Prime Wheeljack had a great figure, which im sure helped his popularity a bit
True, but its repaint Dead End had better colors AND a cooler face.
I don’t know how popular Wheeljack was - he’s the badass loner archetype, you’re typical Wolverine, so I imagine he was pretty well liked by the rest of the fandom, but the only things I remember the fandom talking about back when Prime was airing were 1. the possibility of Starscream becoming an Autobot and 2. how the toy aisles were clogged with too many fucking Bumblebee toys, which was a huge problem for collectors since whole goddamn waves were kept off the shelves because of the swarms of fucking Bumblebees.
I also doubt a little kid watching Transformers Prime would recognize that Wheeljack’s “Badass Loner Who Don’t Play By the Rules” tactics are actually literally war crimes. I think they’d just see him as a cool warrior who fights the bad guys real good and has clever ideas on how to beat them. Which is one of the reasons I really hate him as a character - he teaches bad lessons to children.
