Beast Wars
The Hasbro Beast Wars action figures were part of the Transformers franchise. The characters in Beast Wars were descendants of the original transformers. The Maximals came from the Autobots, and the Predacons from the Decepticons. Characteristics of their planet forced the creatures to move around as animals/insects until they needed to transform to robots. They came in several different sizes and the franchise continued well into the 1990's and beyond.
The Maximals were the good guys, with names like Airazor (turned into a Falcon), Break (turned into a penguin), Razorbeast (turned into a Boar), Bonecrausher (turned into a Bison), Cheetor (turned into a Cheetah), and Stampy (turned into a rabbit). The bad guys were called the Predacons, with names like Drillbit (turned into a Weevil), Iguanus (turned into an iguana), Blackarachnia (turned into a spider), and Guiledart (turned into a dinosaur).