RAR wrote:That makes me think less of both Hasbro and of the character both - as I thought for some desperate moment they'd done something "Original" and made a new Character flier Autobot. and not just looked at a Character list from the 1980's and thought "Right which box do we need to tick"
That is the same attitude that made me loose all interest in Gi Joe.
Not necessarily - Stormshot shares nothing in common with Jetfire/Skyfire other than being an Autobot that has a jet mode and has white in their colour scheme - and there's certainly no shortage of those in the G1 Autobot ranks - and this simply seems to be a case of them using the name and not making it a new version of the character. This happens a lot - RiD Strongarm not being a new version of Energon Strongarm, for instance. And Jetfire from Animated really not being a new version of G1 Jetfire (or any other Jetfire) either. And don't even try and tell me Armada Wheeljack is just Armada's version of G1 Wheeljack.
Just because they share a name with a character from G1 or another previous series doesn't mean it's meant to be a new iteration of the character. It can be a bit confusing and borderline in certain cases, but same name does not immediately equal same character. In fact in a lot of cases, it's likely just "well we have that name already, why not use that instead of applying for a trademark for a new name?"