Hate to say it Bob, but when you were talking about all the people who don't really care if they get the characters right or if the movies are particularly good, I was thinking "Yep, that's me!"
See, I was never much of a Transformers fan as a kid, so I have little to no investment in the franchise. Now I'm not saying I [i/]wanted[/i] them to throw out the story, characters and any semblance of quality, I'm saying that even though they did, I still saw all three movies and bought the first because I enjoyed them. Well, Ok, not the second, but I still saw it.
My point is, there are many people out there just like me who would have enjoyed it quite a bit if the movies were spot on, but didn't particularly care when they weren't and I think the studios tend to interpret us as part of the moron/very small child audience you mentioned.