Quote Originally Posted by jimoinj View Post
More generally, I think the popularity of third-party companies with hyper-toon looking MPs is forcing Takara to attempt to match them/keep up with the competition.
I disagree, as the third party companies generally had a level of stylization in their offerings up until Takara started going the full toon route with Ironhide. Since then the third parties making MP style toys followed suite, and started to reduce the surface detail. When it comes to Transformers Takara and Hasbro set the rules, third parties are a little fish by comparison.

I think Takara went the full toon style because of A: the designer and B: the highly source accurate appearance of expensive collectors toys from other franchises.

In the case of Starscream it's kind of funny when people argue that this new version is too slavish to the toon, when the first MP Starscream was criticised for deviating too much from the source.