To sell toys



To understand Transformers fiction, it is important to understand that it exists to sell toys. Hasbro and TakaraTomy are toy companies, and they are primarily interested in continuing to sell toys to children and adults. The cartoons, comic books, etc., mostly exist to make this happen. To be sure, they normally make a profit in their own right, but this is regarded as mere gravy.

The "to sell toys" effect often distorts the fiction in interesting ways. Primarily, since you can't (usually) sell someone the same toy twice, Hasbro and Takara constantly introduce new toys, and often require the creators of the fiction to introduce the new characters into ongoing storylines. Older characters (whose toys are no longer being sold) are shoved aside to make room.

Another effect of "to sell toys" is when the toys have gimmicks which must be explained in the fiction. Sometimes (Mini-Cons) this is relatively easy, while other times it requires a lot of imagination on the part of the writers (the in-comic explanations for the Headmasters and Targetmasters are kinda wonky).

The UK movie-based Transformers comic has taken this to more blatant heights. For its first year, it had a specific four-page feature every week called Top Gear, which exists solely to promote the newest Transformers merchandise. Any merchandise. This led to readers being told how great Optimash Prime was. For Transformers: War for Cybertron, Ironhide himself opened letters pages by telling readers how awesome the game was and how you should buy it.

Huge casts
Hasbro makes a lot of toys at once, and they generally want all of them to appear in their fiction. This can force writers to bring in vast numbers of characters all at once, sometimes with awkward results. Examples include:


 * The first issue of the Generation 1 comics, "The Transformers", in which twenty-eight different robots appeared and introduced themselves, even though only a handful are important to the plot.
 * "The Special Teams Have Arrived", a free mini-comic given away with issue #54 of the Marvel UK comic, notoriously introduces the reader to twenty-four new Transformers in just three pages. Granted, four of those are the combined forms of the other twenty, but that's still a lot of new names to remember.
 * The 1987 Headmasters Limited Series, which introduced over sixty characters in the course of four issues, including all the first waves of Headmasters and Targetmasters, all their Nebulan partners, the Technobots, Terrorcons, and Monsterbots.
 * The cartoon episode "The Rebirth" likewise abruptly introduced a deluge of the 1987 toyline characters, mostly the same ones seen in Headmasters.
 * In the first four episodes of Robots in Disguise, eighteen characters are introduced in quick succession.
 * From #9 onwards, Titan's movie-based Transformers has heavily bumped up the cast with new toys. In one example, #17 brought in nine new toys in eleven pages; only one of the five Decepticons got any real focus or dialogue.

Random casting
The Hasbro-induced need to show all the toys can also cause stories to suddenly focus on a new character, sometimes dropping ongoing plot threads about older ones. Examples include:


 * Season 2 of the cartoon introduced many new characters/buyable toys with no explanation; despite never having been seen before, the story treats them as though they have been there the whole time.
 * The comic issue "Pretender to the Throne!" suddenly introduces a dozen Autobots and Decepticons that we've never met before, and follows their adventures. The story adds nothing to the long-range plot that couldn't have been accomplished by using existing characters; these teams were added to the mix to promote their new toys.
 * Many issues of the Marvel comic had cover blurbs in the form "Introducing the _______!", where the blank was whatever the latest line of toys was. The following issues specifically introduce new toys on the cover: #8, #10, #11, #19, #21, #29, #30, #40, #42, #46, #47, and #60. Throw in a few covers where new characters were pictured but not named, and that's 1/5th of the series.
 * In issue #36 of the Marvel comics, when Wheeljack decides that he needs help in dealing with Grimlock's inept leadership, he doesn't turn to any of the dozens of Autobots aboard the Ark, which include two combiner teams and Omega Supreme. No, he has to call in his "old buddy"/new toy, Sky Lynx.
 * In the prelude to the Underbase Saga, Optimus Prime and Megatron were the lead characters in a story set before the Transformers came to Earth. But rather than palling around with the likes of Jazz or Prowl, they are instead shown alongside the newest "gimmick" characters, the Triggercons and the Triggerbots.
 * Mainframe Entertainment planned to use Wolfang in Beast Wars, but Tigatron appeared instead because he had an upcoming toy, and to save money as his CGI model was only a slight tweak of Cheetor's.
 * Rather than revealing stuff about the Vok and Tarantulas, a long-running subplot, "Other Victories" spends much of its time telling us how great Tigerhawk is and how we should buy his toy.
 * The sixth issue of The Arrival stops following the regular cast so it can flag the awesome cool out-now-in-shops Safeguard toy.
 * Prominent generals in Titan's movieverse Decepticon army change frequently and without any acknowledgment as new toys jostle for (and gain) space.

Limited casting
On the opposite side of things, Hasbro doesn't want to pay to depict characters that aren't selling toys. This can force a story, particularly an animated cartoon, to have a smaller cast than it otherwise might.


 * The early episodes of Armada featured only the toys available on the shelves. This resulted in two ridiculously small teams going to Earth for the all-important mission of gathering Mini-Cons, rather inexplicable in story terms.
 * Both the Dreamwave and Panini comics suffered exactly the same problem, but it gets worse: The first Armada episode reused models of older Transformers as generic background guys to bump numbers up. The comics didn't. So Megatron apparently conquers all of planet Cybertron with an army of three guys, whereas the city/planet defending Autobots are just five blokes.
 * Dreamwave would also feature a scene on Cybertron, where the only Autobot who seemed to exist was Jetfire.
 * For the movie prequels, IDW got around this by deciding that Dreadwing was going to be a series of drones instead of one guy, allowing for really big battle scenes despite a then-limited number of toys. (It would later turn out there was also Dreadwing who was one guy.) Titan Magazines would borrow this, and turn other Decepticons into drone series too.

Forced explication
Rather than simply showing up in the background, new toy/characters often overtly introduce themselves, often with a ridiculous description of their special abilities. The Marvel comic is rife with examples, but it shows up across numerous fictions.


 * Again, Transformers #1 has two huge splash pages in which 28 characters do nothing but stand around and tell each other who they are and what they can do.
 * The two-part Generation 1 cartoon episode "Dinobot Island" features many new 1985 characters getting their own short little introductory scene, often with a characteristic bit of self-description (Tracks: "I'd rather stay in my stunning auto mode!" Inferno: "I'm always ready for action!" Beachcomber: "Wow, like, I hope we don't destroy this place before we can study it!")
 * "The Rebirth" has three different sequences in which large new groups of characters form a lineup and introduce themselves to viewers one after another. Strangely enough, much of this screen- and dialogue-time is given over to Nebulan partners; the "main" Transformer characters get no such introductions, even though they are the items kids would have to purchase to acquire the Nebulan accessories. For instance, Spasma, Monzo, and Peacemaker (all speaking characters) are introduced by name as part of various lineups, but their in-store hosts Apeface, Weirdwolf, and Pointblank are never named (and Weirdwolf never even speaks).
 * "Beast Wars (Part 1)" has the Maximals walk on one-by-one admiring their beast modes, loudly explaining their names and showing character traits. This also gives the impression they deliberately changed their names to fit these new beast modes for no apparent reason.

Gimmicks
When the toys can do something special, fiction writers must often go out of their way to show the gimmick in action.


 * The Headmaster gimmick got an entire Limited Series comic book devoted to it.
 * The comic issue "Pretender to the Throne!" features Scorponok proudly creating the Pretenders, gloating that they will hide the Decepticons' identities from the Autobots "until it is too late". Not only does the plan not actually work, it's also a plot point with absolutely zero lead-in or build-up—at no point has Scorponok ever expressed concern about his troops being detected by the Autobots, and we've never even met the Pretender characters before. It was brought about solely because the new toys had to be jammed into the story. (The, uh, story of returning Optimus Prime's character to the comic book because he had a new toy.)
 * Rotor Force made their debut in "New Dawn", and both here and in subsequent Generation 2 issues would primarily fight enemies not with guns like everyone else, but by firing their giant rotors at them. Page 3 of New Dawn actually shows them having to stop and reattach their rotors before they can carry on fighting.
 * Robots in Disguise Megatron had six alternate modes and the cartoon really wanted you to see them, which is why his first appearance is as a giant hand for no reason. It gets sillier when he turns into Galvatron and gains four more modes. In "Mistaken Identity", he turns into his "Iron Mammoth" form when facing off against a hostile Fortress Maximus even though he doesn't do anything in his form except stand there as he was already doing.
 * Jetstorm and Jetfire are the only Autobot jets in the Animated line. (Not counting the toyless Omega Supreme.) To fully big this up, their origin story has it that there have never been any flying Autobots before, despite them having been in (and won) a long and bitter war with enemies who often fly.

The Unicron Trilogy, noted for its gimmicks in all three toylines, was particularly notorious in this regard:


 * The quest for power-enhancing Mini-Cons practically defined the plot of the Armada cartoon, with both factions out to recruit or capture all the Mini-Cons.
 * Powerlinxing is shown again and again and again in Energon, despite having comparatively little relevance to most episode plotlines.
 * Cyber Key powerups are likewise shown repeatedly in Cybertron.
 * All three series were also marked by lengthy transformation sequences which highlighted the gimmicks in very toy-accurate animation (and also made production cheaper, thanks to recycled footage).

Strange developments
Shoehorning loads of new characters with new powers can compel the writers to do things with the plot that, in all probability, they otherwise wouldn't.


 * Marvel UK had to promote the Special Teams toys before they knew how they'd be appearing in the US reprints. To get around this, Simon Furman wrote a story arc titled "Second Generation!", where Buster Witwicky, Optimus and Shockwave watched an advert saw a Matrix-induced vision of the Special Teams in action. These events were previewed in "The Special Teams Have Arrived", nine issues earlier, with no indication that they were part of a vision, making their place in continuity uncertain.
 * In the US Marvel comics, the simultaneous introduction of the Aerialbots and Stunticons and the introduction of the Pretenders both saw a lot of rigamarole involved in explaining why both the Autobots and the Decepticons had new members with identical numbers/gimmicks at the same time.
 * Season 3 of the Generation 1 cartoon almost completely ignored the characters of the previous two seasons that were no longer on toy shelves. The 1985 Autobot cars, for example, are not seen at all. Bumblebee and the 1985 Mini-Vehicles, by contrast, show up now and again, as their toys were still shipping. Even Starscream, who was dead, managed to get a couple of Season 3 episodes all to himself; again, his toy sold through 1986.
 * Transformers Comic-Magazin issue 2 wrote an entire story devoted to Optimus sternly explaining which Autobots and Decepticons were on sale in Germany in 1989. The reason he had to? Quickmix had shot an Autobot!
 * The first thirteen issues of the Armada comic were focused around the Mini-Cons, with plots often revolving around their desire to be seen as equals and not be enslaved. Then without any prior set-up, the last five issues turn into a dimension-spanning battle against Unicron—who had just had a new and expensive toy.
 * "A Fistful of Energon" has Prowl learn not to use upgrades, and gives up using powerful samurai armour. But whoops, Hasbro thought "hey, we could make a toy out of that armour"! And so in a later episode, Prowl regains it and the show hurriedly claims that the upgrade is fine now because Prowl realizes now that it's the Autobot, not the upgrade.
 * The French decided to be good sports and start using propeller-driven nuclear bombers again, just so Tankor could be used (All Hail Megatron issue 11).
 * Ransack has been on Earth for a while, in hiding from other Decepticons while he waits for orders from the Fallen. Ransack is a member of a race that can scan any object and take its form as a disguise. Ransack moves around in the cunning disguise of a 100-year-old plane. (At least, unlike the previous example, the oldness of the alt-mode was pointed out.)
 * In Titan's Revenge of the Fallen comic, Skids and Mudflap go from being Bumblebee's responsibility to bugging Ironhide to being Sideswipe's responsibility in the space of three issues, all to allow each issue to focus on a specific toy-bearing movie star. Similarly, only one or two Decepticons per issue are sent on a mission, when presumably the Fallen might want to send loads of guys to silence the twins.

Awkward continuity


Sometimes the requirement to feature new toys can be so strong that continuity takes a major backseat and stories are produced that feature combinations of characters that make the story very difficult to slot into the main continuity. The Marvel UK comic was especially prone to this as it could not always foresee where, when and how characters would be introduced:


 * The Transformers Annual 1986 contains many stories featuring toys from the 1985 release long before they were formally introduced in the regular comic, often interacting with other characters who would be out of action by then. As a result few of the stories easily fit the continuity of the weekly comic.
 * The demands of Hasbro UK for the Headmasters and Targetmasters to be featured heavily even before the US Headmasters mini-series was available meant that both the Transformers Annual 1988 and the regular strip "Worlds Apart!" contain a slightly different set of events that are at odds with the mini-series.
 * The requirement to give prominence to the rereleased toys in the Classics range resulted in one the biggest continuity trainwrecks of all, Earthforce. Over two decades later fans are still uncertain where it fits in continuity, and even Simon Furman admits to being unsure.
 * Germany's Transformers Comic-Magazin started in 1989 and reprinted older Marvel US and UK strips. Since, of course, these would rarely show the current toys, Comic-Magazin ran text stories from #2 that showcased completely different Transformers that were on Earth at the same time, and just happened not to be seen in the strips.
 * Trapped between the need to pimp toys and the problem of not knowing what the plot of Revenge of the Fallen would be, Titan just threw up their hands and unambiguously set their lead strip in an alternate universe.

Power levels
In order to make new characters seem more totally awesome, they're often depicted as ultra-powerful in their initial appearances. Once they become old news, they frequently seem to lose their super-charged abilities.


 * The Generation 1 cartoon introduced Devastator as the ultimate threat. Once newer combiner teams came along, however, he was less of a threat, easily defeated at various times by Bruticus, Broadside and even Perceptor.
 * The Marvel comics feature Omega Supreme as nigh-invulnerable and ultimately powerful in his debut issue, slaughtering 2/3rds of the Decepticon forces sent to attack him. Just two years later, he's getting his butt handed to him by the likes of Buzzsaw, one of his original victims.
 * Waspinator was, amazingly, something of a threat in early episodes; he holds his own against Cheetor in his debut. He only became significantly weaker than the other Predacons during the second season.
 * In her first appearance on the Beast Wars cartoon, Airazor effortlessly blasts Terrorsaur to pieces. She never displays such a level of power again.
 * Similarly, Rampage was presented as a huge threat when he first appeared, but just a few episodes later, he seems just slightly tougher than the average Predacon (save for a few notable occasions).
 * Sky-Byte was actually a credible threat for his first couple of episodes.
 * The Commandos were far more powerful and competent than the Predacons, who were made even less powerful and competent as episodes went on. Remarkably, this was actually used in the plot, with Megatron focusing on the new toys while the Predacons became underdogs trying to get their old status back and one-up the new guys.
 * Any new toy character in the Unicron Trilogy cartoons is almost guaranteed to win the day's battle.
 * Tidal Wave was a staggering behemoth as big as the sky in his introduction, and his ability to combine with Megatron LITERALLY gave the battle advantage to the Decepticons until his equally powerful counterpart Overload was introduced. By the time of the Energon cartoon, Tidal Wave is just this tall guy (but not as tall as he used to be) and is treated as just another Decepticon, even after he gets a body upgrade in the form of "Mirage".
 * When the newly redecoed Jetfire and Optimus combine in Dreamwave's Armada comic, they are so powerful they can hurt Unicron himself.
 * Jungle Planet ruler Scourge was incredibly powerful when he was first introduced, but later on, he's getting slaps on the wrist by Lori and Thunderblast, and schooled by Bud, ultimately becoming more of a sympathetic comedic bumbler than a credible threat.
 * The Decepticons in Animated started off as being so horrifically powerful that the entire Autobot team had to take on a single one. By Season 3, this no longer happens. Uniquely, this was deliberate by the writers: they wanted to show the Decepticons as supreme threats, and have the Autobots gradually being better at dealing with them.

New bodies
There's rarely a compelling reason for a Transformer to get a brand-new body in fiction; it's simply to promote a new toy. It has become a default way to keep a popular character on shelves, rather than having to kill them off and introduce a new character to keep moving toys. Sometimes fiction writers are able to work these alterations in elegantly... sometimes not.


 * Bumblebee was rebuilt into Goldbug following his near-destruction... and was later re-rebuilt back into Bumblebee to sell the new Classic Pretender toy. The reason given in the comic storyline was that Ratchet reverted him without his consent because Ratchet liked his old form better, something Bumblebee is strangely fine with.
 * Season 2 of Beast Wars introduced the new Transmetal toys in short order, requiring some strange sci-fi waffling to explain why members of both teams suddenly got special new bodies. The writers had originally planned to introduce these changes gradually, across the length of Season 2, but Hasbro ordered them to be brought in immediately. (The slow-and-gradual notion would eventually appear during Season 3.)
 * The Unicron Trilogy cartoons feature Megatron getting recolored and renamed "Galvatron" three times; at the start of each subsequent series, he's given a different body but called Megatron again, because the name "Megatron" just sells more toys. (This also means Hasbro gets to keep the trademark "Galvatron".)
 * Several times during the Unicron Trilogy, characters get new paint jobs as part of some magical power-up enhancement. These new color schemes exist solely to promote redecorated toys like "Energon Ironhide" or "Powerlinx Hot Shot". Even the comics got in on the action, introducing the redecorated versions of Jetfire and Optimus during the Unicron arc.
 * The three future members of the Cybertron Defense Team get shot up by Megatron, then transmogrify through the power of BLAZING HEART OF JUSTICE into new forms. These new forms, of course, were just hitting shelves at a toy store near you.
 * In the course of the live-action movie, Bumblebee gets irritated at a slight against his alternate mode, and scans a new form. Voila, suddenly he's got two toys on the shelf!
 * When IDW's Transformers comic originally came out, there were no Generation 1-themed toys to flog, and many characters were given altered designs for the series. Then along came Universe, featuring new toys of Generation 1 characters, and suddenly multiple characters get new, toy-accurate bodies in All Hail Megatron, for no apparent in-story reason. Later, Bluestreak even gets a namechange to Silverstreak to fit his toy.
 * Shockwave was originally grey, but when he was reunited with the Animated Decepticons, he changed his colours to purple while referring to it as his proper look. Why he changed colouration to go undercover was not explained, but it may have something to do with a purple-coloured Shockwave toy being out when that episode aired.
 * In Revenge of the Fallen, Skids and Mudflap start out as an old ice cream truck combiner but after a disastrous mission NEST decides to upgrade them to new individual General Motors vehicles. New toys and product placement!

Abrupt conclusions


Just as Transformers fiction lives at Hasbro's pleasure, so too does it die. Falling sales, a change of plans, and standard rebranding can all cause a storyline to come to a sudden end when Hasbro decides to pull the plug.


 * The American Generation 1 cartoon got a somewhat rushed conclusion in the form of "The Rebirth", rather than a full fourth season.
 * The Generation 1 comics were nearly canceled at issue #75, but granted a reprieve. The stay of execution was only temporary, however; with the Generation 1 toyline ending, the comic was terminated a mere five issues later, resulting in a rather hasty concluding plotline.
 * Hasbro was only willing to support the Generation 2 comic for twelve issues, unless it proved an unqualified (perhaps phenomenal) success. Aware of this from the start, writer Simon Furman was able to plot a story arc that reached its finale as the series ended (and poked fun at it with a character whose name is a pun on "Gee, axe us".)
 * The writers of the Beast Wars cartoon reportedly never had any idea if they'd be back for another season. When the axe fell with Season 3, they had only three episodes left to wrap up the whole series.
 * Hasbro nearly killed off the just-begun comic series The Wreckers in 2001, wishing instead for 3H to focus on a Universe comic advertising its current toyline.
 * Even though Cybertron wasn't abruptly canceled, Kids WB ended the series on the cliffhanger of the episode "Revelation", leaving millions of kids tuning in next time only to get a re-run of Xiaolin Showdown. The reason? The Cybertron Defense Team toys hadn't hit stores yet.
 * With Revenge of the Fallen coming out in June, Titan had to end their alternate universe storyline in May so they could tie in early—an issue earlier than planned. The main strip handled this, with the notable exception of the Jazz plot arc going completely unresolved, but it played havoc with working out the IDW reprints!

Killing off old product
The most obvious To Sell Toys effect comes from the temporary nature of retail sales. Even in the 1980s, toys rarely stayed on the shelves past two years; today that timespan is much smaller. Once a toy is no longer selling, Hasbro has no interest in supporting fiction about that character—especially when there's newer toys to promote. Therefore, writers are often compelled to remove characters from the story by killing them off. Sometimes this happens through carefully developed story arcs, but it's easier to do it with huge, apocalyptic battles with massive numbers of casualties.

This has become less common in recent years, as Hasbro has come to realize that their target audiences can actually get attached to certain characters, and might not enjoy seeing them die random, brutal, meaningless deaths.


 * In The Transformers: The Movie, numerous main characters are killed or changed in the movie's first 30 minutes, including Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream, and Ironhide. They are replaced by a slew of new characters; in fact, the poster for the movie shows only new characters.
 * Numerous characters are killed in the Marvel UK comics saga "Time Wars". The Grim Reaper seemed to spare either popular characters (Megatron and Shockwave) or newer characters (Carnivac, Catilla and Scorponok, for example.)
 * The Underbase Saga features a super-powerful Starscream killing literally dozens of characters; some place the count over fifty. The survivors were mostly from the Pretender, Headmaster, and Targetmaster ranks, those being the then-current toy lines. However, the explanation (Underbase power didn't affect those TFs with organic components) meant that even the Seacons, new toys at the time and introduced three issues before, met their end.
 * The climactic battle with Unicron 25 issues later killed off many of the Underbase survivors, whose shelf run had ended.
 * With its enormously expensive CGI animation, Beast Wars was particularly vulnerable to toy-based interference. The expense of creating and animating a CGI body model meant that the character roster had to remain fairly constant; the introduction of all-new characters usually required the removal of an equal number of pre-existing characters. And so, Scorponok and Terrorsaur die just in time for the arrival of Quickstrike and Silverbolt. (Frustrated with the situation, the writers carefully planned out the demise of Dinobot, anticipating that someone would have to be removed to make way for newer characters.) Tigerhawk was introduced and then killed off within three episodes, due to corporate uncertainty about whether the toy would actually be produced.
 * The Reign of Starscream would end up killing a large number of Autobots in one issue, after their toys had been around for a while; as they'd not made an appearance in the comics until this mini, this is both an example of Huge Cast and Product Clearing. It would then go on to bump off some Decepticons, while its sequel Alliance slaughtered hordes of Decepticons with old toys. Mowry is the new Furman...

Hi-and-die
Kids don't want to buy a toy of a character who's dead. So if the plot calls for someone to die, smart money bets on the character who has a toy as the survivor. The guy without a toy, who you've never heard of before? Toast. This is the Transformers version of Star Trek's infamous redshirt syndrome.


 * This approach was particularly common in the UK comics. Characters created specifically so they could be killed off include Wrecker leader Impactor, Autobot/zombie food Chuffer, Tailgate's Autobot trainee buddies/mutant fodder Subsea and Flattop, and the sixth member of the "Magnificent Six", Stampede.
 * The US comics also used this approach on occasion, as with Blaster's poignantly adorable buddy Scrounge.
 * The Energon cartoon introduced Padlock, whose purpose was to die at Shockblast's hands, proving motivation for toy-character Wing Saber.
 * Animated chucked in Arcee so Ratchet could have a tragic past where he failed to save someone. (And then she got a toy!)
 * The Animated comic wants to do a story arc about an Autobot who's really a spy and then have him killed. Quick, make someone up!
 * Exodus invents hordes of characters solely to populate the story with casualties while preserving the classic characters: Chromatron, Gauntlet, Halogen, Drixco, Revo, Catalycon, and dozens of other unnamed Autobots, Decepticons and Seekers.

Resurrection
Killing off a character isn't always toy-motivated; sometimes it's a dramatic plot development. But it can also be a problem if Hasbro decides to make a new toy of that character.




 * Optimus Prime has been resurrected so many times that it's practically a defining character trait. His original revival in the cartoon didn't correspond to any actual toy release, but the Marvel comic brought him back specifically to advertise his Powermaster form. A second death-and-revival introduced his Action Master body. And a third death-and-revival in Generation 2 brought him into his Hero toy form.
 * The Japanese killed off Optimus (or "Convoy" as they called him) in The Headmasters. A few years later, they not only brought him back with a new toy, the entire franchise for that year was called Return of Convoy.
 * Numerous "dead" characters were brought back into the Marvel comic series when their Classics and/or Action Master versions were released. Many were "deactivated" rather than outright dead; however, very few non Action Master characters showed up alongside them.
 * The series writers for Beast Wars considered Optimus Primal dead and gone at the end of Season 1. Hasbro, however, had a Transmetal Optimus Primal toy to promote, and so he was returned to life in Season 2. Hasbro wanted him brought back in the first minutes of the season premiere, but the writers managed to convince them that it would be better to do so at the end of the two-episode story.
 * At the end of Season 2 of Beast Wars, Inferno was pretty clearly shown being killed—being disintegrated—but in the next season appeared to have just been bruised and cracked, because Hasbro was not ready to have a Mega-scaled toy removed from the series.
 * Pretty much nobody could successfully die in the Energon cartoon. Megatron, Starscream, Demolishor, Tidal Wave, Wing Dagger, and Inferno all die and/or are resurrected from the dead during the course of the show.
 * Jazz still had toys out in 2008. The bio for AllSpark-Enhanced Autobot Jazz states he was brought back from near-death by the AllSpark and is "more powerful than ever". Voila, Jazz comes back from the dead thanks to the AllSpark in Titan's tie-in comic! Optimus even uses the term "Autobot Jazz" in a later issue...

Untouchables


Obviously, if a character does have a current toy (or soon will), they're not going to die, even if the plot or common sense indicates they should.


 * Blackarachnia had betrayed Megatron to the Maximals, ruining his greatest shot at victory. As he declared, "There will be no more betrayals!", she would pay the price: being knocked into stasis lock so the Maximals could fix her and she could stay on their team.
 * Megatron himself was in a prime position to be terminated, as were the Maximals later on, in "The Weak Component". Since this was only episode 6 and everyone had toys out, the cast politely agreed not to take this opportunity to end a brutal war for the planet.
 * Titan's Movie strip was moved to an alternate universe, where you'd expect nobody to be safe from death. However, most of the cast had toys out, so whether it was a desperate guerrilla fight against Decepticon occupation, the rise of Unicron, a Decepticon Civil War, or the final battle, very few characters bought it. The big exception was Divebomb, dying in his first battle.
 * Starscream, the end.

Notable exceptions
There are, however, a few notable exception to the To Sell Toys effect:

Toys not released in the relevant market


Occasionally the Transformers fiction released in a particular country features characters whose toys were not released in that country. The Marvel UK comic featured two variants of this phenomenon:


 * Characters inherited from the US strips. Some, such as Shockwave, Swoop and the Predacons, were given fairly prominent roles in the US stories reprinted in the UK comic and so it was hard to ignore them completely in the UK originated material despite their toys not being around to need advertising. However the decision to develop the Predacons (even before their US appearances were reprinted), to have entire storylines focusing on Swoop, and also to keep Shockwave in continuity even after he'd been (supposedly) killed off in the US comic goes beyond this.
 * Characters not featured in the US strips. Bizarrely the UK comic also made use of some characters such as Roadbuster, Whirl, Chop Shop and Venom, despite their toys not being available on UK toy shelves. None of these characters were inherited from the US material.

Writer Simon Furman has since stated that when writing the stories he was generally unaware of which toys were unavailable in the UK: "We largely took our cue from what characters were being introduced into the US storyline. If there was a release schedule for the toys in the UK, we rarely saw it... But in the case of Swoop and the Predacons, I don't think I was consciously aware (at the time) that we were dealing with toys not generally available in the UK. They were just extant characters, and therefore fair game."

This would happen again with Titan, as foreign exclusives palled around with UK-available toys such as Bludgeon and Slap Dash.

Post-Marvel comics


Both Dreamwave and IDW comics, the two recent holders of the license to publish Transformers comic books, sometimes produce comics using whichever toy line is current (e.g., Dreamwave's Armada comic or IDW's 2007 movie tie-ins), and sometimes publish comics using whatever characters they please (e.g., The War Within and Escalation). The characters in their "discretionary" comics are often not currently available in toy form (Hardhead, a current character in IDW's G1 continuity, only had another toy on shelves at around 2009, a good twenty-two years since his last toy), sometimes are drawn with bodies that have never been toys (most of the War Within characters), and sometimes are toys that were never available outside of specific countries (Lio Convoy in IDW's Beast Wars).

Chris Ryall, IDW Editor-in-Chief and writer of the miniseries adapting the 2007 movie to comics, had stated on IDW's forums that Hasbro does not dictate what comics IDW must make ("Nope, no dictates at all from Hasbro. We put the plan together, send to them for approval."). By the time of All Hail Megatron, however, the Universe line came out and Hasbro asked IDW to start using some of those designs. This practice seems to have been thrown out for the new Ongoing title.

New toys, same basic design
In more recent times (mostly in the case of the live-action film series), Hasbro use a combination of minor redecos and retools and sculpts based on the same basic designs to create new toys, instead of giving recurring characters a major design overhaul for the next installment. The fiction then rarely, if ever, acknowledges any of those minor design changes. According to screenwriter Roberto Orci, some people at Hasbro even argued against changing the designs of some returning characters in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so that parents would not have to buy the same toy twice for their children just because of a minor change or modification to the characters' designs. (Hasbro still released new, or modified, toys of those characters, prompting completists to buy them as well, and the film gave some of the characters slight tweaks in their alternate modes, based on changes in the real-life vehicle designs, which the toys had to incorporate.)