Just "thinking out loud" here but it recently struck me that several of the concept designs for the abandoned post- Beast Machines Transtech line are pretty similar in style to the 'bot designs in the live action movie. I'm wondering: if Transtech hadn't been scrapped, would the fandom have been more accepting of the alien/bug-like/spikey movie concepts? Check out some of these Transtech concepts: http://www.tfarchive.com/fandom/transtech/?dgallery=browse Now, imagine if instead of RiD circa 2000-2001, we'd gotten something with robots like the one depicted in image #7. Is that Megatron design so far removed from Movie Megs? Assuming Transtech was succesful, would Michael Bay's transformers have been blasted to such a degree? Mostly rhetorically here, just thinking about it. Granted, some of those designs are pretty Gundam or Guyver-esque but some of the others have elements that remind me of the new designs. Check out #11 (Nightscream)- the design on the bottom left reminds me of Movie Frenzy. I'm sure many of us would've been put-off by those designs in a TF show at the time, but maybe by 2006-2007...not so much? Again, just a thought.
Given that BM was something of a flop, I very much wonder if this style would have caught on in the same way that Armada/Energon/Cybertron did. Are the designs closer to what we're getting with the movie? Probably (though they really aren't that close either). Would that have eliminated complaints about the design? I doubt it. The movie aesthetic is either something you like or dislike. It really is that simple. I don't like most of the movie designs. Nothing is going to change that.
I think had Transtech been successful they may have become the new style and the movie bot designs do follow a similar style. But, I believe the reason so many fans lament over the canceling of Transtech is because it was canceled...that simple. Had it been done, I doubt many would love it the way some claim nw that it is canned. Personally I love the transtech idea, but I also liked Beast Machines.
In short, no. Most of the detractors aren't basing their opinions about the designs against all aspects of Transformer's history, they're basing against G1. The average 'non-fan' transformers fan would more then likely not be familiar with anything not from the original as that was the one that made the biggest impact. BW and BM easily had the best writing out of any TF show, but niether of them carry the wieght G1 does, and as you said yourself BM is considered a 'flop' by the public. As it stands now, you can *easily* find existing TF designs throughout the past 20 years of Transformers history that share commonalities with the movie designs. But that doesn't matter because to most 'non-fans' Transformers was a 2-3 season show with a single movie and everything else didn't exist. Or at least that's how I see it.