Maxcons - ditch the old deluxe toys and give us scaled down ultras with minicons. Solid cases of Scavengers and Thundercrackers has carried over the curse of the Megas to this line. Overload and Skywarp further down the line are good, and supplemented by a decent TM Megs repaint with 2 minicons.
Gigacons - Megatron is a great toy, his special feature (compounded by Galvatron's purple repaint) will be remembered for many years to come. Jetfire's fabulous - though hideously hard to find in the UK - and Tidal Wave is interesting ..... General success here
Bigger ...... I like my Superbase Op though many don't - I'd prefer my large toys to be bricks and stand up than posable and flop ! Looked at now knowing he combines with 2 other toys makes some of the design choices more obvious. And they finally gave us Unicron too.
Lots of repaints, far too many, every toy bar the Street Action team, Smokescreen, Blurr & Hoist has had one. Minicons fine - army builders and custom weapons. Supercons and up and it starts to get expensive quick. Some of them are very good, a shame the G1 theme to the Powerlinx stuff was torpedoed by some problems with the cartoon - though I believe Red Thrust is on again, meaning we're just a white and purple ramjet Thrust short of a second series of G1 get recolours - I hope that G1 Blurr and SixShot Demolishor show up. A set of 3 Starscreams as the G1 jets and Overload as Magnus make good sense, Galvatron carries on the Megs repaint tradition, and the Hot Rod Hot Shot looks superb. FB Prime I don't get, neither the Tidal Wave or Sideswipe in Universe..... Japanese Minicon repaints reached hysteria levels - but just not enough star sabres with different coloured blades.
All in all..... not bad, enjoyed the line a lot, but a few reservations here and there.