That’s me. I’m being phased out of the hobby myself by a combination of not really giving a damn about half of the characters they choose to make and me deciding that I’m not buying X character again with less greeble/slightly better scale/a new hat.
I get that. And while I wouldn't say that I am being phased out necessarily, I have become much more selective over the last few years. Mostly, I don't mind buying the combiners again, as CW/UW was fun, but some of the designs and combined forms were not ideal, IMO. The only one I have regretted so far was SS86 Devastator, whose team members will remain in individual mode. UW just wears it better on my shelf.
Thundercracker and the upcoming Astrotrain are, I believe, good examples of "...X character again with less greeble". I don't consider Astrotrain to be appreciably better than the existing - and crucially -
far too recent one, and the same kind of goes for Thundercracker. I hit Seeker fatigue a long, long time ago, and have more than enough representations of the characters that I care about.
Maybe this is something for another thread, but I wonder how many of us that have been collecting for decades still regularly make "replacement" purchases? In other words, how much better/different does something have to be to warrant getting swapped out of your collection/display, and what compromises are you willing to accept?