I myself am a Beast Wars fan but I don't consider G1 over rated. Compare an old 1957 Chevy to a new Chevy, the new car is superior in everyway in it's technology and safety but I don't consider the 57 chevy over rated and I know which one I'd prefer to be seen in. I know the old G1's are more like blocks but at the time they were superior to any other transforming toys, I know there was far better articulated toys at the time but I can't think of any offhand that transformed from vehicle to robot without having to pull the item apart and put it back together. G1 set the bench mark, Hasbro & Tak have in general only improved from there, if the bench mark was really low in the mid 80's 2 things may have happened, we may now only be getting decently articulated TF's instead of the BW Era bringing it in or 2 they would have flopped and TF's would have been no more as was demonstrated when they tried G2 which almost wiped out Transformers(as far as I was concerned it did, ugly looking things shelf warming).