Battle Beasts is a line of small 2" tall action figure toys, in the form of an anthropomorphised animals with body armor and a unique weapon. Several figures have their left hand replaced by a weapon of some kind. Battle Beasts were created and largely produced by Takara and distributed by Takara in Japan (under the name BeastFormers) and by Hasbro outside Japan, beginning in 1987. Battle Beasts were created by Takara of Japan in 1986. Tomy Co., Ltd., aka K.K. Takara-Tomy, still owns the worldwi