McBeast Modes

The McDonald's Beast Wars Happy Meal toys are some of my favorite Transformers. I'm sure I've mentioned it here before... who am I kidding? I've said it a million times here before. The first series was just the right thing at the right time. If time travel ever becomes a reality, a trip to McDonald's during that time would be on my to do list.

If you're in the world of Transformers, then you've likely seen the scans from the Happy Meal presentation binder. They've been all over lately and you can guess I'm a big fan of them. For somebody who has a shoe box full of the toys, seeing this part of the process is awesome.

I've always been curious about the original 'G3' setting for the toys. Images have been around of some of the beast toys with classic character names, but this binder really shows that intent at the time. It also shows some of the other ideas for Happy Meal toys being considered. As much as I love what was released, I do kind of wonder how the other proposed toys would have turned out. I think the biggest revelation from the binder is that Cheetor was to have been Prowl. Considering his name, it would have been perfect. Not to mention, his head design make a LOT more sense now. 

One of my favorites of the original set, Panther, is a simplified version of that Prowl/Cheetor design as that's who it was meant to be originally. In the Beast Wars cartoon, Ravage in a new body makes an appearance. In the Japanese version, the character is Ravage's son instead. When I first learned that the Panther toy design was used for the original Ravage in the Beast Wars manga, I was blown away. I kind of wonder how that story would have went now knowing that toy was meant to be Prowl? Obviously the whole thing would have been very different. It's just, what could have been?