>>8516095Beast Hunters was the story that Larry & Bob wrote for the new show, thinking they were still going to be the story editors. Literally everyone from Mainframe to Hasbro believed they were going to keep being the main writers of the new show. Mainframe built CGI renders for the cast. Hasbro built toys based on the renders.
Then Fox Kids found out Larry & Bob made the same $$ as the writers on The Simpsons and shit themselves. This was a Saturday morning cartoon / toy commercial after all. They offered L&B the job, but they'd have to take a 75% pay cut. Bob had a lot of other offers after BW and Larry was going thru his first round of cancer treatments. Both passed on BH.
The problem was that Fox refused to pay them for the story treatment. Mainframe had to start from scratch on the renders. (A cost Fox made sure Mainframe ate itself.) Hasbro had dozens of toys that now didn't remotely match the planned show.
Most were released with new names / colors. Others where scrapped entirely.
Cheetor was going to be the Maximal who was corrupted by Megatron and switched sides. The entire first half of the show was going to deal with that. BM Mirage? That was originally going to be Cheetor's new vehicle form after he returned to the Maximals.
The Maximals all had vehicle modes in this story treatment and the Predacons were all animals. BM flipped it.
Jetstorm was going to be Optimus Primal's new vehicle form. If you look at the larger Jetstorm toy, you can clearly see that his head crest and ear wings are a very stylized version of the Optimus head design.
The toy that became Thrust was going to have been Rattrap's new form. Tankor was always going to have been Rhinox's new form. The new story just replaced Cheetor with Rhinox as the traitor.
Source: Bob and Larry both discussed this about 12-15 years ago at one of the conventions they attended.
I'd love to see BH finally get made, especially if Bob was working on it. Even if it was just a comic.
