For Decepticons it's the original Soundwave. I love the voice, the mono lense eye, the cassette minions he spawns, and the fact he turns into a boombox instead of a military vehicle is baller.

For Autobots I'm going to cheat and pick Dinobot the Maximal from the old Beast Wars cartoon. I liked the redemption arc, his noble warrior personality, his weird spinning tail weapon, and the fact his raptor form is "generic dinosaur" in my head.

This really depends on which version we're talking about. Transformers as a franchise is rather inconsistent... This is my love hate franchise, I'm either all in or I absolutely hate it.

I think across most iterations I'm going to say Optimus Prime, Jetfire, and Megatron are characters I usually like.

But one of my favorite characters is Starscream from Transformers Prime, he is absolutely hilarious if you haven't seen the show. Loved it. Typically Starscream is one of my least liked characters everywhere else.

The comics have a lot of variety in their art, I like Don Figueroa's Jetfire a lot ( https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c7/48/46/c7484659f119f6f9a27bfbb6e2332291.jpg ) and the majority of Alex Milne and Nick Roche's designs.

I loved soundwave as a kid, mostly because of his voice in the original cartoon.

As for toys that I had, the Devestator set was fun.

My fave autobot toy was metroplex.

War dog. Something about a grizzled adrenaline junkie is cool, with the firepower to lay down some hate.

Shockwave. Something about a highly intelligent scientist and senior combatant is super cool.

It is a coincidence they are both tanks

Character - Optimus Prime & Megatron

Toys - Fortress Maximus , I always wanted that toy. I just thought it would be cool to make multiple robots into one.

And

Shockwave , I just like the design of the robot and the gun mode

For both toys I’m talking about the original version. Not remakes or re releases

I'm a huge Transformers nerd, grew up with the G1 cartoons and comics, have read all the IDW series comics, own several action figures, etc etc (but hate the Bayverse movies), so this is hard to pick just 2, because I like so many of the characters for different reasons, but:

Autobots - Ratchet. The older I get, the more I identify with him.

Decepticons - Ravage. He was my favorite when I was a kid because he was a Transformer AND a cat, which was just the coolest thing ever to me. I still have a G1 Ravage figure that turns into a cassette tape.

Soundwave was definitely my favorite. I loved the cassette tape concept. I didn’t have a favorite autobot unfortunately.

I'm super-out of date, so talking about the originals here.

For the Decepticons, I have to go with Devastator / the Constructicons. Something about "We build for EviL" is just so cartoon villian-y that I've always loved them. Plus, neon green & purple.

For the Autobots - my first transformers ever were Gears and Cliffjumper - two relative no-name minis, but they have a special place in my heart.

Autobots - Cosmos

Decepticons - Shockwave

Devastator and jetfire

Clear winners