WTF are these useless bits of plastic that came with Superion? Do they serve some greater purpose I'm unaware of?
They were part of the Energon / Superlink toys and related to the TV show. Almost every figure came with them. All repaints have them as well.
In Energon they gave the Transformers an extra boost of power. And the combiner teams were the most pure... or rare... or something.
Those "Energon Chips" you speak of with ROTF Superion is supposed to be "pure Ultra-Energon stars" or something for the good guys, thus why it's blue (normaly, Autobot Energon Stars are red). They were kinda like mini-cons from Armada in that they could provide a temporary energy boost or provide an Energon weapon of some sort, but they didn't last forever and you needed those annoying Ommnicons/Terrorcons to refine raw Energon into Energon stars. They serve no real purpose for Movie Superion except cover the spark crystals.
o Ya I remember when tehy used to show them shooting up the starts like steroids. I think it is a horrible gimmick, but the little piece does look really neat, if you want to pretend its the super special Matrix of so and so, it would work great.
Oh yeah, the reason the stars are translucent (other than the fact they're set in the same mold channels as the light piping for the figures) is that they're supposed to "magnify" the faction symbol in the crystal. Needless to say it doesn't work, even when Energon was dominating the toy asiles Shane's Megabolt + Pure Energon stars? Oh man, I shutter at the outcome of that!
Nope, only Omnicons did. That was the draw to them. Every figure had a spot, but only Omni's had them, so stock pile the ugly fuckers to deck out your robots.
Omnis AND the combiner limbs , heck there were enough onmis littering the shelves around here that it might as well have been every figure.
Ah yes, a move to get people unintentionaly buying in the "Army-building" mindset (the idea of buying multiples of the same figure to build armies). Come to think of it, I do need a special colored Energon star for my Energon Nemesis Prime project as I don't have a clue as to how to remove or replace the Autobot symbol (my Energon Nemmy is a 'con after all in the Service of Unicron), so I might as well cover it up with a proper Energon Star. Now I go over to the Radicons section, where I think some guy named Darkov makes custom-colored Energon Stars and other hard to find parts like G1 Sixshot's guns.
