[Crazy Jetty]

It's really sad... as awesome as the technology to produce them has gotten, toys are just a dying art form.
I mean, even LEGOs are having a hard time. Legos.

Though, I think Transformers main problem is it's *TOO* popular. The stores want the shelves so full that it oversaturates and floods everything. And the only time TF toylines has any supporting fiction anymore is when a new movie is released. Therefore, lines like Generations only appeals to collectors.
The brief time that Animated and the Animated toyline were available TOGETHER, the toys flew off the shelves. But they didn't hit stores (Thanks to Hasbro's idiocy with dragging out the first movie line well past it's experation date) until the TFA cartoon was almost finished. And once Animated finished, the retail flow of toys seemed to halt almost completely.
I also think that kids might be starting to get tired of the TF movies. I mean, the second one wasn't child appropriate at all. HftD had no fiction accessible to them to help move it, even though it was a movie line. Reveal the Shield had no fiction, and almost no retail presence, even though it was technically movie line. Generations had no fiction, and didn't move.
In this day and age, even toys that have extremely popular, easily accessible fiction don't move well (Ben 10, Generator Rex).
But, Transformers since the first one is the biggest movie event of the year when new ones come out. And the retailers want to flood their shelves, and it seems they do so in greater numbers than the kids AND collectors combined can handle. (Besides, even kids get tired of popular characters over and over and over and over. I stopped collecting Ninja Turtles when the line became nothing but endless Turtles). I imagine you can only own so many identical Optimi and Bumblebees before you get bored with the design.

DotM also has a lot of foolishness on Hasbro's part working against it. The first several waves have absolutely no variety. Aside from Starscream, Thundercracker, Laserbeak, and that voyager helicoptor, then entire line are cars and trucks. All of them in *very* simular colors. Even though there's a dozen different characters on display, if you look at any store's given display, it's all virtually identical.