Overheat is the MakeToys take on Afterburner, and is, along
with Celeritas, the most radical departure from the original G1 Technobots in
terms of appearance. Afterburner turns into a futuristic motorcycle, while
Overheat transforms into a light bike from Tron.
But the alt mode isn’t the only grand departure from the original: the robot
mode is also very different looking.
Because the alt mode has such a rounded profile, Overheats’
robot mode possesses a number of rounder surfaces as well. The legs are
composed of some vehicle shell parts, and so they have something of an egg
shape with feet attached at the bottoms. The shoulders are where the vehicle
wheels attach to the robot body, and do so in a really excellent, visually
interesting way: the wheels split in half and then fold backwards over the
shoulders, placing these large disc shaped parts behind the shoulder proper.
The head is also really stylized, a elongated, smooth and curved top piece that
reminds of Guile from Street Fighter and
his excellent and totally military regulation haircut. The hands are also
inside curved plastic, and this is the only place where the rounded nature of
surfaces winds up being less than great. The hands don’t necessarily look all
the cool, instead being big, Maxx Steel type
hands, and they sometimes don’t hold the blaster accessory well. More on that
issue later, but it’s not a big deal, considering the blaster is a weak
accessory and the other, far better weapon mode has no difficulty being held.
The robot mode has all the joints and posing capabilities
that you’d expect, with a few, like the wrist swivels, being functions of
conversion steps. Overheat looks terrific, the colors all working and the mold
wearing them really well and the design just being terrific. The Quantron team
is a set of figures where each one makes you exclaim that it is the best of the
five, but Overheat really makes a serious case for that title. The feet are
blocked by the lower legs a bit, so some poses aren’t attainable, like anything
that would necessitate deep knee bends and toe pointing. Basically, if the foot
can’t be flat on a surface, Overheat has a little trouble doing it. But there
seem to be very few positions this figure can be put in where it doesn’t look
awesome.
The previously mentioned blaster is pretty lame, certainly
the weakest individual accessory of the group, save for Sonic Drill, who just
doesn’t have any. It’s a long barrel piece with a curved orange plastic panel
on the top, but in its defense, it probably wasn’t initially designed to be a
blaster. It can function as such, and in vehicle mode it does that and serves
to cover a pretty glaring gap, but it functions best when the large, orange,
rectangular parts are connected to it, forming a hammer. A big hammer. Those
other two rectangular blocks attach to the vehicle mode and the over the
shoulder wheels in robot mode to appear as missile pods, but they are not solid
blocks: they are open on one of the long surfaces, which causes some display
dilemmas. They look best attached to the robot with the open surface up, facing
the ceiling, which then means you need to try and look at the figure only head
on or up from the floor, not from the top down. Flipping the parts over means
the open surfaces will not be visible, but then they sit too low on the
shoulders and don’t look as clean and strong as they do when they are slightly
higher up. Whatever way you look at it, Overheat is pretty well armed, and in a
way that makes him versatile for a number of situations.
There has been much ink spilled over the years about Third
Party products somehow escaping litigation by Hasbro for IP infringement, but
if anyone were going to go after MakeToys for that, it should be Disney for
Overheat 100% stealing the light bike design from Tron. There’s not a whole lot to say in terms of what the figure
changes in to, as it is literally a light
bike from Tron. The transformation is really satisfying, but does hold one
step that is really worth pointing out so as to avoid heartaches and breakage.
The feet are attached to one end of a plastic plank that
needs to be lifted upwards, out of a channel in the lower leg, and rotated. The
issue is that the plastic is long and thin, and there is not really a great
place to grab it in order to move it. You basically have to pull upward on one
of the ends until you get some separation and then try to get a fingernail beneath
it so you can drag the plank to a different position. The best way to
manipulate the part is to hold it as best you can at both ends, and then turn
the entire piece around. Apparently, people have broken their Overheats by
being, frankly, unnecessarily rough with this part, something that is really
tragic, mostly because it doesn’t require any excessive force to move. It’s
just a matter of being careful, you know, like you should be when converting
any transforming robot toy? It’s pretty simple.
Anyway, a great transformation that, except for that one
element, is pretty logical and easy, and results in a great vehicle. There are
a pair of flaps that swing up into the bottom of the vehicle mode to complete
the orange surface of the bike that are unpleasant, because they don’t feel
like there is enough clearance to have them pass over the rest of the body, so
they need to be pulled just slightly away from the figure during movement, and
that is worrisome as well. There is one issue with the vehicle mode, and that
is that Overheats’ head winds up being completely visible at the back end,
sitting at the bottom of an open space in the vehicle shell. This is addressed
by plugging the blaster in to cover this gap, which then gives Overheat a
forward facing weapon, but the blaster then ruins the profile of the vehicle
and isn’t retractable. The missile pods also attach to the sides of the
vehicle, so Overheat gets some weaponry impressive for a vehicle like this,
clearly intended to be fast and agile and light. Suddenly, he’s loaded for
bear. 
Overheat is a really great figure. In a set full of great
figures, this one is the one that I most miss having loose when I look at
Quantron in combined mode. It took a little while to get comfortable with him,
as that foot panel part was a bit spooky when I first obtained the set. It was
a stretch of time where I couldn’t give figures a whole lot of attention, so I had
messed around with each of these guys once or twice and when I encountered that
step in the conversion, I made a mental note of its challenge and then put the
figure down and moved on with whatever was occupying my waking mind at the
time. Returning to Overheat later, I remembered to be cautious, but had built
up the necessary caution in my mind to something that would honestly make me
pass this figure over when searching for a toy to handle while watching TV or
something that didn’t require mind or hand attention, and so this ended up
being a toy that went underappreciated for longer than it should have.
Truthfully, the same thing would happen to the next and final entry in the set,
which I’m sure we’ll talk about when we arrive there. But this is a terrific
toy, probably the best entry in its series, and that is a series that is full
of great figures, with the weakest one essentially being a totally faithful andbetter articulated version of its 30-year-old inspiration. So weakest here is utterly
subjective.
Overheat is great.
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