I bought the Bruticus Maximus kit way back in the day along with all of the upgrade kits that came out. I never was too thrilled with the end product. I did some modifications to it giving him some much needed bigger (and better) hands, feet, cockpit window on Blast Off, completed turrent on Brawl, along with a lot of painting. While Vortex and Brawl no longer transform I still have the spares from the original set I can use if I want to. I'm not worried about it since I always keep my combiners in combined form. I still need to do some detailing on his gun and find a battery for the LED eyes but aside from that I hope you all enjoy!
I believe it's Vortex who was heavily modded. Blastoff is pretty much just Fansproject Explorer. I'm very curious about the Onslaught mods myself. Some parts look like they're from the Shadow Fisher kit but there's some stuff I can't identify.
The mods were done to Vortex and Brawl, Blast Off is still able to transform. The only thing I did for him was to add the cockpit window. I was never a fan of Blast Off being a "drone" and not needing a window, which from my understanding was the reasoning behind him lacking one. The chest and crotch plates on Onslaught are from Shadow Fisher and the arm connectors are from Fansproject. Perhaps the paint job is throwing you off, could you be more specific? I probably should have mentioned this sooner, this is for my CHUG collection. I don't have anything against any of the 3rd party bots but they would tower over my other combiners. Currently Bruticus is now my biggest one at 12 1/4in. I'm not certain how tall the Combiner Wars version is but I couldn't justify dropping money into it when I already had this one. The height difference isn't too noticeable though as long as I give Bruticus a wider stance.
Gotcha. Yes the paintwork really did throw me off on Onslaught. I checked some shadow fisher pics and can see the parts there just in a different color. I agree about your choice of Bruticus if you don't plan to separate him any time soon. CW Bruticus is about the same height as your version but is less articulate. I like CW myself but I like the option of taking him down and playing with him. Colossus is a bit more delicate with all the add on parts. But looks awesome especially with all these improvements you've done.
