>>148986005>i feel like g1 especially, the designs feel like, maybe they just shuffled all the toys in a group, separated the group in half, and just arbitrarily said "these are the good guys, these are the bad guys"Specifically, from what I remember from an old interview I still have somewhere, they divided the initial batch them based on familiarity. Paraphrasing as close to the exact wording as I can. "Stuff kids saw regularly like cars and trucks? Good guys. Military vehicles and stuff kids didn't usually see? Bad guys. This guy is a gun? Guns are very bad, he's the head bad guy." and then from there since they'd made one bad guy a gun, they might as well put the other size changing ones in with them.
Later they adjusted according to the needs and wants of the toyline, so the autobots got a jet team 'cause jets are cool and the decepticons got a car team 'cause parallels, etc, but that was at least as I understand it how the first batch was determined and split up.