Dead said:
Transformers isnt a concept that grew up along with its fanbase.
Its a concept that its fanbase outgrew while it continued to cater to kids of the same age. Thats just how it is.
Not entirely true. The mainline brand always has catered to kids and always will, but there have always been pockets of the brand that have gone beyond that. After the Marvel comic stopped selling particularly well and Simon Furman took over, the storytelling stepped up to at least the level of every other Marvel comic on the shelves at the time. A similar thing happened with the Beast Wars show, in that Hasbro's lack of supervision over what at the time was a dying brand let the writers go nuts and do something beyond the usual toy cartoon, and it essentially revived the brand. The Dreamwave relaunch in 2000 was an attempt to wrangle the adult fans, which didn't work all that well, and the IDW relaunch after that was even moreso, and has succeeded.
Hasbro has stated without exception that the Classics/Universe toy subline is targeted at nostalgic adult collectors as much if not more than they are at kids (which is kind of bullshit anyway, because a kid will ask for the cool jet that turns into a robot and not care if it looks just like Starscream did 25 years ago). Also consider the large number of small production run exclusives based on obscure G1 stuff that pop up at conventions and the like.
The Japanese market is very heavily targeted at adults, with things like Binaltech (released here as Alternators, very much not toys for young children) and the Masterpiece line ($100 Transformers are not aimed at kids). This is doubly ironic considering the Japanese TV shows and comic stories are probably the youngest-skewing ones in the world, and sometimes read more like Sailor Moon spinoffs than a Transformers story.
Anyway, the point is that Hasbro knows the brand appeals to adults and kids, and they do a pretty good job of catering to both audiences with targeted sublines and simply by making things that appeal to both ends of the spectrum (see: TF Animated). However, your point is salient in the sense that the movies are so huge and seen by so many more people (potential customers) than any other element of Transformers that they must be broadly appealing by necessity.
If someone wants serious sci-fi Transformers stories, read the IDW comics. Dreamworks is never going to make a movie like that because that wouldn't make a billion dollars worldwide, and they're right to do that. Even if you hate the movies, if you love Transformers you should at least take solace in the fact that the extreme success of these films has basically guaranteed Transformers as a brand for decades, possibly forever.
