Valandar wrote:IIRC, it started earlier in Europe than the US. There's also a bit of a transitional phase - some figures were available in G1 over here, and G2 over there.
That really depends on the area you're living in. It started in 1993 in the US with G1 repaints with the occasional G.I. Joe accessory. The first new molds were actually European toys at first, repainted and sometimes renamed.
In Europe Generation 1 was extended with new subgroups like the Turbomasters, but the new faction symbols

and

were first used there in 1993, even when the packaging still said "Transformers" without "Generation 2". That was because the license to the old symbols expired (Hasbro UK was considered a seperate company), so new ones were made. If you ask me, they were based on the Obliterators Pyro/Spark and Collosus/Clench, the main leaders for that year. The G1 toys from 1993, to say the Aquaspeeders and Stormtroopers, Axelerators and Skyscorchers, Lightformers and Trakkons, and the Obliterators were re-released as G2 in 1994.