Rodimus Prime vs. Rodimus Prime?

I saw a recent post on a forum on seibertron.com that made me think of this. It is amazing how much the Generation One Rodimus Prime gets a bad wrap because of his incarnation in season three of the original series. The fact he replaced Optimus Prime didn't help much either.

In the movie, Optimus Prime was killed off after a heroic final battle against Megatron. Eventually, the young Autobot known as Hot Rod would reclaim the stolen Matrix from Galvatron, unleash its power to destroy Unicron, and he would become the new Autobot commander Rodimus Prime. In the movie, he was portrayed as a strong and courageous new leader. There were still traces of him in the third season, but fans tend to remember more of the character's weaknesses. Rodimus Prime was insecure in his leadership and even walked out on the Autobots at one point. He was also more impulsive as he leaped into action first and thought about the consequences later.

However, I feel the style through which the character was written was a great move on the part of Flint Dille as this part of Rodimus needed to be seen in order to flesh the character out. I feel that the struggles seen during the third season only helped to make Rodimus Prime more real in that he had to learn how hold the mantle of leadership. Optimus Prime was once a young robot too formerly known as Orion Pax. On screen, we saw his youthful innocence once after he was betrayed by Megatron, and he was fatally wounded and rebuilt into Optimus Prime by Alpha Trion. That mistake was all fans saw. We never got to see the other mistakes he made or the path he took to become a strong leader. Rodimus Prime only held the Matrix for a little over a year before Optimus Prime returned. It would realistically be ridiculous to think that a young character would mature to the level of Optimus so quickly. I think the writing style added a lot to the character, and had he remained the leader a while longer we may have seen more of the hero of Unicron War.