#don't even get me started on biolights rid15 gave me so many bad habits (affectionate) about biolights

[transingthoseformers]

My take is that the SG and normalverse bots were actually born the same color, and got different paintjobs because they have different tastes. It's like wearing clothes. Maybe the same about the optics in continuities with more diverse optic/biolight colors or where they can be changed? Or maybe the SGs just were born with different optic/light colors to distinguish them?

Neither's canon colors are necessarily their birth colors, though that can be the case sometimes (ex. Shockwave would have been born purple because he'd think painting himself would be illogical/wasteful/pointless, and Megatron was propably born grey because he's a mass-produced cold-construct and Terminus was also grey).

Oh now that's cool as hell!

We exactly see mecha changing their paintjobs in several continuities, so it makes sense. Plus, I mean same goes for optics (think tfp Megatronus > Megatron, tfa wasp in the flashbacks and in present day, have I mentioned before that sometimes the rid15 mecha's optics change color with their scanned camo paintjobs?) so we can always roll with that

Birth colors is a whole ass scenario because there's just. So much room for fun there.