One that springs to my mind is Springer. In the 1986 movie and season 3 of the cartoon, he just acted and sounded like a generic Autobot. Tough and heroic Autobots like him were a dime-a-dozen in the first 2 seasons of the cartoon (e.g. Brawn, Sideswipe, Ironhide, etc.). His role in the Marvel comics as the Wreckers leader really made him stand out. Then comes IDW where they released the book 'Last Stand of the Wreckers', which in my opinion is one of the best Transformer stories written so far, a prime example showing not every Transformers story needs big characters like Optimus Prime or Megatron to be good.