TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2012 (Timelines) Gigatron

Despite hailing from the end of Generation 1, Overlord is not a character I'd been particularly aware of until comparatively recently, since I'd 'grown out' of collecting TransFormers by the time he arrived in the UK. My first experience of him in anything like his original form was via the Titans Return version, which was a little too cut-down in terms of functionality versus the G1 original. Improved articulation only gets you so far, after all.

However, I believe that my first experience of the character was via this strange BotCon exclusive repaint of the Revenge of the Fallen/N.E.S.T. Global Alliance Bludgeon, itself a reimagining of a G1 Pretender. While that character wasn't the best fit for a movie offshoot toyline, the figure was great... and I might have been in the market for some of the other repaints if they weren't all so hard to obtain, to one degree or another.

I missed out on this figure around the time of BotCon 2012, but eventually found one reasonably priced on eBay, and took the plunge, even though a tank-only version of the character is already missing half of what made the original so interesting. How does it compare, though..?

Vehicle Mode:

Unsurprisingly, a realistic tank sculpt and a G1 toy colourscheme don't make for the greatest match. The blue shell of the vehicle doesn't look too bad in and of itself... but, coupled with the stark white turret, with its main gun barrel, machine gun and missile launchers in purple, one has to wonder how the vehicle mode was supposed to work. The original - and the Third Party versions - got away with it by styling both tank and jet components as sci-fi vehicles, with the essential silhouette being identifiable, but the details being different from anything we have on today's battlefields, allowing for easier suspension of disbelief.

Here, however, the well-designed, super-detailed tank mode just looks silly. The choices of plastic colour aren't hopelessly garish, and are reasonably true to the G1 original. On the upside, the white plastic of the turret doesn't completely wash out the sculpted detail, but that might just be because it's so much more three-dimensional and more fully-detailed than some more contemporary tankformers. There's a minor reference to the original toy's Powermaster cockpit in the form of a block of orange paint toward the back but I'd have thought applying that colour to one or two of the hatches running between the two missile launchers would have been more appropriate, given that the cockpit was on one side of the original toy's turret, with the Powermaster socket on the other.

On the downside, the paint budget has been applied in some very odd ways, following much the same template as Bludgeon, but perhaps even more sparingly, leading to colour mismatches at the front of the tank and on the wheels inside the treads. Part of this appears to be due to the amount of white paint required to cover the blue plastic which forms the base of the turret, as well as a couple of bits of white plastic that had to be painted blue, on the main shell of the tank just below the missile launchers. Curiously, a couple of other patches of white plastic remain visible on the blue shell - the backs of the robot's shoulder joints - which had also been left unpainted on Bludgeon. The end result is that the turret seems woefully under decorated, while the applications of silver paint and the figure's two Decepticon insignias on the main shell of the tank (both in exactly the same spots as the RotF toy) feels wasted. That, and the application of teal paint on the front of the tank appear to be referencing the ramps of the original toy, which is entirely unnecessary since the tank itself had nothing visible in that colour.

The end result is that this premium collectable Gigatron looks anything but premium in its vehicle mode, since it relies on large areas of unpainted plastic to homage the original toy.

Robot Mode:

Given that Overlord - both in his comic book appearances and in the form of the original toy - tends to be large and powerful-looking, this BotCon interpretation is rather weird and spindly. I had the same issues with Bludgeon, but it seemed at least somewhat appropriate on that figure, given his ghostly, skeletal samurai schtick, which never quite worked on the rather portly original G1 Pretender shell. On BotCon Gigatron, it gives the impression that perhaps this is all that's left of him after a particularly heavy battle: literally down to his skeleton, with oversized armour rattling around on his damaged and exposed inner frame.

When it comes to the paintwork, robot mode appears to be playing second fiddle to vehicle mode, in that the distribution of plastic colours isn't quite right and the paint applications are as perfunctory as they are unsuited to representing Overlord. Nothing really fits: the arms should be fully white, but the forearms are black and the shoulder chunks are mostly blue with white panels on the front, which then feature blue-painted detailing; the upper legs should be grey, blue or ideally a mixture of both, but they're white; the lower legs should be largely blue, but they're grey, while an application of teal paint the the underside of the treads is supposed to represent the teal ramps acting as shin armour.

Then there's the weapons... Naturally there was no way to adequately represent Overlord's built-in belly guns in this mold, but the silver paint applied around the torso suits neither an interpretation of G1 Overlord, nor the IDW version. A couple of swords that can be combined into a polearm aren't quite the substitute for Overlord's traditional giant purple gun. Having been molded in soft, rubbery plastic, the hilt of the longsword is seriously bent out of shape, and is only made worse by attempting to fit it into his hands due to their awkward molding. Granted, the base of the main barrel kind of works as a back-mounted cannon, and the missile launchers and machine gun are still there, but they don't look especially useful just hanging out on the backpack/scabbards. The whole thing feels rather forced, even though the G1 toy came with analogous accessories.

When it comes to BotCon and TFCC figures, the head sculpts tend to be very hit-and-miss and, unfortunately, Gigatron's head sculpt is a resounding miss. Since Overlord was a popular character in the IDW comics at the time, so it's no surprise that FunPub wanted to aim for that sort of vibe... However, this thing is a disaster. The proportions are all wrong, leading to a sunken-cheeked, awkwardly pursed, bulbous-lips on a horse-face with an overlong nose and beady eyes. The helmet part of the sculpt isn't bad, though it is very angular and has a somewhat haphazard, unfinished feel. The head as a whole looks overlong for its width, but it had to fit within the same cavity inside the body for transformation and has little more than 1mm clearance on each side. Making it any shorter would have risked making it look far too small for the body, but the could have lowered the brow to improve the proportions of the face. Definitely not one of FunPub's greatest custom heads, but it's still honestly better than their Astrotrain.

I have to admit that, in hand, this is far from being the greatest interpretation of Overlord/Gigatron. The robot form is hopelessly inadequate, and the tank form represents, at best, half of what Overlord/Gigatron was conceived as being. I can live without TransFormers having a base mode, and the absence of any Powermaster gimmicks is no great loss, but Overlord was essentially a massive Duocon, made up of a tank and a jet.

That said, the Collectors' Club and BotCon liked to present alternate versions of characters... and that was the core premise of the Invasion set from 2012. Additionally, I can't deny that this mold is kind of fun, and an interesting choice for the character. Is this Overlord/Gigatron before he upgraded to his more traditional form, or is this what's left of him after sustaining massive damage, rebuilt into the most cohesive form possible?

Overall, I find this interpretation somewhat less disappointing than the Titans Return toy that came out five years later. That may have had both components and all three forms, but the robot and base modes were diminished and lacking features versus the G1 toy... and it wasn't just because of the TR gimmick. Base mode was cut down by necessity, but the original toy's Powermaster gimmicks could have been incorporated without the need to have them activated by Titan Masters. Instead, they were simply removed. The problem here is that the chosen mold is just not suited to representing the character as he's normally portrayed.

There are problems with this figure in and of itself as well. The first thing I noticed when I received Gigatron was the substantial yellowing of the white plastic that forms his upper arms and collar/neck. While the discolouration suits the skeletal look, that just makes it all the more appropriate to the mold's original use as Bludgeon than as an adaptation of Overlord. The yellowing hasn't got much worse in the years since I bought it, and it's most noticeable in robot mode, but it's extremely disappointing on a premium, limited edition collectable. Similarly, there are QC issues with the assembly on mine. The right hand doesn't quite fit right: it's pinned in place, just like the left, but it seems as though the pin wasn't driven through the holes correctly as, while it swings for transformation freely enough, the tab on the back of the hand doesn't butt up against the wrist when the hand is deployed. It also looks to me as though the white part of the left ankle joint is bent slightly, as the foot appears twisted a little inward versus the right.

The biggest issue, though, is the left knee, which has a habit of popping apart. The lower leg is pegged into the 'Mech Alive' part of the thigh such that a tab at the top of the attachment peg marries up with a slot in the inner thigh detail, so that the latter turns along with the lower leg. That part of the joint assembly is molded in the yellowing white plastic and, while it works perfectly on the right leg, on the left, the tab seems to be worn slightly, and so it doesn't fully mesh. As the lower leg is turned, the resistance of the inner thigh detail is enough to unseat the tab, causing the lower leg to detach. Additionally, this joint is compromised to the point where attempting to bend the knee can also cause the lower leg to pop out. I'd have expected better from the Club in their heyday, though I have to admit, this is far from being the only QC issue I've had with a TFCC or BotCon figure.

One of these days, I hope to obtain a G1 Overlord and, while this is certainly no substitute, it's an interesting, alternate universe placeholder in its own way. I just hope the QC issues on mine were not widespread.