A great toy is still a great toy, regardless of how well or poorly writers have written that character. Thundercracker was a B or C list character for decades until IDW writers finally tapped into the true potential of his character (as originally described in his original 1984 tech specs bio) and made him an interesting character! With a pet dog! And conversely you can have a really interesting character based off a pretty ordinary toy. G1 Thunderwing comes to mind.

Many of us original G1 fans saw and collected Transformers toys before they ever appeared in media and we would've already formed opinions on these toys before they ever graced our TV screens or comic books. Often by the time they showed up it was like, "Oh right, there's that toy that I own!" I mean, many of us aren't terribly fond of Machinima's Combiner Wars mini-series, but does that mean that we've suddenly changed our minds about the CW toys and are suddenly hating on them? I love my CW toys but I can't stand the show. I really don't see the logic in confusing one's opinion about a toy with one's opinion about a cartoon. I don't need a show to tell me what I think about a toy.

P.S.: Most of the more popular characters from the cartoon have already been done as MPs now anyway. What's left are the less prominent characters. And this trend will continue as TakaraTOMY work their way down the "popularity ladder" in selecting characters to adapt as MPs. Meister is probably the one prominent character who's surprisingly not been done as an MP yet, but I reckon because that it may be because Jazz has less redeco potential; you've got Stepper or G2 Jazz, both obscure repaints of the original. It's difficult to determine how well the obscure repaints will sell. Exhaust seemed to have sold like hotcakes, but Road Rage is still a terrible shelfwarmer. So I think that TakaraTOMY are playing it safe for now by going with developing moulds with stronger sales potential. But I reckon that they'll come around to more prominent characters with lesser redeco potential later on - Jazz, Hound, Mirage, Sunstreaker...
And some people need to remember that TakaraTOMY are now pumping out more MPs a year than they ever did before! And these are the same designers which also work on other Transformers lines, including the upcoming Last Knight movie toys, Robots In Disguise, Titans Return etc. We've got things pretty darn good now compared to the early years of MP!