Note: I haven't seen the Ron Friedman interview yet. Following comments are based on my own personal experience and observation.
In 1986 I had the plot of TFTM spoiled for me before I watched it. At that age I didn't care about spoilers, and another kid at school had seen the film before me -- and in the playground I listened eagerly as he told me what happened. So I knew that Optimus Prime would die and that Hot Rod would become Rodimus Prime to replace him etc., and when I first heard about it my thought was, "Cool!", because to me it suddenly "matured" the story. Because as a maturing audience member, that's what you want from your story. You want it to "grow up" as you do, rather than continually appealing to that little child in you when you started. And this is clearly a direction that Sunbow writers took with the G1 cartoon after Season 2, not only by killing off a lot of characters, but also by setting it in the future and taking the story off Earth in Season 3.
As for the franchise itself, as Sky Shadow said, I'd look at the toy line. Another thing they did w/ the toys was to start introducing more fantasy alt modes instead of licensed vehicles (i.e. the core of the "robots in disguise" element). e.g. Bluestreak transforms into a Datsun (Nissan) Fairlady Z, a recognisable vehicle that you can see on the streets. Hot Rod transforms into a fictitious sports car with Michael Bay lovin' chopper flames and massive pipes on the sides, plus a huge spoiler on the back that puts modern aviation to shame. Then he becomes upgraded into Rodimus Prime transforms into a Space Winnebago(TM). The Decepticon jets were F-15 Eagles, or at least a modification of that... I honestly thought that Scourge was a boat when I first saw him. I didn't realise that he was meant to be an aircraft until after I watched TFTM!Then as G1 progressed they kept on making more fantasy alt modes (re: Targetmasters, Headmasters etc.). However by 1988 they went back to making more licensed vehicles; e.g. Porsche 959 (Nightbeat), AH-64 Apache helicopter (Spinister), Leopard 2 tank (Quake), Porsche 962 Le Mans racing car (Backstreet), B-1B Lancer bomber (Windsweeper) et al., but of course, the Anglophone G1 cartoon had already been cancelled the year before then, although the comics did continue for a good couple of years after that.
G2's attempt to revive the franchise in 1993-95 didn't work well. I think a large part of that problem was that it was too much like G1 -- bringing back old toys in weird colours? Okay. G2 did produce some good toys later on, and maybe if they'd just _started_ G2 with those kinds of toys it might've fared better, but sadly that wasn't the case. Market research in the mid 90s indicated that animal toys were more popular than vehicles with kids, and so Hasbro (via Kenner) released Beast Wars, which as we all know was incredibly successful (it became the third best selling boys' toyline in the US behind Toy Story and Star Wars). So when I look at the "fall and rise" of the Transformers franchise with G1, G2 and BW, it all boils down to the quality of the toys. And this is what displeases me with Hasbro's current direction in making Transformers a "screen first" franchise, allowing animators instead of engineers dictate the design of toys.
Answer: Because the Autobots in the shuttle were no longer in production, whereas Hot Rod was a new toy that had to be marketed.Originally Posted by Sinnertwin
Oh wait, you mean an in-canon explanation? A wizard did it.
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