Without picking on the character designs themselves, which seems to translate into toys better or more accurately? In my opinion, the fact that the movie characters are cgi and more "life-like" or realistic makes them harder to produce as toys with the same level of detail. Cartoon based toys seem easier to stay true to the design set forth in the show.
It really come down to the relationship between the show/movie guys and the toy guys. Inaccuracies and changes at the last minute really hurts Hasbro and their ability to make accurate figures.
It's a tough choice. I'm gonna have to say cartoons though. There transformations are so simplified that its much easier to show the transformations in the toys.
cartoons as the alt modes don't need be real world accurate so it allows for artistic license to be taken in simplfying transformation schemes
I really think it depends how closely they work together etc. But i mean the last couple of lines we have gotten like animated and classics 2.0 did great justice to the cartoon incarnations of the characters.
Cartoons. The movie toys are a close resemblance but overall, they fall short. They movie CGI is just to complicated to translate well. Just watch Prime's transformation in the first movie and you'll see why. That's not saying they are not good though. Cartoons are just easier because they have simplified transformations for animation purposes. To much detail would be hell for both animators and designers for something that happens multiple times i na 20 minute show.
In the event of cartoons, usually the toy comes first. In the movie, the animation models come first. (Exception: Animated, which works by having ideas between cartoon design and toy design traded back and forth.) As a result, cartoon translates to toys better simply because in most cases the cartoon basically animates the toys.
Cartoons. They are more simplistic, which makes creating an accurate toy easier. The cartoons are made with toy designs in mind (since you know, they were originally just a big long toy commercial), whereas the movie people just want to make things look impressive for the big screen and let someone else worry about creating the toys (I would assume).
Cartoons. And anyone who says movie is lying. I mean seriously, I love the movie (I'm sure I'll love RotF too) and I love the designs in the movie, I like how complicated and realistic they are, but they just don't translate well into toys. Plus, when they add gimmicks like "Automorph" that hinder transformation it's not good (it worked fantastically with movie 1 Leader Prime though).
