I just can't get over the similarity in the premises of the two series, given there was no chance of them influencing each other. It really does just feel like a TF AU. Makes you wonder how much of the core mythos of Transformers - the steps taken from robots that turn into cars to living, alien machines from a machine planet come to Earth to disguise themselves as vehicles - were simply the natural product of 1980s genre expectations.
Then there's Revenge of Cronos, which feels like what Transformers might have looked like if the cartoon was itself conceived in a wacky, parallel Earth.