One of the first things I did once I got a decent job was start buying G1 TFs on ebay. It was a nice nostalgia rush (from like 10 years prior lol) to get the toys I never had. Not long after, TRU had commemorative reissues for much much cheaper. And not long after that, Alternators/Binaltech came out and blew my mind. Then while searching for Alts, I saw the US release of Masterpiece Optimus Prime and lost my shit. MP really picked up steam with Optimus v2 in 2011, and standardized robot mode scale to go with it. These were the best (official) Transformers toys produced IMO, until the line mostly jumped the shark and simultaneously made things less detailed (because toon "accuracy") and more complicated (lots of false parts to get toon proportions in bot mode) around 2016-2017.

By that time I had sold off all of my G1 stuff. It will always have a special place in my heart, but that golden age of Masterpiece will be hard to beat.