Titans Return

Review – Transformers – Titans Return Overlord

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.

Review – Transformers – Titans Return – Topspin and Twintwist

Oct 12th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Where Combiner Wars did it’s duty by giving us remakes of all of the original Combiner Transformers, it also used that opportunity to repaint all of those molds into different versions of the original G1 Autobots. Titans Return has been moving into a lot more interesting territory. There’s a lot more updates of Targetmasters, Movie bots and in this case, Jumpstarters. Topspin and Twintwist were a pair of very similar G1 bots that had one specific gimmick. Pull them back, and a motor would speed the vehicle along and eventually it would pop up and land on it’s robot feet. The entire transformation was literally “fold in half at the waist”.

Topspin got sort of an update with the movie line, he appeared in Dark of the Moon as one of the Wreckers, as a blue Lowes NASCAR. His toy even got a gray colored repaint that kind of worked as his buddy Twintwist. This iteration had pretty much nothing in common with his namesake aside from a vaguely Blue and White color theme. The original jumpstarters are more of a turquoise than a blue.

Titans Return has given us a proper update to this pair. Topspin came first but Twintwist is a straight remold of the Topspin mold. The new mold isn’t an exact replica of the original space ship/tank thingy, but it’s close enough, and the originals were kind of misshapen anyway to help accommodate the auto transform gimmick. The transformation is also an actual transformation now, and naturally a lot more complicated. It’s still reminiscent of the original. The bulky back end becomes the legs with the sides becoming the arms and the end result looks pretty close to the original robot with better proportions as well.

Like a lot of Transformers lines, the later figures tend to be get better all around, and Topspin is no exception. He’s definitely one of if not the best mold in the line. The closest rival is Triggerhappy. A lot is helped by the way his transformation does a good job of hiding a lot of the hollow bits that have been prevalent lately. He also does a lot of interesting twists and flips that help him feel like he actually has a complex transformation. Something else lacking in a lot of figures lately. Particularly of note is his arms, which do this neat open up and collapse in on the shoulder and hand, often it’s a trick done on one end or the other, not both.

Both vehicles do a great job of lending itself to the Titan Master gimmick. The space ship design is perfect for a cockpit for the small robot to sit in and pilot. The little drill tank of Twintwist is a great vehicle for these little guys as well. Neither was originally a Headmaster but the gimmick fits well.

Topspin and Twintwist are definitely a top notch toys for the Titans Return line. Twintwist is slightly weaker than his mold originator Topspin. The guns don’t work as well in the tank mold and the tank dreads kind of just hang off and look ugly in robot mode vs Topspin’s wings. There’s been a lot of hits in this line but this mold one of the best. It’s a solid update of a unique and interesting G1 design with a modern appeal layered on top.

Review – Transformers – Titans Return – Kup

Aug 17th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Ah Kup, a character that seems to be hard to just do right in Toy form while not being kind of boring. His original G1 toy is best described as “Weird Space Pick Up”. He got an alright update a few years ago in the Generations line where he turned into an old timey Earth Pick Up. Kup, despite being fairly popular has a few issues that come up when trying to make updates. First, his alt mode is lame and kind of boring, which isn’t particularly marketable. Second, his character is old and grouchy and thus isn’t the best character to appeal to kids. In the comics he’s been molded more into the classic veteran commando type but he also has trademark items like his Cygar, that help push this motif, which doesn’t really work in a toy line marketed to kids either.

The whole Titans Return line is really pushing in on the later G1 toys, and being really slavish to their original designs as much as possible. It’s not surprising Kup got an updated figure for this line. Aside from the chest area and actually having shoulders, he is a pretty good update to the original G1 design as well. The vehicle manages to fold up on itself in some pretty interesting ways to form a very nice looking and clean robot.

In fact the neat Transformation is one of the best parts of this toy. The front cockpit does some fun little things to form a cavity for the Headmaster to drive, but on top of that the side panels do some pretty impressive origami to form the lower legs. The end result is that the Robot doesn’t have a ton of gaps and holes in it that has become the trend in today’s cost saving design choices.

Kup maintains his dopey Space Pick Up design this round, though he takes some queues from Transformers Prime’s Kup with the truck bed. His guns can fill in the gap to create a nice little block of technology engine looking junk that he can carry around. They still look like guns, but it does help to keep his alt mode from looking funky.

Like all of the Titans Return line, Kup’s titan master can sit in the cockpit to drive the vehicle mode. Unfortunately the pegs that hold the titan master in place are kin of weak and getting the little figure attached while navigating the window piece and not splitting the truck panels apart is tricky. What I’m saying is, it’s a lot harder to get him into the driver’s seat than say, any of the space jets that have simple canopy cockpits.

The Transformation that I enjoy is probably the main downside of this figure. Getting everything to line up isn’t that hard, but it can be tricky and it could be tricky to manage for some folks (kids, apparently Kup just doesn’t work well for kids all around, see above). Getting the front of the truck to all line up and attach to the side panels is definitely tricky and given the small pegs holding things in place can be hard to keep in place. He’s a neat fun toy, but the Transformation from robot to vehicle is overly complex compared to other figures in the Titans Return line.

Transformers – Review – Titans Return – Broadside

Jul 27th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Broadside is a character that people have been anticipating an update of for a while now, mostly because he was part of the popular Wreckers team int he comics. He’s one of the few members who hasn’t gotten a new toy in ages, though it’s somewhat understandable why he hasn’t. Broadside has two alt modes, one is a jet, one is an aircraft carrier. Working aircraft Carriers in with any level of scale is effectively impossible being possibly the largest vehicles on the planet.

There is a vague attempt to make scale work with Broadside. He includes a set of small aircraft sculpted to resemble the recently released Combiner Wars Aerialbots toys, that can be stuck on the carrier deck using little pegs. This does have the odd effect int hat it means his Headmaster in “reality” would be larger than Superion, but it’s still a neat effort. I plan to paint up my Aerialbots at some point since they are all white plastic.

Talking about small Aerialbots seems like a funny place to start out discussing a figure, they are just accessories after all. The thing is, I prefer to discuss the good points before the bad points, and the mini Aerialbots are the only real good point with poor Broadside. It’s fairly rare that I just flat out don’t like a toy, I try to find some redeeming qualities when possible, but I really just don’t like Broadside, he’s just a big ball of weird design choices and flaws.

So, continuing with the carrier mode. The flat deck essentially consists of a bunch of flippy panels that all sort of but don’t quite mesh together well, which kind of huts the aesthetics of the carrier. It’s also covered in a lot of ill fitting stickers. The stickers aren’t the problem on their own, it’s how poorly they fit and how the sticker detail doesn’t even attempt to match the sculpted detailing on the surfaces they attach to. Then there are the little landing gears on the carrier, which are mostly just used to allow it to sit on a flat surface, except the way they fold up is goofy and they are prone to folding up by mistake when trying to display the carrier. Lastly the goofy wings on the front end of the carrier. These wings sort of exist for the Jet mode, except they look goofy over there, as well in Robot mode. They just are all around poorly executed and get int he way in all three modes than they do help the look.

Moving on to the Jet mode. I will just say, an attempt was made, and leave it there.

On the robot, hid design is almost there, he’s nice and beefy and chunky, except his also just sort of gets int he way of himself. Those previously mentioned Wings just sort of hang off of his shins and get in the way. The carrier panels hanging off of his shoulders get in the way of the arms and shoulders. He’s also back heavy so posing him can be a little difficult as well.

I think my biggest issue with Broadside is mostly just how close he is in almost every area he misses. It just makes him frustrating to interact with in every way because everything about him mostly almost works but not quite. To add insult to injury, he seems to have been shipped alone to a lot of stores, which means he will likely clog up shelves for a while blocking other Voyagers from getting a more widespread release.

Review – Transformers – Titans Return – Perceptor

Jul 20th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Due to it’s hodge podge origins in various Japanese toy lines, primarily Diaclone and Microman, the Transformers picked up a few less practical alt modes in it’s early days. The most well known is Soundwave’s cassette player. Perceptor is one of those characters with a less conventional (ie not a car or a plane) modes with his Microscope mode. The previous Generations remake of Perceptor changed things a bit giving him a Snow truck alternate mode instead of his traditional Microscope. Titans Return has been all about keeping with the designs of the original toys as much as possible, with updated modern engineering, so Perceptor is once again, a Microscope.

You could argue that he’s actually a sort of medical bay for the Titan Masters however, since the stage of the microscope is designed for a Titan Master to lay in to be examined by the scope. The scope itself is functional as a microscope, though it’s extremely low power and kind of hard to look through due to it’s small size. If you put say, a finger in front of it, you will get an enlarged image of your fingerprint however, which is a nice touch.

The overall design is very reminiscent to the original Perceptor toy from the 80s, though he’s quite a bit smaller, the original figure was somewhere between modern Deluxe and Voyager sizes. His transformation is where a lot of the flaws come through. It’s simple enough, but the sliding mechanism for the microscope feels extremely stiff and prone to breaking. I have not broken one, it just very much feels like a part that could easily BE broken if care isn’t given. There are alsoa lot of unused extra bits on his body for the undocumented Tank Mode

The original Perceptor had an attack mode which amounted to folding him into a square and using the scope as a tank canon. There are definitely vestigial bits for something similar to be done on the Titans Return toy, but the instructions do not show anything about how to properly transform him into a tank. There are extra flip out treads, extra flipping parts on his chest, extra tabs on his legs and shoulders. It’s even a great way to better incorporate the little Titan Master drivers into the mode. It’s just not documented, which is kind of tragic.

Aside from the missing Tank Mode, I really enjoy this figure. I’ve always been partial to Perceptor because of his goofy Microscope mode, though I can see how this may be seen as boring by some people. The microscope actually having some very basic functionality just makes this guy even more interesting and good in my book.