But more than that, there actually were several massive changes in American animation between the time when TAS was made and the time when Transformers was made. One, limited animation produced domestically was almost entirely replaced by somewhat less limited but messier animation outsourced to Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, with Filmation being the last holdout. Two, kids' animation was almost completely taken over by shows created to sell toys (and in this case Filmation actually pioneered the change with He-Man). Three, first-run syndication took off and animation came to be dominated by shows that aired every weekday afternoon and had 65-episode seasons rather than just Saturday-morning shows with seasons of 13 episodes or less (another change He-Man pioneered). And four, the broadcast standards that had restricted violence in '70s kids' shows were relaxed, so that '80s shows were heavily dominated by guns, swords, and fighting. So they really were two radically different eras in American animation, and TAS and Transformers were very much products of those respective eras. So it's strange to me to see them paired off.
