Rated X wrote:No explanation is offered on why Megatron shares the name of his Predacessor,
He chose it deliberately.
If Optimus Primal is related to the line of Primes after Ginrai,
He's not. He's a random Cybertronian who chose the name as a tribute to the great Autobot leader, similar to what Megatron did. From a toy standpoint, before the show, the BW characters were meant to be the original Optimus Prime and Megatron, hence the names.
or why the Beast Wars robots are so small next to the ark robots if they came from the same "Cybertron". Did Cybertron shrink in it's 2nd golden era ?
I don't remember if this is explained in the show or supplementary media, but there was a great reformation where all Cybertronians upgraded to smaller, more efficient bodies.
Then you have Starscreams ghost. (Even though Unicron gave Starscream his body back in G1 and wasnt a ghost anymore)
Honestly I don't remember this at all, so I can't provide any input.
I only watched the series once and cant remember any other vauge refrences to G1. To me it seems like the writers wrote G1 into the story later on in the series to appease G1 fans who wernt buying into the beast era. But it doesnr seem to be something they intended to do from the beginning in my honest opinion.
The writers were initially on the fence about whether to set Beast Wars on Earth or not, and they eventually settled on it being Earth at the end of the first season. Large and small references to the G1 cartoon were there from the beginning, and any question of whether it was in the G1 timeline was settled in Beast Machines.
Like I said, I just erased the other continuities and re-purposed the figures as generic G1 characters. Unlike Hasbro, I didnt allign anything.
To be technical, Hasbro didn't align previous continuities. They took ideas from old ones and made a new one to hold all new properties. It's not like G1 Optimus Prime is running around with AEC Hot Shot and Movie Ironhide. On the flip side, that's basically exactly what you're doing. Even if you pretend the figures are unseen G1 characters, they're still technically from other universes. So by erasing the other continuities and putting their characters in G1 (even if you make them into new G1 characters), you're doing more aligning than Hasbro.
I don't want to dwell on this too much, because it's not the point of the topic. I just wanted to address some of your points. Obviously, you're free to do as you want with your collection.