OVERVIEW: Battle Beasts

Killer Carp and Horny Toad (yes, really)

Oh, man, these guys. Battle Beasts were introduced by Takara/Hasbro in 1986. I only ever got these two on the left in childhood. I liked the "purple shark," though I found out years later that he was a carp and not a shark. He has a pretty toothy grin, so 8-year-old me went with shark. These guys got up to some mischief interacting with my other toys, but despite their low price and my love for animals, these were the only two that made it home.

When I began collecting as an adult, the first thing I turned to was Jem. I did some research into other "girly" toylines I'd liked as a kid, but then I decided to research Battle Beasts and during the early years of collecting, Jem and Battle Beasts were my main focus. I don't actually talk about them very often and have very few pictures of them, because I completed the collection before I got into sharing photos of my toys online.

Wood. Fire. Water.

Battle Beasts are 2" animal/robot figures with poseable arms. Each came with a weapon and a heat-sensitive "rub sign." The sign would reveal which side the beast was on: wood, water or fire. Wood beat Water. Fire beat Wood. Water beat Fire. Battle Beasts were mostly sold in packs of 2, so you could make them "fight." The picture on the right shows them fresh from a stream of hot water, which is the only way I could get all 3 rub signs to remain active while I shot the photo. The signs don't necessarily match the type of animal. I mean, you'd think Octillion Octopus would be Water, but no, mine is Wood. A lot of my aquatic beasts ended up Wood. These three designs are also the later style. The original style was a black and white simple picture, though the same shapes as these, if I recall correctly. I was too lazy to go through all my beasts trying to find three old style signs.

I love Battle Beasts because the sheer variety of animals used was pretty awesome, as was the level of detail in sculpting something that small. (On the downside, these guys get dusty easily and a dustcloth will not get in those tiny crevices. I wash my beasts periodically.) But yes, the variety. Spider, deer, musk ox, crow, octopus. It didn't matter if the animal couldn't breathe on land. It got to be bipedal and carry weapons and fight for the Wood Team anyway.

Each beast is numbered somewhere on its body and its weapon is numbered also, which is quite handy. Series 1 was 1-28, Series 2 was 29-52, and Series 3 was 53-76. There were several paint variants, mostly minor differences. My Killer Carp comes in either brighter or darker purple, for example. But some variants were more major. The jaguar comes in either burgundy or blue armor. Tusks and teeth can be painted or unpainted. One version of the rabbit is shorter.

As you can imagine, the rub signs don't last forever, so many of mine don't work anymore. But I never followed the beast rules anyway. I split mine up into teams based on what they would somewhat logically be and switched around weapons based on coolness factor. Most of my favorites are the unusual animals like the ones to the right here: Armored Armadillo, Leapin' Lizard, Slowpoke Sloth and Tanglin' Pangolin. (Did I mention a lot of the names are silly? They are.) I had never heard of a pangolin until Battle Beasts, so hey, educational value.

The beasts didn't stop at 76 though. Numbers 77-112 were released in Japan, and the European and American markets got some of them.

Newly dubbed "Laser Beasts," these guys look quite a bit different. Each one now has full armored boots and the rub signs have been replaced with clear orbs. You'd hold the beast up to the light and peer through to see his sign. (I tried to get a shot of this, but it didn't work out.) The weapons had also changed from mostly bladed weapons to giant guns with animal motifs that matched the beast.

When I was collecting, it was pretty easy to get Lasers 77-88. Those were the ones that got American release, I believe. The others were...not so easy, to put it mildly. Some of them came with a small vehicle and those were easier to get, even boxed. The popular Skull Grotess dragon was a mail-away, and the later numbered figures were all more expensive. And by expensive, I mean you could spend hundreds on a single beast.

The good thing about that is that once I got all the beasts I wanted, I knew I'd have no trouble selling them if ever the need arose. Years after I finished, I sold off collector cards and empty toy packaging and made hundreds. A couple years later, I sold all my Laser Beast guns and again made hundreds.

Some of the rarer figures. 

The only Laser Beast weapon I still possess is a fan-made replica of the Skull Grotess gun, as you can see in the lefthand photo. I never liked the Laser guns, because they're practically as big as the figure itself and they made display much more difficult. 112 tiny figures take up quite a bit of space as it is, so eliminating the 2" guns helped a lot.

I'm by no means even scratching the surface when it comes to info about these guys. There were playsets, Takara linked them to the Transformers and they had Autoobot and Decepticon allegiances, there were all sorts of premiums, like clear and stone versions and superdeformed-style beasts. It gets surprisingly complicated considering they're tiny robot animals that basically take Rock, Paper, Scissors and run with it.

Minimates Battle Beasts

In 2012, IDW released a 4-issue Battle Beasts comic series and Minimates toys came out of several of the comic characters and some incredible-looking new beasts. I bought several of them and while the detail is amazing, they also have a bad habit of pieces dropping off. I can't remember which figures were the worst with this, since I've only had the spider and scorpion out on display since we moved, but the spider drops legs all the time. This year, two new beast Minimates were released as part of the "Comic Book Heroes" line. I just learned about this, so I'll probably try to track a pack down, as one of the characters is a hammerhead shark.

That's about it from me when it comes to Battle Beasts. They're one of my largest, but also least talked about collections.

PHOTO CREDITS: All mine.