Beast Wars Pictures Archive: TV Magazine - 1998
Beast Wars Japan	Pictures from Japan's TV Magazine
	Last Updated 2/9/99 1998 issues spun off into this page.

• Thrustol and DirgeGun - Animated style drawings of the pair in robot mode, with little tiny pictures of their beast modes near the bottom.
• G1 Leaders - One of the goodies in this issue was a "sticker book" covering all sorts of popular action shows, and one page is devoted to Microman and pre-Beast Wars Transformers. This scan shows the leaders of various Japanese series: Hot Rodimus, Chromedome, God Jinrai, Victory Sabre, VS and Dai Atlas, Star Convoy and Laser Convoy (from right to left, top to bottom).
• Transmetal Standups - Cardboard standup toys of Transmetal Convoy (Optimus Primal) and Megatron, from the U.S. series as imported into the movie.
• Majin Zarak - The big badguy from the movie. Majin translates as either Devil or Satan, but since I'm betting this isn't the same exact Devil Zarak as in Masterforce, I'd translate the name as Satan Zarak this time. (Majin is literally "magical creature," but has taken on the connotation of Western demons and devils. Since Majin Zarak doesn't really seem magical, I'm going with the Satan connotation.)
• Majin Zarak, full shot - Tiny little arms and huge backpack. He turns into a flying aircraft carrier thing, and I seriously doubt he'll be issued as a transforming toy. Maybe as a PVC figure.
• Tripredacus Change Kit - More toys with candy, this set lets you assemble Tripredacus out of DJ, Gimlet and Motorarm. Unknown if the individual figures "transform."
• Microman - The heroic Micromen are techno-types, and the ones which transform turn into vehicles. The evil Acroyears are bestial, and their transforming troops become critters. Check out Bryan Wilkinson's Microman page for more info.
  • Transforming Micromen - The guy on the far right turns into the motorcycle shown.
  • Magnoman vs Acrobeast - Another gimmick for this line is figures that pull apart and reassemble using magnets, like the old Baron Karza types. Also in the shot is one of the smaller Acroyear beast transformers.
  • Acroyear Beast Combiner - Three animals that merge to form a giant (well, keeping in mind that Microman toys are supposed to be 1:1 scale) robot. I can't tell if the individual bat, lizard and scorpion are supposed to transform into robots or not. Also in the shot are a non-transforming Acroyear leader and a Microman in a non-transforming helicopter. UPDATE: The combiner team is the Acromonsters: Ig-nite (Iguana), Vampizer (Bat) and Hellpion (Scorpion). The merged form is Acrobotman. The Acroyear leader in front of him is Demon Blue.

• Takotank (Octopus Tank)
  • Toy Pics - Top frame shows the Takotank and the motorcycle that can be concealed in it. To the best of my knowledge, this mold came from an abandoned relaunch of Microman (Micronauts). Ironically, the Micronauts seem to be back anyway. Second row shows Ikard (Squid) on the cycle, and the Takotank in base mode. Third row shows the cycle in hover mode, and the gripping action of the tank's tentacles. Last row shows Ikard and the water-squirting "inkjet" action.
  • Anime Pics - Shots of the tank and cycle driven by Scuba, then Scuba introducing Ikard to Lioconvoy.
  • Trading Card - Ikard and the Takotank.
• Cyborg Beasts
  • Gigastorm Toy - The remolded Trypticon, Gigastorm. Megastorm gets transformed into this big bad boy as part of the Destron's next stage in the corruption of the Argonmoa energies.
  • Hellscream Card - Hellscream, Starscream placed in a remolded Cybershark body, shown here in robot mode. No toy pics yet here, but see the miscellaneous images section.
  • Hellscream Beast Mode
  • Max B Card - BB (Big B?) is now Max B, a K-9 remold, as seen on this card.
  • Max B Beast Mode - Sorry about the busy background.
• Another LCD Game - A smaller LCD fighter game for BWII.
• Decoy Game - I'm not exactly sure what this is, but it seems to be a board game that uses red "decoys" as playing pieces. There's a better picture of the game board on the BonBon page.

• Magnaboss Toy: As you should be able to see in this scan, the coloring changes are subtle, and mostly serve to add more detail to the figure, especially on the face and the silver and gold accents on Santon's body.
• Animated Magnaboss: I'll toss in the history bit here. Skywarp (Silverbolt) and Santon (Ironhide, the name means "three tons") were sent by Convoy on Cybertron to help out the Lioconvoy group on Gaea. They encountered Liojunior, created by Gaea's life forces, and in a moment of crisis merged to form Magnaboss. They do not seem to be the mysterious gestalt in the iron suit from a few months ago.
• Liojunior: Most of the alterations are in the robot mode, he doesn't turn into a white lion. As can be seen here and on the toy, his head has been recolored to look like Optimus Prime's. Possibly remolded as well, but I doubt it. In the upper left of his picture is an inset of Santon using his forcefield.
• Santon: Pacifist healer type, his weapons are a pair of air cannons and a force field. Wonder if he's related to Trailbreaker?
• Skywarp: As far as I can tell, Skywarp is female. Unfortunately, Japanese doesn't really have pronouns, so translating her text didn't help any when I had a friend look at it. She seems to play the role of nanny for Liojunior, which would also suggest that the family relationship hinted at with Bighorn is that of mother and son. Skywarp is the least recolored of the three, presuming she's recolored at all.
• Cybertronian Kid and Starscream: This picture shows Kid and Starscream as they looked before getting their alt modes on Gaea. Starscream's design kicks skidplate.
• LCD Fighter Game: A handheld LCD game, and I'm guessing that the screen pictures over in the Bon-Bon page are from this game.
• Shoes: A better, color picture of some of the kids' size shoes with BWII images on them.

• God Neptune: Back of the issue ad for the God Neptune combiner team. They're recolored Seacons, minus Nautilator.
• Seacon Space Pirates Ahoy! The space pirate Seacons menace Diver and Scuba in their spaceworthy pirate ship. Arrrr!
• God Neptune scatters the Cybertrons: Cel-style picture of God Neptune on the attack. Not shown, because it's a cruddy drawing, God Neptune can use his sword to part the waters a la Moses.
• Seacons: Pictures of the leader Halfshell (Snaptrap), Scylla (Tentakil, pronounced Skill-uh) and Coelagon (Skalor). Robot forms are shown in reduced form, and insets show the attacks of Scylla and Coelagon (Halfshell's attack is on the next page). Yes, Scylla has lipstick on, and is trying to look sexy. Coelagon (named after the living fossil Coelocanth) looks his age, and is a crusty old pirate.
• More Seacons: In addition to Halfshell's flying turtle mode, we see Terramander (Seawing) and Sea Phantom (Overbite, doing a "Jaws" imitation in his attack shot).
• BWII Shoes: Yep, kid-sized shoes with BWII characters on them. This picture's from the two-color pages in the back, as are the next few.
• Toys with Candy: More Kabaya-style kits, this assortment has six characters and seems to be transformable, but I'm not totally sure. Included are Lioconvoy, Apache, Bighorn, Galvatron, Starscream and Megastorm.
• Chrome Galvatron! In the spirit of Clear Convoy and Red Convoy, this chrome-plated Galvatron is being offered as an exclusive through TV Magazine. Not sure what color it really is, since it's in the blue&red pages, but it looks kinda golden.
• "Blank" Destron: A monochrome picture from the stamp album, this shows one of the "blanks" that Megastorm turned into the Autorollers using the ancient computer on Gaea in episode 2. Note, there are other new pictures in the stamp album, but generally of really low quality and all of characters I already have scans of.
• Moon: The dopey rabbit robot sidekick thing. It's being made as a limited-edition toy you can get with robot points in Japan. Basically it stands on its head to transform, and the rabbit face forms the butt of the robot mode.

• Cardboard Standups of the first batch of BWII characters, still in the sheet. Might pop them out and assemble them later, but I really don't have anywhere to put them. They have a back side as well.
• Mysterious Gestalt! - BB has coated the Jointron brothers in a substance which prevents them from forming Tripredacus, and is moving in for the kill. But a mysterious joining team arrives on the scene in a protective suit of tin armor, buying the Jointrons time to recover and get back into the fight. Thanks to Drew Dederer for translation of what was going on. My guess is that the tinman is Magnaboss. UPDATE: Having now seen the episode in question (#16, which also has the first combination of BB and Starscream), the tinman is actually all the original group of Cybertrons huddled together in the suit for protection against the bacterial weapon. Shades of the Autobots trying to imitate Menasor, eh?
• More Toys With Candy - Somewhat more Actionmaster-like kits this time out, they don't seem to transform, but they're in full color unlike earlier large kits (not that this picture is in full color, it's from the cheap pages).

• Lioconvoy Mask - I found that my glasses could be slipped through the rubberband-holes on the mask, letting me wear it quite comfortably.
• Trading Cards 10-17 - 10: Cybertron ship, 11: Lioconvoy, 12: BigMos, 13: Powerhug, 14: Tonbotto, 15: Mantis, 16: Drilnuts, 17: Scissor Boy
• Trading Cards 18-26 - 18: Destron ship, 19: Galvatron, 20: Dirge, 21: Thrust, 22-25: Autorollers, 26: Artemis and Moon
• Toys With Candy: Models - These have been out for a few months, they're sort of like model kits, where you assemble the modes out of the available pieces, and reassemble them into other modes. Lioconvoy, Apache, Galvatron and Megastorm are shown.
• Toys With Candy: "Decoys" - New for July (and I really, really, really hope the local Japanese grocery gets these in), each pack has a little painted "decoy" of the character both in robot mode and in beast/vehicle mode (only one of Galvy's alt modes is provided). Pictured are Galvatron, Megastorm, Lioconvoy, Apache and Bighorn.
• Costumes! - Unknown if these are hired by Takara or just reallllly obsessed fans (probably the former), but we have people dressed up as (left to right) Galvatron, Lioconvoy, Apache and Artemis. I wasn't sure if these were costumes at first, but Apache's fur and the spandex of a non-TF character I cropped out confirm that these are costumes.

• Barf Missile! - From a page showing the attack modes of the Cybertrons is this screenshot of Bighorn firing his Barf Missile in episode 3. At least there's not a scan of Kid urinating on the fire from episode 2, eh? CORRECTION - According to Gyumaoh, the actual translation is "Buffalo Missile," which sounds a lot like "Barf Missile" when spoken in Japanese. Mind you, any sort of "Buffalo" projectile might make a barf missile look good by comparison. Heh.
• Diver Being Weird - Same page, this shows Diver using his head-tongue attack in a way which is typical of his behavior in the show. Reminds me of a goofy Giger-esque Alien.
• Galvatron with axes - The Destrons also got a two-page spread of attack modes, mostly just shooting guns, so I didn't scan them. Here's the main pic of Galvatron, his axe is a little hard to see at this contrast level, tho.
• Galvatron's Other Attacks - Galvatron apparently has shoulder cannons in robot mode, as seen on the left. He can also use the big claw weapon strapped to his back, as shown on the right.
• The Three Modes of Galvatron - These appear to come from animation model sheets. Robot, drill tank and dragon modes, all in pink.
• Galvatron Versus Cybertron Insects - In the upper right, Galvatron is in dragon mode kicking hinder, holding Lioconvoy and all of the Cybertron Insects at bay. On the left of the crease are Mantis (Manterror) and Tonbotto (Jetstorm). Scissor Boy (Powerpinch) is just to the right of the crease, Drilnuts (Drill Bit) is obscured by the crease. Finally, in the lower right are Powerhug (Retrax) and BigMos (Transquito) being shot at.
• BigMos - An inset of BigMos, leader of the Cybertron Insects, shaking hands with Lioconvoy. I cropped out Lioconvoy since you know what he looks like by now. :)

• Galvatron - Still a fairly small picture, but it gives Galvatron's true colors and I blew it up to double size. The dragon mode's wings aren't really visible against the background, the gold parts are just shoulderpads. The drill tank mode has a spinning drillbit.
• Stamp Set - A set of postage-stamp-like stamps for several of the BWII characters, using the same CGI models seen in some of the other pictures on this page.
• Trading Cards 1-9 - A set of trading cards, sorry about the reduced size, but this threatened to be a pretty huge image. Nine BWII characters in their animated designs. Row 1: Megastorm, Tasmania Kid, Lioconvoy. Row 2: Starscream, Scuba, Apache. Row 3: BB, Diver, Bighorn. Click here for a B&W (1 bit) scan of the backs of the cards, with line art of the transformed modes. I don't know which of the 8 techspec stats was omitted, but it's interesting to note that both Starscream (Smokescreen) and BB (Dreadwing) get distinct stats.
• Cybertron Group Scene - A two-page spread cut down to half size, showing all the Cybertrons from the first episode.
• Fight Scene - Cybertrons upstage, Destrons downstage. Three of the four Autorollers are standing off in the back, notice how willowy they are compared to the chunky toys they're based on. In the actual show, they're much chunkier, but still slimmer than the toys.
• Episode 1 Summary Page - Sorry, I don't read Japanese, so I can't translate this for you (someone may supply me a translation later, tho). Lioconvoy and Megastorm are pictured, with the space battle that brings down the Axalon-ish Cybertron ship down in the lower right. The figure in the upper right is Artemis, the kawaii (cutesy) female android and her pet rat. I believe the pink robot in the upper left is Moon. The presence of these two characters on the Moon fills me with a vague sense of dread unmatched since Zone Bunny (the flying rabbit squirrel thing in Transformers: Zone). CORRECTION: The pink robot is a horribly colored Galvatron, according to Doug Dlin. Moon is the rat critter. Galvatron starts out with the blue-purple coloring of the toy, but for some off reason is turned pink later.
• Cardboard Lioconvoy - The punch-out cardboard toy for the June issue is this Lioconvoy. Once I get it, I'll stand it up next to my Apetimus Convoy.
• Lioconvoy Maze - Reproduced full size from the activity pages, print it out and join the fun!
• Playstation Beast Wars Game - The cover art for the Japanese release of the BW PSX game. Kinda small on the page, I blew it up to double size, but it's still small.

Beast Wars II pictures:

• Early Promo Ad - A "versus" pose, with the organic Cybertrons facing the mechanical Destrons in cel-drawn style. In the Destron corner, from top to bottom, it's: Galvatron (in shadow because, I suppose, his design isn't finalized yet), Dirge (blue jet), Starscream and BB (the recolored ATB team), Thrust (yellow jet), Megastorm (Tank Megatron). In no particular order in the Cybertron corner: Lioconvoy, Apache (B'Boom), Scuba (Clawjaw), Diver (green recolored Spittor), Tasmania Kid (Snarl), Bighorn (Bonecrusher, it's the red face in the lower right corner). The red Optimus Primal is a prize the magazine's offering for kids to send in for.
• Some Toys - On the pages which show as many of the toys being plugged as possible, the kid's playing with an assortment of BW toys. I cropped out the non-BWII toys.
• Back Cover Ad - This ad doesn't include Lioconvoy, Galvatron or the new Autorollers, but it has reasonably good pictures of the rest, including Diver's circulating waterfall set. Megastorm seems to lack the noisome graffitti stickers of the U.S. version.
• Starscream/BB team - I blew up one of the really tiny pictures of this ATB recolor, mainly because the vehicle mode looks SO much better than the Dreadwing we got.

• Card Game - This issue came with a "war" style game featuring art of 14 characters from the Beast Wars cartoon. The front of each card has a screen capture, the back has stats and notes, plus a new stat called "Break Strength" which is used for the game. It's the number in the larger block on the back of the card. A quick look at the cardset suggests the Preds may have the upper hand in this game.
• Optimus Primal Enters The Pod - The scene where Primal enters the pod to go destroy the alien planetkiller is redrawn here in cel style. There was also a page showing the fight outside the alien installation, but it was too confusingly drawn to include here.
• Optimus Primal Trapped - Primal beats on the canopy of the pod just before it explodes, drawn in cel style.

• Stickers of Optimus Primal, Rattrap and Tigatron in anime style, part of a sheet of foil stickers in the beginning of the magazine.
• A jigsaw puzzle of the "Introducing Beast Wars" picture from January 1998 (this isn't scanned, just see below).
• Primalbucks! - One ofthe goodies which came with the magazine is a board game with lots of play money. Optimus Primal (Convoy in Japan) is on the 100¥ bill. The phrase "Telemaga Ginko" means "Bank of Tele(vision) Maga(zine)." Next month's board game will have standup BW characters for pieces.
• Cardboard Primal, see below for an image.
• Airazor - She's become a he for the Japanese series, and this picture shows a more buffed-up masculine take on the character.
• Inferno - Anime style picture of our favorite psycho ant.
• Blackarachnia and Tigatron - Part of a larger fight scene, this shows the two characters in anime style. Between them is the tower from "The Trigger." Airazor is above, firing energyblasts from his fists.
• Superdeformed Primal - He's got a hammer of some sort, I have no idea what he's making with it, he seems to be pounding a vat of something. Doug thinks the vat is of mochi, a common New Year's treat made from sticky rice paste. Scorponok's cyberbees are attempting to make off with some, and tasting the business end of Primal's ladle.
• Toys with Candy - These pages are newsprint, so sorry about the quality. The picture here shows the existing unpainted inaction figures, painted ones, small transforming model kits, and Beast Wars Egg Beasts (more on them in a sec) as part of a giveaway contest. Here's a better picture of some of the 3" tall painted inaction figures Kabaya's selling.
• Egg Beasts! - According to Doug Dlin, these toys are reused molds from Takara's Meteor Robo line. Keychain spheres which transform into little robots or critters, there's three mold types. Each mold comes in a Cybertron (Maximal) color and a Destron (Predacon) color. The feet or lower legs of each toy are metal. The three molds are lion (Metal Leo), bird (Metal Hawk, no relation to the Pretender) and robot (Metal Man). The names for the current releases (the ones I just gave were for Meteor Robo) are Eggleo, Eggbird and Eggbot on the Maximal side, and just add "Dark" to the beginning of the names for the Predacon versions. "Now and forever, I am Dark Eggbird!" They run at 500¥, about 2/3 of what the Regular Beasts cost in Japan. I was later informed that they were originally Microman toys, but have been recycled multiple times.

• Greetings From Convoy: A postcard "signed" by Convoy. The Japanese translation of Beast Wars continues the tradition of calling Optimuses "Convoy."
• Introducing Beast Wars: The first page of the Beast Wars section of the magazine, it shows the original five Maximals in anime style, with some inset images from the show. Fairly big image.
• Beast Warriors: Fight!: An action scene, spread across two pages (sorry about the crease). Megatron's being knocked off the bottom of the page, my scanner's plate was a little too small to catch the whole image. Really big file, despite some shrinkage on my part.
• Map of the Axalon: A cutaway diagram of the Axalon, with insets showing details from the show. Another huge two-page spread. According to Doug Dlin, the ship has been renamed the Cyber Falcon in Japan.
• Cardboard Hero: Each issue of TV Magazine comes with a few cardboard punch-out toys for kiddies to build (the issue I got had an Ultraman standup and a Megaranger pinball game). The January, 1998 issue will have this cardboard Optimus Primal with firing missiles. Looks like I'll be buying next issue.
• Volcano Playset: Taken from an ad on the inside back cover, this is the Snapper/Armordillo two-pack set being sold in Japan, with volcano, cage and cannon.