>>10215800>>1021590386 was when the movie hit and they ran out of Diaclone toys-- and Hasbro pushed the Takara designers to make toys more blocky and durable because kids broke the Diaclone stuff too easily. 87 was when everything was a gimmick: Headmasters, Targetmasters, Throttlebots, Clones, double spy etc etc, The closest thing to "normal" transformers was still a scramble combiner. The show ended on a whimper of three episodes, and then after that was just continued attempts to focus on some new gimmick each year while trying stragglers of "last year's" gimmick filled out the line: Pretenders and Powermasters get the focus, and smaller and cheaper Target/Headmasters. Then Micromasters and all their playsets get the big push, with Pretenders getting some share of the limelight. Then Actionmasters, with Micromasters holding on for dear life...
