AK, I do no disagree with you. The financial benefits to doing the same old poop is abundantly obvious. However, at some point, I really wish Hasbro would take a stand and give their product true integrity. Maybe adopt google's internal slogan, "Don't be evil."
My main beef of late has been reusisng the original charecter names for a whole new product and just calling it a "reboot." Can they not find someone with a little bit of imagination to come up with some new characters? Then link it back to BW and G1 and we would all be sold on the toys and they storyline.
I wish they would take a page out of IDW's recent offerings. Finally, Transformers are being done the right way, or so it currently seems. I only hope that the IDWverse will one day be translated into anime. Maybe a set of anime movies?
Don't get me wrong. I think Hasbro did a fantastic engineering job on these figures. They look exactly like the cartoons and appear to transform seamlessly. Technically, these might end up beiong the most impressive TF toys ever.
It is the idea backing them that bothers me. New characters, a litte imagination, and attempting to historically connect the new stories to the old and I would be won over.
P.S. I'm still gonna end up buying a half dozen.

The difference is, the right storyline and I would have bought them all, hook line and sinker.