On "G1"
I remember a few weeks ago when the SS86 Starscream hit retail here (not s Target exclusive, but maybe like 10 pieces showed up nationwide, so hardly any less exclusive or more widely available). Way too many people made having it, or not having it, their whole personality.
Well, and some made bitching about scalpers their whole personality, because nothing wins attention like a moralizing crusade that doesn't actually DO anything but is very loudly passionate about it. The latter was firmly represented by some guy shaming a scalper who DARED to call SS86 MTMTE Collection Starscream (from the 40th anniversary of 1986’s The Transformers The Movie) "G1 Starscream" in a sales post, using this alleged misnomer as irrefutable proof that this mere scalper was no True Fan and simply cashing in on the rare figure. Doubling down on it, he used the airtight logic of "that's like saying all Asians are Chinese", insisting that only the 1984 mold and maybe its reissues are "G1 Starscream". Classics? No. Earthrise? No.SS86? No.
I mean yeesh, the actual offensive behavior is scalping, call the person out on THAT, and do so from the ground, not some high horse that assumed True Fans would never scalp (they do).
Setting aside how, if one WANTED to be as pedantic about it as all that, not even the 1984 toy is "Generation 1" because there WASN'T a Generation 1 until Generation 2 came about and fandom retroactively applied the name to everything prior... Quibbling over an ultimately baseless point like "this obviously G1 THEMED thing is not G1 how dare you" is refusing to see the forest for the trees.
At this point in brand history, G1 is as much of an aesthetic and throughline as Live Action Movie, or Animated, or Rid2001, or Prime. For all its taking influences from all eras, Evergreen is firmly rooted in G1 and not much else (that Arcee sure is not a spider or a motorcycle). G1 is so the default spine of the brand that it's not unreasonable to assume that for a new take, it fills in the blanks until that new take explicitly diverges from it. It's thus likewise not unreasonable that people may mean "G1 THEMED" when saying "G1", and I suspect that's more common than the opposite at this point.
I don't know how likely it is for Hasbro to be making new material SET in the world of the G1 cartoon anyway; even this short was kind of a surprise, and one that I'd argue is more of a timing thing than anything (we have a project in mind, here's a big event we can use as a springboard/how can we keep the momentum from this promotion going?). But no, retiring any G1 (really any Evergreen) over this is not brand smart, and I would never expect them to do it. It's certainly a choice they could make, as "The Simpsons" did for Mrs. Krabappel, but to not choose it is as reasonable (maybe even more so, in a franchise that has spent over two decades with new reboots and new taked, usually with fresh casts) as to choose it.
On Dan Gilvezan's call
That said, it makes sense that this short would have been a teaser for an upcoming new project that is more of an offshoot of G1 than being actual G1 -- it certainly makes more sense as that than a proper closure coda for the Movie. Which may be why Hasbro was not being particularly fastidious about matching the Movie cast. Maybe Cullen and Welker would justify the budget, but otherwise they'd go with whatever prevailing logic they've followed for getting all the people they have for the last 15 years or so for their "smaller" projects.
In any case, it's hard to guess how far along that had or has gotten, because if that were in the pipeline AND Peter Cullen had done work for it, they might not have leaned so hard on promoting this as his last TF work. Maybe it's the last COMPLETED, I don't know. (I'm intrigued by the possibility of a Dr. Parnassus situation where Gary Chalk, Alan Tudyk, and wow there haven't been many new takes that I've liked, could swap in for the voice for some segments. I'd prefer this to his estate authorizing an AI copy, although that is of course their decision and their right.)
But there would likely only be one Bumblebee VA, and so Dan angling to get hired would displace someone else who might be expecting to continue in the role started here, or someone else who might have gotten it otherwise. To be fair, okay, that's the nature of the job. But stooping to this roundabout "oh, won't someone rid me of this troublesome rival VA" way of siccing a fandom against a competitor isn't (or is it now?), and it strikes me as being just tacky as all hell, certainly in 2026.
It's gross when Swifties and Snyderbros do it, and it comes with a little extra soupcon of cringe to see Dan think he's got their level of pull. Maybe he does, though? But I don't know. For all the talk of "you'd be outraged if", it's hilarious to me that there by and large WASN'T any "outrage" from the broader audience -- this is just my anecdotal not-encountering-any, to be fair -- over Dan not being Bumblebee. I've genuinely not seen any "it should've been him"; at most a bit of confused acknowledgement. To the point where his whole push here had to bring it up that it wasn't him and frame that as a big enough issue to rise up about.
Anyway, I can't stand it when neckbeard armies do this of their own accord for sheer love of the game, so seeing a focus of fandom actively (whatever plausible deniability lawyering about Exact Words notwithstanding) calling for it is... so disappointing. Again, I understand being protective and aggressive for a job opportunity, especially today (doing groceries and gassing up the car is always such an unpleasant reminder of reality), and the industry HAS always been this dog-eat-dog situation, but that's still a yikes.
[I didn't know the new VA was right wing, or at least has been in a right wing production. I'd wouldn't shed any tears over them not getting this role for that reason (there are apparently other such productions, so they won't starve), but let it be over that, not because someone from the 80s refused to give up a seat they haven't really sat in for some time anyway. ]