I do agree that the movie was the biggest thing since BW - but it isn't bigger than Beast Wars. The Transformers line was _dead_. Dead. Kenner took a chance with BW and brought Transformers back to life. While the film is a bigger medium, within the context of the franchise, it's not as big. Having said that nothing since BW comes close to matching the film.

I'm frustrated that Hasbro have thrown away a lot of the momentum from the film. From extremely tenuous "movie" themed repaints to some of the really poor merchandising which will clog shelves for a while, such as the turnarounds. I'm still amazed that Hasbro followed it up with Animated - which is so ridiculously different from the film that it can't really grasp the momentum the film generated.

I hope the lines following the future films are able to ride their momentum better, so that the films aren't a flash in the pan (: