>>9403159I have noticed how G1 had the really accurate vehicles, but by Beast Wars they were deliberately making weird mutant animals (and weird robots with claw hands and junk) and it kind of makes sense.
G1 was largely based on diaclone, where these literally are vehicles people drive that happen to be able to turn into battle mechs. They're utilitarian, not made for coolness. A lot of them don't even have heads because they don't need a head, the driver is looking out of the windshield. This is also why they frequently had altmode parts that serve utilitarian purposes such as a little base or weapons platform.
meanwhile by Beast Wars all the molds were new, no recycling from anything based on a show about piloted vehicles... and what's more, the show was putting focus on characters first, so we were thinking of these robots as beings. living aliens. Yeah hasbro had already decided that when Transformers was created, but this is the first time an entire line of toys was made with that in mind.. so for the most part, robot modes won out. Beast modes could have robot kibble visible.
Car Robots had a lot of remolds, Unicron Trilogy was mostly fantastic and cybertronian modes, Animated was just goofy rubber shit in both modes but had the excuse of futuristic vehicles.. it wasn't til the movie line that we REALLY got back to caring about altmode first, and most robots became piles of kibble again. but at least by that point they cared a lot about proportions.
