Trivia / Unicron Trilogy

• Creative Differences: Each entry was subject to serious creative and marketing disagreements between Hasbro and Takara:
  • Transformers: Armada: For starters, a good chunk of the "Powerlink upgrades" of the Hasbro toyline were not released as mass retail in Japan, only as exclusives for certain stores. This results in the oddity of only a selected few of the cast receiving the upgrade, and Optimus only obtaining his powerlink upgrade in the finale. Moreover, Starscream obtained a Powerlink upgrade in the anime that was released in Japan as such, but instead it was released as the new character "Thundercracker" in the West.
  • Transformers: Energon: This one got hit hard, as a lot of new molds meant to represent new characters were instead repurposed in the Anime and Japanese toyline as upgraded forms of existing characters even if they looked nothing alike (Demolishor's dump truck body was confirmed to be intended a new form of Long Haul, and Roadblock's and Mirage's bios still reference them as separate characters instead of a upgraded Inferno and Tidal Wave). It even affected fiction, as Alpha Quintesson was intended to be a servant of Unicron but the anime ignored this intention entirely (with only the Dreamwave Comics despicting it). In addition, both Terrorcons and Omnicons were meant to be upgraded Mini-Cons which was also ignored in the anime.
  • Transformers: Cybertron: The entire premise of the show was changed very late in production. It was supposed to be a sequel to Energon before it was changed to a unrelated entry in the Japanese version (character designs or concepts reminiscent of the earlier entries notwistanding), while Hasbro decided to simply dub it as the sequel it was intended to and use external material (mostly the Fun Publications comic book) to explain the plotholes and discrepacies. Eventually, those retcons were retroactively implemented to the original version, restoring its intended status as a sequel there as well.