TAKARA company released the Beast Wars toys and Computer Graphics television show in mid 1997 after realizing the success of this toy line in the states.  This new line of toys along with various merchandise varies some compared to the stateside version.  For example, the names have been changed from Maximals & Predicons to Cybertrons & Destrons, and some figures have been renamed or repainted creating a newly owned Japanese toy.

These toys are packaged individually or in a "Versus" set which depicts a Cybertron Vs. Destron character.  There are many repaints and exclusives (I don't have any at the moment) were released in Japan which do not appear in Hasbro's toy line.  One of these is the X-9 Jaguar which is known as "Ravage" in the stateside version of Beast Wars.  Although I haven't found any distinguishing markings on the package indicating this, the majority of posts I've read state that it is an exclusive.

The Japanese Beast Wars Metals was released during the second/third season of U.S. Beast Wars and are called Metals.  I believe the U.S. version is called Transmetals or Transmetals II.

There is so much to learn about the Transformers and the many characters that exist in this line dating back to 1984.  I'll continue to search the internet to expand my knowledge and hopefully add more valuable information to my pages.   I've already received some assistance from fellow Microman collectors and hope to correspond with other Beast War collectors throughout the web.  I've subscribed to the TRANSFORMER newsgroup and added some valuable links such as "The Formidable Transformers FAQ Version6.0" which has more information that one can imagine.   I'm doing as much as I can, when I can, and as fast as I can so bear with me as I bring this website up to par.