Hasbro bought up Tonka back in the 1990s and today, Tonka is one of Hasbro's subdivisions. Look behind the box of any Tonka toy and it would say "© Tonka, a division of Hasbro, Inc."
Because of this, Hasbro now owns the Gobots name, the franchise and most of the trademarked names (such as Leader-1's name ended up as the name of Megatron's Minicon partner). However, Hasbro cannot reissue the 1980s Tonka Gobot toys because they are owned by Bandai, Takara's toy rival.
With Hasbro owning the Gobots, they get to gloat about it.
An Autobot in the Generation 2 line has the name "Gobots":
http://www.tfu.info/1993/Autobot/Gobots/gobots.htm
The name "Gobots" in Generation 2 were also a subline of minicars, which later became the Spychangers in RID:
http://www.geocities.com/futuristgroup/vsp...pychangers.html
http://www.tfu.info/1995/Autobot/Blowout/blowout.htm
http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/tf/toylis....html#A-Go-Bots
Lastly, Hasbro created the preschool "Transformers: Gobots" toyline, replacing the preschool 1-2-3-Transfomers and Playskool Transformers lines:
http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/tf/toylis...03.html#Go-Bots
http://www.tfu.info/2003/Gobots/Aerobot/aerobot.htm
The fact that Hasbro owns Tonka (and the Gobots) are common knowledge in Transformers fandom/message boards.
Wow, how do they expect fans to follow such a convoluted and butchered story? Thanks for the info. I think TF lost me with "Starscream's Ghost" after that it I couldn't make sense of anything!