Transformers: Titans Return Overlord

 

The Titans Return Leader class felt particularly empty, despite having several entries. The only other Leader from this line that the Coffin experienced is the rather pedestrian SixShot, although the Powermaster Prime was on the radar for quite some time, but was never found at what was considered to be an acceptable price. Oh well.

Overlord is the end of many things. He is the end of the Titans Return line for the Coffin. He is the last toy that came out of that large box of early November online purchases. There was an online buy yesterday morning that proved this wrong, but Overlord could have been a very last as well. But never mind those things, let’s talk about Overlord.

A retooling of line mate Sky Shadow, Overlord is of course from the “Super God Master Force” series, as well as the fantastic comic series “Last Stand of the Wreckers,” as well as being featured for a while in the “More Than Meets the Eye” comic, and was originally a double Powermaster, or Godmaster as his originating fiction would call him. As an inclusion in the Titans Return line, the Powermaster gimmick is gone, replaced by the Headmaster one, and like Six Shot before him, it is not necessary to remove Titanmaster Dreadnaut for transformation. Overlord retains the dual chest mounts for Powermasters, this time in the form of holes in the chest that will accommodate Titanmasters, which is kind of disturbing looking. Potentially, since Power of the Primes  is retaining the Titanmaster gimmick, sans faces but in their place, bizarre designs or sigils, Overlord would look better with twin mounted Primemasters or whatever they’re being called in the new line. Overlord sure looks like Overlord, which is to be expected by now from a line that is dedicated to providing accurate appearances. Even the torso mounted weapons are molded in, although they do not deploy or anything. With the original G1 Overlord, inserting the Powermasters made a right torso mounted dual blaster and a left mounted six pack of blasters pop out.

Both a Last Stand of the Wreckers reference, and my favorite Freddy Kruger effect, all in one picture.

Poseability is decent, Overlord having all the expected joints and such, including ankles thanks to transformation, but lacking a waist. The upper body can lean backwards, also thanks to transformation, and reveal what is apparently supposed to be a missile rack or something, but there is no swivel. It’s like a reverse ab crunch, and it cannot be found in any of the alt modes, so it is a strange inclusion to be sure. The blaster is kind of weak, as it is, when held in hand, a stumpy tank barrel, and not the kind of big, imposing blaster that a character like this would wield.

The paint on Overlord is very nice, everything is very sharp and bright. The white is real clean and bright, and the teal and lavender are actually teal and lavender: Titans Return Overlord looks like “Super God Master Force” Overlord, original colors and everything. Oftentimes it seems that lavender gets simplified to just purple, and the teal would have been muted to light blue, but no. It may seem like much ado about nothing, but the original color scheme was kept in place, and Overlord shines for it. In robot mode, this figure is full of character, and that may be its best quality. It looks like Overlord, and by that, I mean it LOOKS LIKE OVERLORD.

Overlord transforms into a tank, a jet, and a city, so let’s take alt modes one at a time here. For the vehicles, Overlord simply splits at the waist: the torso becomes the jet, and the legs the tank.

Tank mode is cute. Small and stumpy, could also be seen as compact and solid. The turret does not move, and even if it did, the tank barrel simply plugs in to a hole in front of the turret, so it would end the ability of the turret to move anyway. There is a cockpit for a Titanmaster to ride in. The turret is revealed by flipping plates in the calves around – this can be surmised from practically any picture of the figure – and while the parts line up nice and cleanly in robot mode, in tank mode there are very, very noticeable gaps that result from this step. The waist and thighs of the robot merely fold in to the gaps of the calves, and voila, tank. There isn’t much else to say about the tank mode, but the turret does have some nice molded details, along with a pair of metallic faction stickers. Again, nice, but there isn’t much to it.

The jet mode is intended to evoke the SR-71 Blackbird, or the COBRA Nightraven, which is also intended to ape said real world aircraft, and like the tank is kind of on the small side. It is essentially the robot torso with the arms held flat at the sides, and a piece flipped up behind the head. There are some gaps where the forearms do not meet the sides of the body, and they don’t attach at all, no pegs or tabs to hold the arms solid, so over time, looseness may creep in to the shoulders making for a floppy jet mode.

The base mode is not very impressive, at all. It is realized essentially by turning the robot mode legs around so that they face the read, and then sitting Overlord down. Ok, ok, it is intended to be connected to other Titans Return Leader class Decepticons, notably Trypticon, and it is not hard to imagine that, if one owned Overlord, Six Shot, Sky Shadow, and Trypticon, the resulting superbase combo would look pretty good. But the base mode is intended to accommodate Titanmaster figures, not, as the history of Citybots shows, smaller actual Transformers, in this case Scout or Legend class sizes. This has apparently been a constant with the Leader toys in this line, as they all have a base mode, but the play pattern is clearly meant to incorporate the Titanmaster size. That’s totally fine, the base mode isn’t getting slammed for incorporating a different size class, but rather for it’s being kind of lame on its own. Applying some imagination allows the base mode to be a kind of launch platform for missiles, as the Overlord arms could be projectiles on their own, and the blaster mounted in the center gives the whole thing a G.I. Joe battle station kind of feel.

So Overlord has a lot of things going on, and he does them all pretty well. But the figure feels really simple. There was a time where the Leader class of Transformers were the most impressive and generally most complex of them all. That time seems to have passed, as the few Titans Return Leader experiences had have provided figures that were good, but not very amazing. 

Many years ago, I owned a G1 Overlord, found on eBay as the figure alone. Over some time, I’d hunted down the blaster and the cool shin pads and a few other pieces, but never got the figure complete. Overlord was sold off at one point, and that was always something I’d regretted, as since he was never available in the US at retail, owning one was quite a bragging right. But aside from being able to say I owned one, G1 Overlord never was that much of a toy. One of those figures that, back in the 1980’s or early 1990’s, was something really amazing, but in truth was pretty simply and brickish. Titans Return Overlord provides a marvelous opportunity to get an Overlord in a collection without having to spend tons of money on a vintage one, or on one of the third party options. Seeing as the character has been in lots of media over the last eight to ten years, as well as being one of those Japan-only characters/toys that gained a cult following in the collector corner of the fandom, that is terrific.

It feels strange to say this, like this review has simply given up, but whatever your desire to add an Overlord to your collection is, Titans Return Overlord is “good enough”. That is not supposed to, nor intended to, come across as apathetic or detached: this is an Overlord figure that will satisfy the needs and wants of many collections and collectors. The alt modes are all capable, although not real exciting, but the figure is likeable and effective. It’s hard to find real faults in a figure that is so competent, but it is similarly difficult to find things to truly praise. So, kind of like Six Shot, again. Titans Return Overlord is good at everything he does, but doesn’t blow you away with anything either. I’m glad to have him, as he does fill that Overlord hole in my collection, and helps to put those memories of my time as the owner of a G1 Overlord to rest. There are days when that kind of soothing quality of certain figures is their most valuable quality.