Overlord may be slightly less familiar to a lot of people because he wasn’t a part of any major show continuity in the US. He was the big dog Decepticon in the Japanese series Super God Masterforce, and showed up a bit in some of the other Japanese only G1 shows. His other major role was as the protagonist in the popular IDW comic arc, The Last Stand of the Wreckers. In the original continuity he was a double Power Master. He had two Power Master figures who could slot into his chest behind the panels on his chest. In the Masterforce cartoon, these were Giga and Mega, a husband and Wife combo recruited by Devil Z to combat the Autobots. In the IDW books he was just a big tough guy. In this new iteration, he is a headmaster, like all of the Titans Return figures. He also only has one head, though the Japanese version includes two head options, representing Giga and Mega.
He does have his chest slot gimmick still however. Sort of. The chest flaps open and have slots where you can stick Titan Masters. Except the holes aren’t deep enough to allow the doors to close with the Titan Masters inside. This is actually a real shame given the whole gimmick of the follow up line and it’s Prime Masters. Having Overlord be able to “power up” with the Power of the Primes would have been a neat little play pattern to tie the two lines together.
The Titan Masters kind of look funny anyway, with their obvious faces and all. Disappointing chest face gimmick aside, Overlord still has a few tricks up his sleeve. Unlike a lot of Transformers, he eschews the standard one bot, one vehicle gimmick and splits into two vehicles, a Jet and a Tank. Neither vehicle has an independent robot mode and both are somewhere between a deluxe and voyager in size individually. The tank is pretty nice, but even without the need to hide a bunch of extra bulk that most jet Transformers suffer with, the jet is still kind of chunky and weird.
For a Leader class Transformers with two vehicles, the overall transformation is pretty simplistic. He definitely falls into the category of “G1 with more articulation” in his design in that respect. Considering Overlord isn’t one of those staple characters who gets a new look every few years, that’s probably for the best. He fills the role of “Classics Overlord” pretty well. Certainly better than the TFCC version we got a few years ago. As much as I like the Bludgeon mold and that figure, he doesn’t work nearly as well as Overlord as the Titans Return figure.
In addition to his two vehicles, Overlord also turns into a pretty nice little base for Titan Masters. This fulfills the line gimmick of the Leader toys becoming bases and homages back to G1 Overlord, who also became a base. It’s works really well in this line too given the emphasis on the little Titan Master figures.
Overall, Overlord is just a nice solid toy. His vehicles and base work well with the Titan Masters. The robot itself is all around solid and nicely poseable. He isn’t the most well known character, but he does look the part of being a big menacing bad guy, which is pretty much what he is trying to do. I’d definitely recommend Overlord.
