>>6222805With season three of BW, the toy offices moved back to Pawtucket from Kenner in Cinci. It was literally a whole new team of bosses, suddenly telling Bob and Larry to do things different than they had done for 39 episodes.
This new team didn't like the adult jokes and mature storytelling of BW and as a result we got an episode with the cave kids.
I know Bob and Larry created a whole series bible for what became Beast Machines. Hasbro even did several toys based on those intial character designs.
When Fox Kids found out that their new 30 minute toy advent was paying it's showrunners the same $$ as the guys from the Simpsons, the told B&L to take a 75% pay cut to keep writing the show or leave. They left. Before Hasbro and Fox paid them for the story bible they had written and had been using! Fox Kids refused to pay them and so Hasbro had to ditch every part of the story bible. The toy molds eventually got used for diffrent characters and the show's premise was flipped.
Beast HUNTERS had Megatron turning all of Cybertron into techoorganic beasts like him. Cheetor would switch sides. The returning Maximals would all assume vehicle forms. If you look at either Jetstorm toy, you'll notice an Optimus style head crest and face. They were designed to be the new Optimus Primal. Rattrap would have had the Thrust mold. Rhinox wasn't changed. He was always Tankor, just not called that and he stayed loyal to OP. Cheetor would eventually switch back and get a race car design, that would instead be used for the Vehicon Mirage figure.
Hasbro wasn't happy about Cheetor ever being a bad guy, That and their fueding with B&L kept them from fighting Fox to keep them at their going rates.
The utter ratings and toy sales failure of Beast MACHINES shows how wrong Fox and Hasbro were.
