The Energon Pub

Years and years ago, when CW was nothing more than a pipe dream, I bought a Takara Bruticus Maximus on eBay and the FP upgrade kit (though I suspect that kit may have been a bootleg because it was really, really bad). I've since relegated the upgrade to the "breaker's yard" that is my model parts bin, but even without the upgrades I still rather like the actual figures. As a G1 Bruticus it's awful, yes, but as a set of crowd-fillers with an "original" combiner mode it's pretty cool IMO.

So the question is, what about the other two teams? I had Steamhammer and two of the Aerialbots as a kid, and I rather liked them, so I'm considering acquiring them (especially as they go for pennies on the aftermarket).

Constructicon Maximus- or "Decimator" as I'm calling him- doesn't have any upgrades outside of one rather expensive Shapeways kit, but quite frankly I like his derpy-yet-badass default gestalt form, and with minimal fanmoding he can have a decent elbow joint from the crane mold. Steamhammer was always one of my favourites as a kid too; he was a really cool standalone toy in addition to a pretty nice looking torso. So he's a definite buy.

Superion Maximus is slightly different. Whilst he's a bit weaker in his "vanilla" combined form without heavy fanmoding, he does have another FP upgrade kit which doesn't try and turn him into G1 Superion, rather just makes his combined mode look much, much better, and from what I've seen looks much better than the Bruticus upgrade kit. I can get a set of the Aerialbots from eBay for about £35 and a genuine set of FP upgrades from Mandarake for 4000 yen, which (without shipping) comes to a fairly sensible £60; not bad for a combiner, even a small one. I am aware that Storm Jet needs minimal surgery to fix his legs, but what about the FP upgrades? Anyone have any experience with them? They don't seem to fall into the Bruticus trap of loading him down with masses of extra parts held on by wishful thinking, and the only major loadbearing joints "added" by the kit are the ankles, which look fairly solid.

Lastly, if like me you do still feel residual affection for them, where do they fit in your display/collection? I'm currently writing up a set of personalities for the sadly bio-bereft figures (and renaming a few of them) so they can "fit in" with the ludicrous headcanon that makes up my collection; they'd make very good "cannon fodder" characters but they still deserve personalities IMO. My ideas are currently:

Steamhammer: Pretty close to his OG bio, a reasonably chummy 'con who's smarter than you'd think, and more suited to technical work than brute force destruction (or at least he would be if he didn't have a bucket for a hand).
Buckethead (Bonecrusher): A health-and-safety conscious fembot who never does anything unless the relevant risk assessments have been carried out and forms filled in. Embarrassed by sharing a mold with Sledge.
Sledge: A bit of a butterservos who tries his best to be helpful but usually ends up accidentally wrecking things.
Winch (Heavy Load): A perfectionist who builds absolutely superb structures...very, very slowly. If a single rivet is off centre he'll probably start the whole thing all over again.
Burden (Duststorm): Obsessed with punctuality and getting things done on time, tries to get his jobs done as quickly as possible and either does them wrong or else screws up and actually creates even more work.

Ballista (Barricade): A fembot who envisions herself as a tactical genius, unfortunately she's horrendous at multi-tasking and micromanagement, so her battle plans rarely go well. However, when combined into Obliterus, the extra processing power of her limbs' brains compensates for this and makes her into a genuinely good general.
Warnado (the purple helicopter): A psy-ops wingnut who is constantly dreaming up new ways to terrify the enemy into submission...most of which fail miserably. He thinks he's a cold-hearted evil genius, but his comrades just think he's a dork.
Burnup (the orange helicopter): Has a crippling phobia of organic life, is armed mostly with incendiary and defoliant weapons as a result. This can either be very useful or really annoying depending on the circumstances.
Sharpshot (the yellow/olive tank): A commando/stealth expert and a superb marksman, Sharpshot would be a model soldier if he weren't also constantly pestering his team-mates with useless "intel updates" over the slightest thing. Gets really tired of Burnup's chemical weapons and firebombs destroying his cover.
Blockade (the green tank): An endlessly stubborn, uncompromising madbot who will never surrender under any circumstances, even when it actually makes sense. Fortunately he's borderline indestructible so it's all good.

Storm Jet: Unlike Silverbolt, who's terrified of heights, Storm Jet is terrified of speed. He loves to fly, but he doesn't like going too fast. If he were a cargo freighter or a biplane this would be OK, but as a high-speed interceptor jet with a very high stall speed, he often falls out the sky from going too slowly to generate lift.
Windrazor: A young hotblooded fembot who wouldn't understand "covert ops" if it painted itself purple, danced naked in the street and sang "covert ops are here again". Loves fancy flying, prone to running out of fuel from excessive use of her afterburners.
Zephyr (Treadshot): Windrazor's twin sister and her polar opposite. Shy and bookish, doesn't like flying in the daytime where people could see her and make fun of her flight skills.
Terradive: Armed to the teeth, Terradive would be the perfect ground attack fighter if she didn't insist on doing dive attacks that she constantly misjudges, usually ending in her plowing into the ground. Fortunately, she's tough as old boots.
Thunderbird (Sky Shadow): Terradive's twin sister, she wanted to be a high-speed interceptor like her crush Storm Jet, but was stuck in a slow ground attack airframe instead, which she's still salty about. Often crashes from trying to do maneuvers she's not designed for.

I really love those energon combiners. I do have every unique mold made for them, though I am missing technically 3 limbs to complete all 3 combiners.

The Aerialbots were the weakest in my opinion. Silverbolt was really messy in torso mode unfortunately.
The Constructicons were o.k.
The Combaticons are the best of the 3. With barricade being the most fun of the 3 torso modes.

Also, never, ever google for the Funpub Exclusive repaint Nexus Maximus by name. You have been warned.