It wasn't mentioned in canon anywhere. AND I HATE THEM FOR IT.

 

Okay I don't, but the last Autobot was lame all around.

Don't blame Furman for the Metallikato thing - that's actually stated in Bludgeon's tech specs. As for the whole Last Autobot thing... don't forget that he was just trying to very quickly tie up story ends so he needed a convenient plot device. ;)

 

They did the same to him again with G2, hence the name "Jhiaxus" ("Gee, axe us!") although I'd say that Furman handled the wrap-up of G2 better with G1, so it shows that he did learn from his mistakes. And hey, it was a HELL of a lot better than the way that the G1 cartoon wrapped itself up... (-_-) He, Forward and DiTillio did a fair job with Beast Wars. You need to understand that's difficult to tie up a lot of loose story ends when Hasbro comes along and says, "by the way, we want this series finished by..." (insert time frame) after you've spent months (or years in Furman's case) seeding the story with sub-devices which you intend to spawn off various future story lines.

I never said that the Autobot logo was derived from Hot Rod, Rodimus Prime et al., but merely that these characters do illustrate that the spaces are the eyes. I hadn't thought of the logo being based off Prowl/Bluestreak before, but now that you mention it I can see the similarity - and they too also demonstrate that the spaces in the logo are the eyes, and not those narrow slits.

 

Anyway, I quickly threw this together for a quick comparison:

 

Obviously the centre image is the Autobot insignia. Clockwise from top left: The Last Autobot, Rodimus Prime, Primus, Hot Rod, Bluestreak, Energon Rodimus and Prowl.

Now do a Decepticon version!!

It'd just be the Decepticon logo and Soundwave wouldn't it? Can't think of anyone else who'd resemble that logo... maybe The Fallen..