Kenner's successful Beast Wars continued strong into 1998, but with some new tricks up its sleeve. Wanting the line not to become stale and hackneyed, Kenner introduced the Fuzors and Transmetals: new sublines featuring fantasy hybrid beasts and sleekly robotic beasts, respectively.

The new assortments, despite changing some of the design aesthetic of the series, still fit into the same standard size-classes. Fuzors were offered at the Basic and Deluxe levels, while Transmetals appeared in the Deluxe, Mega, and Super classes. The new gimmicks were well-received and the series continued strong in all of Hasbro's markets.

Europe received largely the same lineup, although Hasbro finally took over distribution of Transformers product in Italy, displacing long-standing licensee GiG.

Takara diverged from Hasbro's lineup once again, however, and introduced Beast Wars II (prounced “Beast Wars Second”) in order to bide the time for the next seasons of Mainframe's cartoons to be dubbed. Beast Wars II received its own domestically produced anime, and featured a strange an eclectic mix of molds. Many selections were taken from the 1997 Kenner lineup of non-show characters, and supplemented with a number of redecoed G1 and G2 toys, as well as the Machine Wars flip-changing Decepticon jets, all on the Destron side. Beast Wars II also drew some product from the boneyards of unproduced toys: BB & Starscream were barely modified from the scrapped G2 Megatron ATB, and several vehicles and playsets are suspected to be nixed Microman designs. The unused G2 Autorollers would also make appearances. Takara's strange collection of toys was selectively released in the Republic of Korea through licensee Sonokong, a tradition that would continue through Micron Densetsu.