>>10971373>makes children cryOptimus dying, making children cry was kids showing emotion and their love for a character. Every creator of characters has a hope that their characters become emotionally important to people. Every creator has a hope their characters move people to joy or to tears....that means those characters really mean something to people.
>makes kids dislike dead charactersEvery character that died in the transformers movie came back because fans wanted it, and Optimus because a freeaking LEGEND because of his death in the TF movie.
>toy sales go downSales may have dipped because Rodimus and his generation of TFs were the only ones available, but the long game of sales was a huge success, bringing back Optimus and the Gen 1 designs to selll wayyyyy more TFs if the movie had a success in killing off the Gen 1 designs forever.
>series in steep decline to death afterwardLast I checked there was a bunch of live action movies and cartoon for years and years and all kind of toys still sold of TFs. Doesnt sound like death to me.