look sufficiently different to their Masterforce counterparts. Slapdash and Getaway have completely different heads.

Their bodies may be similar but can be explained just by being variations of a production type like Prowl and Bluestreak or Skids and Crosscut.
Joyride has a different enough colour scheme anyway.

A lot of the Seekers share the same head like Skywarp, Thundercracker and Hot Link while having the same body type but with different colour schemes which could work for the Decepticons.

If the colour schemes aren't enough to differentiate Nightbeat and Minerva, just Outback to use the Crocodile Dundee technique.
"Hey, that was a bloke dressed up as a Sheila! You all knew you pack of b######s!!"