>>9773657They had Alternators and Masterpiece then to focus their attention on, which started towards the end of Armada. It was less of an issue that Sideswipe was the world's worst minicon when you had a toy of a real world car that turned into G1 Sideswipe. They'd be more upset Hasbro couldn't use old names anymore (like "Shockblast" and the homage merry-go-round in the mainline was more a head shaking "they don't really care about the legacy characters, huh?"
That said, Unicron as a toy made everyone's penis get big, and Energon as a line was tripping over itself to give G1 homages (and that mad the grousing over the ones that weren't magnified because you'd get "why is Mirage a Decepticon boat instead of the blue and white race car" or "goddamn how could they do Ironhide dirty like that"