Beast Wars II (pronounced Beast Wars Second) was a subsection of the Japanese Beast Wars series. Numbered consecutively after the regular Beast Wars figures, Beast Wars II shifted the focus from the dubbed Mainframe Animation cartoon to a domestically produced anime, occurring in another time and place.
Many of the design themes endured from Beast Wars, but the series diverged on several points. While many Cybertron releases were recolors of US Beast Wars toys not featured in the Mainframe show, the Destron faction of BWII was mainly comprised older designs from G1 and G2, as well as redecoes of the newly designed Machine Wars basics . Not unlike Beast Machines, the Destrons focused very heavily on mechanical designs, and the only beasts were “cyborg” retools of extant Beast Wars toys. The series' eclectic mix of designs was complimented by the use of several previously cancelled designs, including unused Microman vehicles and playsets, and two scrapped G2 Autorollers. Only three totally new designs were released: the two faction leaders, and the unusual space rabbit, Moon. Like the first segment of Japan's Beast Wars, figures were available in myriad box sizes (unlike US toys that shared packaging patterns based on size class), and most of the regular figures were available in versus packs unchanged from the individual releases.
Korean toymaker Sonokong licensed several of the main figures of the series for sale in South Korea. Other than the drastically different packaging style, the Korean versions of the toys are indistinguishable from the Japanese-market releases. Additionally, Lio Convoy and Galvatron were offically imported to the US and sold direct-to-consumer through Hasbro''s now-defunct hasbrocollectors.com website. These figures were identical to the Japanese release, but can be identified by a white Hasbro sticker in the lower corner of the box front.
As the series was largely meant to fill the gap between Japanese dubs of the second and third US Beast Wars seasons, it was rather short-lived. It was quickly replaced by Beast Wars Neo, a more developed, purpose-built section of Beast Wars to serve the same function until the adaptation of Mainframe's Beast Wars could continue.
