Ken Kessler, who has had a very long career as a subjective and high end reviewer praised the SL 1200 -granted, not when the table came out (he may not have even started reviewing then), but later in its production run. It is possible (maybe even common) to overstate the denigration poured on the SL 1200, just as it is possible to overstate the influence of the subjective press - clearly nothing TAS did was sufficient to cut into sales of the table.
There are bad sounding direct drives, both because of bad engineering/cost cutting, and lack of environmental isolation (surprisingly few DDs have suspended subchasises (though some of those that do are close relatives of the 1200)). Apparently it served some purpose for some reviewers to condemn all DDs, just as it served some reviewer's purposes to proclaim their superiority as a class. And don't forget that at the time the first 1200 came out, the high end was going toward very high compliance cartridges (whether or not that was a good idea is not relevant) and the arm of the 1200 wasn't well suited for first generation ADC XLMs, Sonuses, AKGs, and of course, the Shures and Pickering/Stantons and so on. If such cartridges were your standard, the 1200 might not seem so great. Of course, almost immediately, moving coils replaced high compliance moving magnets, but by then, the 1200 was not a new table, so it wasn't an obvious review topic.
It's naive to think that big, technically capable companies like Panasonic/Technics can't build absolutely first rate equipment if they choose to do so. But its not naive not to believe everything that corporations tell us. My own experience is that there are plenty of tables that sound better than the 1200 (I've had a couple of 1200s, liked them, but not enough to keep them), but the economies of scale of a company like Panasonic/Technics make it very, very difficult for other makers to produce better sounding tables at an equivalent price - I'm thinking here of the 1200 at its perfectly (actually astonishingly) reasonable original price, not the current used and reissue prices.
The high end audio press probably did blow it with the 1200, but being suspicious of manufacturer's claims is a good thing, regardless. How many of us are still using our Dynagroove, CD4/SQ, SACD, ElCassette, DAT, minidisc, Dolby 1,2,3,4,5, or wherever they are now, or whatever? And how many Marantz 7T owners wouldn't be very very happy indeed to swap it for a 7, or Fisher 400T for a 400?