I love the toys, however story and characters are not any less important. They can't really be mutually exclusive. For example, there were heaps of well designed and engineered toys in Transformers Energon and Cybertron, but I refused to buy any of them because I didn't like the story/characters. On the other hand, I like the War Within comics so much, I could tolerate the Titanium Optimus Prime toy with all his flaws.

Another example is the Binaltech series. There wasn't really any cartoon or comic behind it. However, I saw the Binaltechs as re-incarnations of the G1 characters I loved. If Takara released toys of the same quality but as completely different characters with different backgrounds, I don't think I would have bought so many.

An interesting question is: If someone likes Transformers for the toys only, does it make him less a "Transformers fan" than others? On the other hand, if someone likes the Transformers story, the characters, the universe and mytho but has no toy whatsoever, does it also make him less a fan? I reckon being a fan is about enjoying what you like, in your very own way.