Not that he wasn't somewhat of a deal before, but folks have been very loudly asking for a new Overlord ever since he was the big villain in 2010's Last Stand of the Wreckers.  BotCon tried to jump on this hype in 2012 with a version of him retooled from Revenge of the Fallen Bludgeon, but that's always felt like a band-aid on a gushing wound of desire for the real thing.  Well, here he is, the Real Thing, probably!

I mean, I can't rule out that there'll be a Better-er Overlord at some point, but this offering seems like it's the most on-the-nose that retail can muster.  He looks like Overlord (the original toy, at least, though not the LSOTW redesign), he splits into two vehicles like Overlord (not a common gimmick), and he's the largest size class that isn't a city or a combiner, which is suitably Overlordy.  Overlord was a big-ass guy.  But, frankly, anything much larger than this and he isn't gonna fit on any of my shelves.

(note: TakaraTomy just solicited their Overlord, and they're officially mistransforming his feet in a way that extends his legs, making him taller by about an inch.  Essentially, theirs is on tippy-toes.  You can do that easily on the Hasbro version as well if you want your Overlord to be a smidge taller.)

In addition to the tank and jet modes and the combined robot mode, the two vehicles can also combine into an okayish base mode.  I probably won't be using this much, but it's there.

Since Overlord is a Titans Return toy, that means he's got a little dude that turns into his head.  And since Overlord is a LARGE Titans Return toy, that means his little dude actually just transforms into the face, which sits inside a larger helmet, so that body parts remain proportional.  There's also little head-guy-shaped crevices inside doors on his chest where you can capture two other head guys.  (These take the place of the Powermaster engine plug-in spots on the original toy.)  

Overall, Overlord is a solid toy.  His robot mode is where it's at and stays together like a toy that doesn't transform at all, featuring most of the articulation you'd want (though no waist rotation), and he transforms into two smaller vehicles which are also individually fun entities.  The tank mode's turret doesn't rotate, but considering how the thing transforms, that's not really surprising.  

Just keep him away from Pipes.

I've got a Trypticon!  He's a big Trypticon, unlike the tiny Legends of Cybertron class Trypticon I've had for a decade, and even bigger than the original Trypticon I got last year when it was reissued.  We found out about this new Titan Class Trypticon like the day before my original Trypticon reissue arrived in the mail, and I don't regret it.  He's Trypticon.  He's a very large robot dinosaur and/or kaiju.  There should be more of him.

Trypticon is definitely of the "original design with knees" school of design most Transformers seem to graduate from these days.  He's essentially a bigger version of the original.  But with articulation.  And no electronic walking gimmick.  There are some improvements, though, like how there are fewer.... pieces.  Trypticon stays whole when he changes from dinosaur to spaceship to city, instead of having to rip some smaller parts off him and move them around.  The only part that really comes off is his separate little race car guy, Full-Tilt.  And this makes sense because, you know, he's a separate little race car guy.

That I said "from dinosaur to SPACESHIP to city" is a clue at another improvement.  Trypticon's third mode used to be a battlestation instead of a spaceship.  But, honestly, battlestation versus city is not a very large distinction.  And so now he has a new spaceship mode, which looks very much like his original battlestation-like mode with tiny wings attached, which we've decided is the Nemesis.  

Also, like, you can put little Titan Master guys in his mouth and they dump into his tummy.  Or out of his tummy, if you have his tummy hatch open.  Food spills out of his maw like Cookie Monster.  This is an excellent addition.

Some problems!

1) Full-Tilt is pretty heavy, as he's a full Deluxe-Class-sized toy, and the weight of him kind of pulls Trypticon's tummy hatch open constantly.  Is there a way to secure this better?  I dunno.  

2) Some people have reported that Trypticon's leg springs are so tight that they destroy the legs if you try to move them at the hip.  Mine does not have this problem, but it's something to look out for, just in case.  Apparently you need to screw open his hips and snip the giant-ass spring inside to lower the pressure.

3) WHY STICKERS, WHY.   I mean, I could see if they were GOOD stickers, but the thinner-than-paper foil stickers that Trypticon comes with are... not good stickers.  And they're incredibly difficult to place without error, because, like, they're constantly staticky and want to jump to the wrong place, and because they're so thin you can't actually remove them once they're placed because they will tear or crumble instead.  Also, sometimes the stickers aren't fully cut from the sheet!  Hooray!  WHY, WHY IS THIS A THING, WHY CAN'T WE JUST HAVE PAINT, OR AT LEAST QUALITY STICKERS THAT ARE NOT SHITTY, STOP TRYING TO MAKE THIS GIJOE, THE WORST PART OF GIJOE WAS THE SHITTY STICKERS

All that said and swept under the rug while we whistle, this Trypticon is easily the best of the three big Titan Class city/battlestation guys we've gotten so far.  Both Metroplex and Fort Max are fine, sure, but neither of them transform into friggin' dinosaurs, and that's kind of a huge mark in Trypticon's favor.  And being a spaceship instead of a city is a huge plus, too.  Three solid modes, all distinct from the other.  And one of them's a friggin' dinosaur.

I've always been kinda lukewarm on Seaspray.  Had his toy as a child (I think), but he never made a strong impression on me.  I mean, I don't dislike him.  It's just that also I'm not in love with him or anything. 

But I am actually pretty taken with this new Titans Return Seaspray!  And I'll be blunt with you as to why: dude's FAT.  He's short and stout and he's got a tum and his feet are enormous.  He's a cute little dude.  His rotundity adds a bit of character in a world where nearly all of your robots are either Bruce Timmy He-Man chests or skinny stickmen.  

(The He-Man chest look was Seaspray's previous toy, by the way.  He was a real broadshouldered V-torsoed dynamo.  He was Star-Lord Chris Pratt instead of the more traditional, cuddlier Parks and Recreation Chris Pratt.)

However, his tummy detaches and becomes a... weapon?  Some sort of missle-launching pod.  And under his tummy, he's got flat abs.  And we older fans, we know that his tum-tum should be there.  It's drawn right into his cartoon animation model.  But I guess it's detachable now, and he can wave his gut around at you, while looking all svelt and buff for the kiddos following the instructions insert.  But we older fans know.  We know the truth.

(I mean, like, generally, if you're going to make a detachable weapon out of something on Seaspray, you think you'd go for the thing behind his head, with the spinny fans?  And not his intestines?  But no, clip that chub chub right off and put it in his hand, sure.  This pizza-box-shaped thing is a weapon and not the blades beyind his head.)

Seaspray transforms standardly enough, as you'd expect.  Feet extend out, arms pull from sides, yadda yadda.  The only truly disappointing bit is the head just hides behind a little flip-up panel.  It's not even really very hidden.  It's more like Seaspray was wearing a bib, like at a crabshack or whatever, and the wind blew it up in his face.  You can definitely still see the head itself from most angles.  There's just a small little nub there covering his face.  

There's also a compartment you can open up in the back where you can fit a Titan Master head-dude figure.  If you want.  

And he's got the name of his mermaid girlfriend tattooed on his arm.

You heard me.

I don't have a LOT to say about Quickswitch.  He's Titans Returns Sixshot with a new face and better colors.  That's what really matters.

He's also Sixshot's son.  What this even friggin' means has never been explored by Transformers fiction of any kind, but that familiar relation has been stated.  It's canon, somehow.  He's Sixshot's kid who's trying to make up for all the evil his daddy did.  Does.  Whatever.   I mean, we have Transformers siblings of various kinds, Transformers cousins, Transformers spouses, but we have no idea what being a Transformers dad means outside of the job title existing.  Could it be merely adoptive and not biological?  Who knows!

The original Quickswitch had a few different modes than his dad.  He could become a boat, a drilltank, and a different kind of four-legged animal other than a wolf.  I want to say a puma?  Regardless, this new Quickswitch is just Sixshot again in teal and red, so he doesn't get any of those unique modes.  

Also, the promotional renders gave him a new helmet, but the actual toy just gives him Sixshot's.  

If you have to choose between only Sixshot or Quickswitch, I'd go Quickswitch.  Teal and red is just neat, plus he comes in a box set with Nautica, so.  

I had been taken for a fool!  I never studied Titans Return Legends Class Brawn's stock renders very closely, but I did note that he had his spare tire on his arm.  Aha!  He must transform asymmetrically!  That is interesting, I said!  

Ah-heh, actually, no, the spare tire section just pops off during transformation and pegs onto his arm.  He otherwise transforms exactly like you'd expect Brawn to:  Arms pull out from sides, legs fold out from back.  Done!  He is not a complicated guy.  Even if you remember to flip out his heels, he's still not a complicated guy.  This is somewhat of a relief, given how much more fiddly the other Titans Return car guys like him are, such as Bumblebee and Wheelie.  

The main difference between them and Brawn is Brawn's passenger compartment for little Titan Master guys doesn't compact.  It's left alone during transformation, meaning you can keep your Titan Master Brawn inside him if you want and never remove him again.  It also means his torso is a little long, but whatcha gonna do.  

If you don't like Brawn keeping his spare tire on his arm, you can also choose to peg it on his ass.  

Brawn is versatile.

Nautica came with some other toys in her box set!  They're all right.  I'll talk next about Laser Prime, who's one of two toys in the set that's a mold I haven't owned before.  There's a version of Laser Prime at retail, in normal Optimus Prime colors, and I yawned so hard I actually didn't buy a Transformer for once.  

You see, like, okay... back in the Nineties, Laser Optimus Prime was a thing.  It was one of the first truly articulated Transformers toys, and so it was Everybody's Favorite Transformer for about a decade.  It was an Optimus with a glow-up sword who had a trailer that turned into a base that fired disks and missiles.  It was also decoed "wrong."  It had a gray chest with red windows and a yellow grill, and the legs were black.  And for that entire decade of "Laser Prime is the goddamned best toy ever," there were counterpart rumblings of "OKAY BUT MAKE IT IN REAL OPTIMUS PRIME COLORS."

But here's the thing.  It is 2017, and we get a new poseable G1 Optimus Prime toy every few months.  You could fill shelves and shelves with all the poseable G1 Optimus Prime toys we've gotten since 2004.  And so at this point?  Laser Prime's eccentric color scheme is one of the few remaining unique things about him.  We've got articulation and trailer bases and electronics and swords in so many other Optimus Primes.  So when you do a new toy that's specifically a homage to Laser Prime, why the heck should I care at this point if he's got his "proper" red chest and silver grill and blue legs?

Also the new toy didn't look that great, either, which was another reason to skip it.  But if I'm gonna own this mold as Optimus Prime, I'm glad the version Nautica's box set pushed on me was the version that's decoed like Actual Laser Optimus Prime.

Like the other Voyager Class-scale toys in the Titans Return toyline, this Optimus Prime is a Triple Changer.  He's not-so-unobviously an Octane pretool, as he goes from robot to tanker truck to jet.  (We've seen the upcoming Octane from this mold, and it has a new head and chest, IIRC.)  The robot's okay, the tanker truck mode is better, and the jet mode is hot garbage. 

But let's talk about the robot mode.  Unlike the original Laser Prime, Titans Return Laser Prime's robot transforms into the entire truck, trailer and all.  The original's robot was just the cab, which hauled around a trailer accessory.  But TR Laser Prime contains multitudes.  As such, he doesn't, y'know, transform the same way.  The robot mode essentially looks the same, but different parts become different other parts in service of this desired end.  There's a pair of helmet antenna built into the collarbone of the robot mode, so that when you plug in the Head Robot Guy, there's some added bulk.  But this don't look right, and in fact it looks kinda goofy.  Oh well.  The robot has both a sword and a hand-held cannon, just like the original, but they don't light up with electronics.  

Tanker truck mode is my favorite, and it's easy to explain why.  The original Laser Prime's trailer had giant stickers covering most of the trailer, and what these stickers portrayed was a mural of Laser Prime's robot burning down a forest, followed by his name in capital letters with a cursive-y splash of "OCTANE" on top of that.  Short the "OCTANE," TR Laser Prime replicates this trailer mural perfectly.  So perfectly it appears to be just the same art, with a depiction of the original toy and everything.  Why is Optimus Prime burning down a forest?  I dunno.  But if I ever get a tattoo, I want it to be of myself burning down a forest followed by my own name in all caps.  I'd have this running down both of my arms.  Anyway, this is super awesome.  Not SO awesome that these stickers aren't a tiny tiny tiny bit oversized and so they kind of want to peel off a little at the edges whenever you so much as look at the toy sideways, but still super awesome.  It absolutely makes the truck mode, which is otherwise not terrible to begin with.

The jet mode turns the truck backwards, shoves a nose and cockpit awkwardly on the ass-end of the trailer, and barely puts tiny wings and tailfins on there.  It's awful, and I don't recommend acknowledging this mode further.

Anyway, Laser Prime definitely only has two modes, and they're both okay to great, while the stickers are a constant annoyance.  The original Laser Prime does all this stuff better, though.

Well, our prayers have been answered, and there is finally a real Nautica toy.  No longer do you gotta, like, order a 3D printed kit from Shapeways to turn Beast Hunters Starscream into the Lost Light's favorite socially awkward quantum mechanic.  

There's a few hurdles in the way to getting her, however.  Three, in fact.  Their names are Laser Prime, Rodimus, and Quickswitch, and she comes in a giant $100 boxset with them.  It's the only way to get her, I'm sorry!  Sure, some folks are splitting up their sets on eBay, but Nautica's by far the hottest ticket.  She can cost as more than half of the set by herself.  Everyone else is an also-ran.  

But, y'know, if this is what it takes to get a Nautica, I'm down.  These days box sets like hers (titled "Chaos on Velocitron," btw, despite nobody in it being a Velocitronian) exist as a "we can't fit these into our normal wave-by-wave production schedule, so let's dump them off in sets" dealio.   It's this or nothing, and I will gladly take this.  And, y'know, maybe if Hasbro notices that Nautica was the Big Deal here, it might open them up to more Nauticas later.

Nautica is a retool of Titans Return Blurr.  Specifically, she's got a new face and two new propeller wings which plug into the pre-existing 5mm pegholes on her shoulders.  She transforms into Blurr's futuristic racecar mode with some propeller wings.  It works well enough for Nautica's altmode of "futuristic submersible" if you ignore that Blurr is, um, a convertible.  He's got an open top, and now so does this submarine.  Whoops.

Blurr as Nautica works strongly for me.  It helps that Blurr is, y'know, a fantastic toy (which I was happy to also get retooled as Brainstorm), so Nautica's already starting out with a solid foundation.  I also think that, out of all the other current Titans Return figures, Blurr's is the one that best works as both her robot and her vehicle form.  Yeah, there's a TR Windblade coming up, but, like, I dunno, TR Windblade is very super obviously a jet, and also TR Windblade's robot mode is more svelt than Nautica is.  Sure, Nautica has an hourglass figure, but she's got big boxy kibble on her arms and over her shoulders and big boxy boots.  Windblade's just a lady with wings, with tapering legs and skinny arms.  A Windblade retool would give us that hourglass figure but leave everything else short, including turning into Super Obviously A Jet And Not A Sea Vessel.  Meanwhile, Blurr's altmode is vague enough that it works as anything.  It's a wedge.  And now it's a wedge with propellers.  Bam, it's a water vehicle.  Blurr also gives Nautica her big boots, and the wedge-shaped vehicle kibble on her forearms, and the placement of propeller wings on her arms maintains Nautica's silhouette.  

Some folks have also suggested Nautica from Scourge, but, like, no.  Yeah, Scourge is a Space Boat, but his transformation prevents anything resembling Nautica's silhouette from occurring.  If you retool the Boat Shell on his back to be Nautica's propeller wings, you end up with an altmode that's a robot folded up with wings attached to it, and not in the fun way.  And if you just retool propeller wings onto the ends of the Boat Shell halves, you end up with a robot that has wings on the ends of wings.  It just can't work, I'm sorry.  And that's before we get to Scourge's He-Man proportions in robot mode.  He is girthy.

Nautica's new head-robot guy partner is unnamed on the packaging.  This is dumb. 

I also kinda wish they'd given Nautica her magical Doctor Who wrench, but they didn't, and so I just gave her one of Generations Wheeljack's.  I also unplug her propeller wings and swap them so they face backwards.  This gives her more shoulder kibble bulk, which I think is more evocative of her.  

Sadly, she arrived to my shelves too late to hang out witih Skids.

Look, you guys, you have to take my word on this.  Titans Return Kup's colors are pretty good!  He's not, like, various flavors of cyan as most photographs of him seem to claim.  I swear to you, his torso, crotch, and half of his legs are this amazing vibrant teal.  This amazing vibrant teal is impossible to photograph correctly, and not even Photoshop color correction can produce it.  I tried.  I can get close.  You will look at these photographs and think, okay, whatever, that's kinda teal, but nothing to write home about.  But it is.   You would write home about this teal.

Unlike Sixshot (and Perceptor), Kup is not just his 1980s toy with more articulation.  He's the flavor of Titans Return toys that tries to do a little something new.  Mind, he still looks generally like his original robot and futuristic pickup truck in either mode, but how he gets there is a fun jaunt.  For example, on the original 1986 Kup toy, you merely bent him back at the waist, tucked his arms under his hood, and generally you were done.  This new version's a bit more complicated.  The entire lower third of the vehicle, from front hubs to back hubs, unwraps and then rewraps to form his legs.  The arms fold out of the back of the cab, which has an open drivers compartment which you have to compact in on itself for robot mode.   The head, as always in Titans Return Deluxes and larger, is a little robot guy.   His guns can combine into a larger gun which the head guy can ride, or it can plug into his back to replace the missing "hood" that his new transformation no longer creates.  

I've talked about the teal, but beyond that, Kup's colors seem to take their cues from his original toy (and Marvel Comics appearances) rather than his appearances in animated media and subsequent comic book series.  The dark gray helmet (and partially dark gray legs) are a clue to this.  To me, this means this toy represents Marvel Kup, who I also call Murderkup, because he likes to murder.  His earliest characterizations in the Marvel comics were that he had an insatiable battlelust.  Mind, this was partly because the writer needed counterpoints to the more pacifistic Fortress Maximus to keep the desired narrative happy, but in the absence of Kup's "I'm old and I have many stories about being old!" characterization from the cartoon, his battlelust is a striking take.  He just wants to kill and kill, because it's fun and he's good at it.  I think this might have seeped a little into Kup's IDW appearances, where, sure, he's an old guy (and currently billions of years older than the universe itself, which is a.... long story), but he's also a member of the ultraviolent Wreckers.  

Eventually painted my Kup's forearms and fists gray to more complete the Marvel Kup look.  Good ol' Murderkup.

I'm just sad he doesn't get to have a cy-gar this go-round 'cuz it'd futz with his Titan Masters gimmick.  Also because Hasbro would never sculpt a damned cigar into their robot toy for children.  That too.

Toys from the current Transformers team seem to fall into two categories: Slightly reworked designs of old toys with new Transformations, and.... the old toy, but now with knees.  Titans Return Sixshot is definitely the latter.  He's essentially the original 1987 Sixshot toy with articulation added.  And GUESS WHAT.  I'm happy with him.

Maybe it's because I never had the original toy?  I don't remember being particularly interested in him, anymoreso than with other toys in the Transformers pack-in catalogs from my youth.  Possibly because he was never in any real fiction.  He shows up for three seconds in the cartoon, and spends half a second in each mode, and in the Marvel comic he only appears wadded up into the corner of one panel in a group shot.  Bizarrely, he had an IDW one-shot issue based on him, but even that story never landed with me.  

However, over in the Headmasters anime, he appears a bunch, and in the bad English dub he referred to himself as a "ninja consultant" while the voice actor did all his lines into a paper cup.  That's the most endearing the character has ever been to me.  

But this toy of him, I really like it.  He turns into "six" "things," and while each mode is mostly distinct, they're all obviously made out of the same semblage of parts.  They kind of have to be.  This toy isn't magic.  When you have a toy turn into a robot, a winged wolf, a "submarine," a jet, a car, and a tank, a lot of that toy's parts are going to be pulling double- or triple-duty.  Obviously, the robot limbs also become the wolf limbs.  Obviously, the jet's wings are going to feature in a lot of the other modes.  Obviously, a lot of the non-wheeled modes are gonna have wheels somewhere on them.

The enjoyment, though, is how relatively simple it is to get him from one mode to another.  The trade-off for "six modes all using the same limited amount of parts" is that there's no chore in transformation, and there's so many possible transformations to do.  You're always just a few steps away from another mode, keeping the toy in play.  YOU ARE NEVER SATISFIED.  Wait, that sounds bad.  Well, it's not!

It should come as no surprise that the robot mode is the strongest.  He looks like a robot!  He's got a chest and limbs and a head!  Definitely a robot.  Because Sixshot is Leader Class, he's big enough that his requisite little head-robot-dude only transforms into his face.  His helmet fits around that, and also stows inside the chest while in the other five modes.  This means you technically don't have to remove the head-robot-dude for transformation if you don't want to.  

But if you do, your winged wolf mode is going to be missing the back of his head.  In this mode, the robot face sits directly behind the wolf's skull, filling in that plastic void.  This also gives the winged wolf mode the same Naruto ninja headband the robot mode does (under his helmet).  This is fantastic.  The winged wolf mode itself is okay.  It's good by default just for being a beast mode, as beast modes rock.  But it's fairly perfunctory.  The arms become forelimbs and the legs become hindlimbs.  The gun pegs on as the tail.  

To make a jet you fashion everything into a wedge.  Everything except the wings.  To make a car, you compress everything into a box.  To make a tank, you bend the car in half and fold down the rest of his treads.  

The sixth mode is a submarine.  It is the original toy's gun mode upside-down.

This is hilarious.

I dunno, he's fun to fiddle with.  I like him.  However, he's coming out later in more interesting colors (redecoed with a new head as his own son, Quickswitch) as part of a box set that includes Nautica.  So if you only want the mold once, and also want Nautica, I'd hold out.  I want both versions, because I am eccentric.  

It's amazing the difference between the last Transformers team and the current one.  The last team wanted to do a new Perceptor, but original Perceptor was, um, a microscope, so they made him a halftrack truck.  Like, you could feel echoes of the plea to marketing for that guy.  "LOOK HE HAS WHEELS AND TREADS, HE'S NOT A SCIENCE THING, PLEASE LET US MAKE PERCEPTOR, BOYS DEMO AGED 5-12 WILL BUY THIS."  

Meanwhile, the current Transformers team just straight-up remakes the original Perceptor, now with 10% more articulation because the original wasn't too bad about that to begin with.  He's a microscope, yo.  Again.  And by "microscope," we of course mean "Perceptor's robot mode folded up to look like the original Perceptor's microscope mode, which also looked like Perceptor's robot mode folded up and not too much like a microscope."  Do kids want this?  I'd like to think so, because science is important, but who knows.  Here's your regurgitated 1985 Perceptor.  Hasbrobadger don't give a shit.  Hasbrobadger don't care.

Also he has a third "tank" mode, just like the original, which is rendered on the cardback but not present in the instructions.  This is not a great tank mode.  It's a terrible tank mode.  I mean, they tried, but it just looks awkward and doofy.  I can see why they left it out of the instructions.  (there are extra tabs and slots for it, plus some extra pieces, so it's not, like, an "oops this toy can still do the original third tank mode" thing, it was definitely intended on purpose)

But, look.  Credit where it's due.  His microscope still works.  It's a functional microscope.  The amount of magnification isn't great, but you can even rotate the little nob on the scope and it'll do a small amount of focusing.  That's a surprise in 2017.  Transformers these days aren't often budgeted individualized gimmicks that aren't part of the line-wide Mega Gimmick.  This isn't Armada.  

Perceptor's head pops off and transforms into a little dude.  His name's Convex.  

Also, what I am here for is that this Perceptor is designed specifically after IDW's Perceptor -- at least, the one that featured in All Hail Megatron and beyond, including Last Stand of the Wreckers and More Than Meets The Eye.  It probably helped that his IDW comics design is close enough to the original toy that you can do the IDW comics Perceptor and most folks will think, Hey, it's the original style.  But the sculpted shapes of the arms and knees and such give him away, if not the fact that he comes with a friggin' sniper rifle.  Sadly, he's got two normal eyes, and not a normal eye and a big ol' targeting grid monocle.  Also, I guess, the scope is on the wrong shoulder for IDW.  The original 1984 toy could switch the scope's placement, but this toy keeps it over his left shoulder, like it was in the cartoon.  

If you want a Perceptor that's like the original toy but now he can bend his knees at the hips, this is your toy.  Also if you want a toy that'll fit better into your Lost Light display shelf.  Or if you just like Headmasters.  Or if you're desperate to throw money at something shiny to distract yourself from the rise of fascism, I dunno.