As Al said, the key to me is that the printer made actual changes to what was being printed in between runs. (Wow, that sounds like some weak grammar there!). Personally, I hate all the hawkers on ebay touting their variations, which all seem to be anomalies in the printing of colors and not purposeful changes made while creating the card's layout. Ugh!!
And, of course, there is huuuuuuuuge gray area, too. Al mentioned some of them above, and there are many others, such as 1967 Spiezio with the effed up name and Schaal with the green bat. The 1966 'purple tree' Heffner is another one that comes to mind. I actually love all of those things, including the 1971 'blob' cards. Something about them intrigues me, although almost all of them would not be counted as true variations to me.
To remark on your main point, though, it is absolutely ridiculous that there is no legitimate and/or official reasoning when it comes to labeling cards as variations by the TPG's or industry publications. It's silly.
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