[AkibaSilver]

It's the eternal curse of a long-running pop culture franchise - while the fans might care about their own little corners (say, Ninja Storm, or Transformers Armada or whatever), the general perception is entirely governed by the public, who will forever know it as whatever got it popular in the first place. And, in many cases, that just happens to be the first thing the brand did, when it was new and exciting and inescapable. The careful balancing act that many brands seem to be in these days is building off of their more popular aspects whilst simultaneoulsy trying to move onwards and do something new. How successful it's done depends entirely on your own personal opinions, of course.