* As you probably already know, Yee will be working with Simon Furman on this project. A full backstory has been worked out in blending all the characters together, taking into account Beast Wars and Beast Machines. The old "3H BotCon" story threads, however, will not be acknowledged. The mini-series is believed to run for four issues, but IDW will make the final call.
* Characters from the Japanese-exclusive BW series (BW II and BW Neo) will also appear in the books, along with the North American ones. This will also include the likes of the BWII Seacon-like Pirates, Megastorm and his upgraded form Gigastorm, etc.
* Toy characters who didn't appear in the shows will also be in the books (however, many of them had appeared in the recent comic series).
* A few G1 homages will be present; one of these few ones will include BW Grimlock, who WAS stated in his Tech Specs that he really was the original Grimlock in a new Maximal body.
* Unlike most of the earlier BW toy packaging, the characters in this mini-series WILL have mottos.
* The Predacon ship will be called "Good Ship Lollipop." Just kidding
; it's still the Darksyde. 
* Although BWII and BW Neo will still stand on their own as separate series from the Mainframe-produced BW show, certain elements from the Japanese series have been borrowed and integrated to make a slightly hybrid-ized BW mythos. This was due to mentions of Magmatron, originally a BW Neo toy, having been released as part of the Beast Machines-era "Dinobots" sub-line, among others, even though they're not all being merged into one massive convoluted migrane-inducing mess.
* Regarding the situation with the Scavenger toy resembling a Transmetallized Inferno; the two will be treated as separate characters.
* Japanese names will be retained, so Lio Convoy won't be renamed into something like "Leo Primal".
* Somehow, the elements from BWII and BW Neo that the backstory will be following -- I believe it's the "Unicron Capsules" theme -- will take place before the Mainframe story. (How they're going to do that, this I gotta see.)
* Characters that share a name in the same series will also be made separate characters, even if neither appeared in the shows or comics. One example is Prowl, whose name was used by a Transmetal 2 owl and the lion segment from the Magnaboss Combiner.
* Transmetal toy versions of characters who did not get Transmetallized in the show (like Rhinox and Waspinator) will be given brief sub-entries into their main profiles.
* McDonald's BW Toys... Yee only teased us, but who knows?
* Beast Machines' events will be incorporated into as least one character's profile. But there are no plans to make a Beast Machines profile book yet.
* A note will be made on TM2 Prowl, drawing from his toy's Tech Specs that said he thought he was a military strategist in a former life.
* The bat version of Primal and the gator version of Megatron will be given VERY brief mentions.
* For those who don't know, during the first year of BW, Hasbro had released a pair of Micro Machines-like mini-playsets (each with two tiny non-transforming figurines), one for each side. The Maximal mini-playset was an orca (or killer whale) name Orcanoch; the Pred base was a spider named Arachnid. Believe it or not, even though these toys were never featured in any official fiction before... both these toys will be getting profiles, too!
* Noting how many of the BW Japan toys were repainted from toys that didn't appear in the Mainframe show, these characters will still be considered separate characters from each other. For example, Manterror from Hasbro's BW and Mantis from BW II will each be given separate profiles. The basic rule is, if a character has a different name in Japan, he or she will be a separate character. This, however, will lead to two Magnabosses; while both the Hasbro and Japanese versions of the team had different names for the individual team members, their combined forms will still share the same name (which they plan to make note of in the books).
* The so-called "Egg Beasts" from Japan will not be appearing.
* BotCon-exclusive BW toys will be included. This should cover the likes of Antagony, Packrat and Vicegrip; as well as BotCon Japan-exclusive toys, including Double-Punch.
* However, characters from the "3H BotCon" story who didn't have toys (such as The Covenant) will not be appearing, given that the 3H BotCon storyline will not be used.
* Fox Kids repaint jobs of already-existing characters will NOT be getting separate profiles or artwork. That would be redundant.
* While the BotCon-exclusive toy Sandstorm was revealed as a member of the Covenant in the 3H BotCon story, this will be changed in the new Profile Books.
* Onyx Primal will return to being a Predacon.
* The BotCon 2006 exclusives won't be addressed into the books; the toys weren't ready in time before the profile books' deadlines. As I understand it, pre-BW body forms won't be addressed.
* There will be no mention of "Megatron X", which was a character that only appeared in an old BW Transmetals game for Playstation.
* The Japanese BW mangas won't be incorporated, either; their stories are already separate from the animated stories. Doing so would convolute things even worse, especially with the handling of Ravage from the mangas.
* Una and Jak and othe protohumans from the Mainframe show were considered being included, but ultimately, they will not be appearing.
* G1 Starscream will be getting a brief mention (and he's completely separate from BWII Starscream).
* Also getting a profile... Transmutate.
* A glossary section is expected to be included for smaller "odds 'n' ends" tidbits.
This is the most recent update regarding the build-up to these profile books. If you wish to see more detailed discussion, the URL to this thread is just below, as more questions and comments are still coming in (it's at 14 pages so far, and still growing!):
http://forums.idwpublishing.com/cgi-bin ... =22;t=1318
Outtsyder
I'm reading the thread on the IDW forums now for more info!