Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
From the Human Error Part 2 thread:

I agree, but for me it's different with Animated. I'm sure that from the very inception of Animated Hasbro had the intent of making this a toyline, but decided to design the characters for the cartoon first and then asking TakaraTOMY designers to engineer toys from Hasbro's animation models.
That's exactly how they did it. There's interviews out there that confirm it.

Love it or hate it, one has to admit that the design ethos in Animated is very coherent, and the toys amazingly accurate in most cases.