>>6252464They where, but toys where way under their radar. Its not like google was around back then to bring things into notice of their legal department.
RiD Sideburn is sort of pointed to as the time the line in the sand was drawn and Hasbro/Takara had to be more careful about mimicking real cars, as the release of their Super Sideburn had Dodge licensing, and a logo on the hood unique to the US version. Its anecdotal evidence, and I was young at the time so take it with a grain of salt, but I remember looking at tF fansites when Car robots debuted and the toys came out, and everyone was hyped about the realistic vehicle modes . Speedbreaker got a lot of notice for looking like a spot-on Dodge Viper in a lot of reviews for it. Furthermore,a lot of reviews for the US releases noted Hasbro's attempts to cover up the resemblence to real vehicles for the US releases, using paint of the headlights to change the shapes. Its not to hard to see how all the instances of "Dodge Viper" and "Transformers" pop up and decided to do something about it.
Its probably even worse now that Transformers has become a franchise so ubiqutous with car merchandising. Hell, part of the preproduction process for Transformers movies, according to Bay, is just auto companies showing off their cars to him for consideration. There's way less plausible deniability now.
