Transtech

Transtech was originally planed as the follow-up to the Beast Machines toy-line and cartoon.

Story-wise not much is known. It likely would have picked up on Cybertron folling the events of Beast Machines. Rumors are that as with Beast Wars and Beast Machines a Mainframe animated CGI cartoon was considered.

The line would have involved both Beast Wars/Machines characters: Cheetor, Silverbolt, Blackarachnia. And returning Generation 1 characters: Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream, and Shockwave.

The characters transformed into cybertronian vehicles that in many cases had animal-like features/deco. Cheetor was a cybertronian race-car with a cheeta-like paint job, for instance, and Prime (confusingly invoking Optimus Primal) was a truck whose front end looked like an ape's face. Designs were done by Draxal Hall and had a distinctly "odd" not-quite-usual-TF look to the robot modes. (Cheetor had large hoop "wheels" for shoulders and feet.) Many of these designs were first shown at Botcon 2002 and then subsequently available online.

The toyline got as far as prototypes for some of the characters, including Cheetor, Starscream, and Primal, some of which have been seen in photographs online before the line was nixed.

It is unknown really why Hasbro canceled the line at what seems to have been the 11th hour.