>>10063333Yeah, look man, I don’t know how to tell you this, but literally every single show* Transformers has ever had has had a character named Optimus and a character named Megatron. Their appearances, characterizations, motivations, and even narrative prominence have all versed from show to show, sometimes so wildly that basically the /only/ thing they retain in common was the names (looking at you Beast-machines, you weird rebel, you.) But name recognition is essentially a required conceit of the continuation of the brand.
Hasbro, probably completely correctly, doesn’t trust their audience to be willing to try their latest new reimagining if they don’t put on at least that paper thin veneer of familiarity to draw them in. But aside from that the brands tried plenty of different tones and approaches for series over the last several years.
To use your analogy, I think it actually more fair to say that it’s been several different flavors, only some of which where vanilla related, they’ve just been adding food-coloring to make them vanilla colored so old fans would be tricked into still trying them out.
*Rescuebots never actually directly showed Megatron, despite him purportedly existing off screen in their shared continuity. And RID2015 similarly only ever alluded to his past existence, as he’d already fucked off to parts unknown at the end of the previous series.
