Yes I Know it's a "Gobot" but....

[DAMartin]

Well, the difference with Jetfire was that he was a toy so expensive that Hasbro needed to show him in fiction to make him marketable, so they altered his character model to make him appear without being sued.

The good thing is that is not a limitation to us the consumers. Even though my Jetfire is the Legends of Cybertron one, I still get to transform him into "Gerwalk" mode. In my toy continuity, that's his "flying battle mode" and is also his "lower part" mode to get combined with someone else.

[Sundance]

the reason why characters never released over here were used in stories was because Simon Furman frequently didn't know which toys were being released in the UK and simply used whoever was being released in the US. several times he continued to use characters not released because they were popular.

[Red Laser]

Not sure about that but Marvel UK had no way of knowing what was going to happen in the monthly US storyline until it came out so they may have used certain characters to try and tie in with the current US plot simply bu guessing what was going to occur next. I know they did the future timeline quite often just so they could get a weekly story plus the cartoon was never picked up on tv after the Movie.

[ODB]

the reason why characters never released over here were used in stories was because Simon Furman frequently didn't know which toys were being released in the UK and simply used whoever was being released in the US. several times he continued to use characters not released because they were popular.

That pretty much sums up the early Transformers releases. The line was taken by surprise of just how popular it had become so in order to cash in on the success Hasbro went round and brought the licenses for quite a few toys that might fit the line and then worried about how they would fit them into each of the different mediums and countries. Plus it seemed that quality control of overall continuity was lost in the quest to keep up with demand.

[Thundershot]

I know Marvel U.K. came under pressure to introduce things like the "special teams" in the stories long before the U.S. stuff could be re- published, I think though, that this may of played into Furmans hands well as some of his best stories..
Target 2006 et all used a lot of the newer toys & non-U.K released charactors to great effect, the Weckers & Ultra Magnus were very well used & written..after reading the U.K. comics, Magnus was a big let-down in the movie!

[Red Laser]

He was a let down in Target 2006 as well and only improved after the Sparkbots recovered him from Mount Verona.

[Thundershot]

The Magnus/Galvatron fight was an epic one in the comic, one that's never been matched...that scene when they are fighting inside a forest fire's still a vivid memory from my comic reading childhood, I'd love to see something like done that in the next live action movie.

[Sundance]

Not sure about that but Marvel UK had no way of knowing what was going to happen in the monthly US storyline until it came out so they may have used certain characters to try and tie in with the current US plot simply bu guessing what was going to occur next. I know they did the future timeline quite often just so they could get a weekly story plus the cartoon was never picked up on tv after the Movie.

Toys not released in the relevant market

Occasionally the Transformers fiction released in a particular country features characters whose toys were not released in that country. The Marvel UK comic featured two variants of this phenomenon:

Characters inherited from the US strips. Some, such as Shockwave and the Predacons, were given fairly prominent roles in the US stories reprinted in the UK comic and so it was hard to ignore them completely in the UK originated material despite their toys not being around to need advertising. However the decision to develop the Predacons (even before their US appearances were reprinted) and also to keep Shockwave in continuity even after he'd been (supposedly) killed off in the US comic goes beyond this.
Characters not featured in the US strips. Bizarrely the UK comic also made use of some characters such as Roadbuster, Whirl, Chop Shop and Venom, despite their toys not being available on UK toy shelves. None of these characters were inherited from the US material.
Writer Simon Furman has since stated that when writing the stories he was generally unaware of which toys were unavailable in the UK.[2]

2 Simon Furman: "We largely took our cue from what characters were being introduced into the US storyline. If there was a release schedule for the toys in the UK, we rarely saw it... But in the case of Swoop and the Predacons, I don't think I was consciously aware (at the time) that we were dealing with toys not generally available in the UK. They were just extant characters, and therefore fair game." TransFans.net - Interviews: Simon Furman - Part 1 'The Past'.

as for the Special Teams:

Strange developmentsShoehorning loads of new characters with new powers can compel the writers to do things with the plot that, in all probability, they otherwise wouldn't.

Marvel UK had to promote the Special Teams toys before they knew how they'd be appearing in the US reprints. To get around this, Simon Furman wrote a story arc titled Second Generation!, where Buster Witwicky, Optimus and Shockwave [s]watched an advert[/s] saw a Matrix-induced vision of the Special Teams

quotes from http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/To_sell_toys

[The Baron]

I had always thought that the Wreckers were created by Simon Furman (barring the UK-release characters). I assume that Impactor was never made as a toy?

It always makes me smile how MUK how to constantly work to make thier stories fit US continuity, yet by the end of the run were the ones creating the MUS comic.

[Thundershot]

M.U.K. really did produce the best T/F stories, it felt like in Furman's hands they got away from being a gloryfied toy commercial & became a proper story line.