I don't think it's so much exploitation, but a sign of lack of effort in the first place. Now, Classics/Universe Starscream is not a good example of this. I will concede that in this case it is a case of making an improvement.

An actual example of what I mean is Animated Deluxe Bumblebee. The fact that the weapon doesn't sit in flush in the forearms to me feels like slackness. They should have made sure that this gimmick worked properly before approving it for mass-production and release!! Now they later fixed it with Elite Guard Bumblebee repaint.

What they should've done was what they did with the first batch of movie 70s Bumblebee. There were widespread reports of the automorph gimmick breaking in the early batch, so Hasbro fixed it with subsequent production runs. Full kudos to them for fixing that problem. Hasbro saw the problem and promptly acted on it.

Instead of giving us a repainted Elite Guard Bumblebee, I would've preferred it if they'd just simply fixed the existing Deluxe Bumblebee toy in later production runs of the figure. When Hasbro gives us a dodgy Bumblebee, then fixes it but only in a drastically different repaint... it feels exploitative to me.