Battle Beasts were pretty lame compared to other toys of that time (see GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man, MASK, Robotech, or Voltron).

They were these little anthropomorphic animals that had armor and weapons, and a black square on their chests. You would rub the black square to reveal one of three insignias: water, fire, or wood. Then you could play what was basically a variation of paper-rock-scissors.

Fire burns wood.
Wood floats on water.
Water puts out fire.


Wood floats on water? Hello? I'm not impressed. I can see how fire burns wood being a threat, or water quelling a fire, but "Wood floats on water"? Sounds like a draw to me.
#1 through #76 of this list were the widely-released and well-known-to-North-America series of poorly-alliterated Battle Beasts. #77 through to #112 are the Japan-only Shadowbeasts / Lasebeasts / Laserbeasts, which featured the look-through decal inside the chest cavity rather than the better-known heat-sensitive sticker-patches and wielded species-appropriate firearms .

It seems as well that while the translators of the names of the first batch had a dictionary to thumb through for quasi-appropriate English epithets (some - octillion? osified?! - so obscure to be on a level with our own Webster1913's occasional burps in the Cool Archive), the for-distribution-in-Japan-only set didn't need to employ such crude literary devices and, in the most case, scrapped them altogether in the monster names with only a few bizarrely punny exceptions (such as the manta ray "Grin Reefer"?!) Unfortunately, this also means that some of the later Beasts' species is not as plainly stated - your guess as to what kind of animal "Anarchy" is is as good as mine 8)

As a small child I sent away for the promotional poster showing all seventy-six of the North American Beasts. Many were the hours I'd gaze up at their names and contemplate minor literary works. For your reassurance, however, I looked up this information on the web rather than having remembered it all from childhood. Otherwise I'm sure I would have gotten the Panda's name wrong... 8)

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