>>10206671A lot of Armada's figure budgets got sucked into the mincion activated gimmicks. Lots of extra springs, pins, and surprisingly complex (almost clockwork-like) assemblies. Not to mention needing to make sure the gimmicks themselves would actually work with the figure's articulation. There was an early hotshot prototype with full articulation but it looked horrific and didn't tab together well.
The minicons themselves were free to just be tiny robots.