 Hello GI Joe fans, before we get started I need to let you know Timmer from the YouTube show Half the Battle is doing his annual charity drive and it is going on right now. It will be running through the entire month of November. All you have to do to participate in this charity drive is donate to a charity that benefits children. Send the proof of your donation to the email you see on your screen now. You can take a photo of a receipt or other proof of your donation. You can edit out your personal information but make sure you include the amount. We are hoping to raise a thousand dollars for children from the GI Joe community. As certain target amounts are reached you will get special bonus videos. At the end of the charity drive there will be a drawing and the winner will get some special prizes. I am donating one of the prizes as I usually do each year and I will also be donating to a children's charity. This is our chance each year to do something positive for the world. I will be helping out and I hope you will too. It's time for another vintage GI Joe toy review and for this one I need to thank David Jones. David has been a friend of the channel for a long time. He sent a few things to me and he donated the toy that will be reviewed in this video. Thank you very much David. Overlord has fascinated me for years. He represents a pocket of the GI Joe universe that is almost never mentioned. We all know who leads Cobra. Cobra Commander. There have been challengers. There have been usurpers but they all failed to maintain their power. Cobra Commander would always return and assume absolute authority. But in 1990 there was a stranger on the throne. Apparently Overlord climbed through the ranks to become leader for a short time. There was a 1990 commercial where Overlord fit the exact role we would expect Cobra Commander to fill. I remember when I first saw that commercial I thought, who is that guy? Let's find out who that guy is. HCC788 presents Overlord and the Dictator. This is Overlord and his vehicle the Dictator from 1990. This figure and vehicle set were released in 1990 and were available in 1990 only. They were discontinued for 1991. There were no other versions of Overlord in the vintage era. There was a GI Joe Convention Exclusive version released in 2006. Overlord was in the 1991 GI Joe video game on the Nintendo Entertainment System. His file card specialty just calls him Dictator Driver. But the text of the card says he is much more than that. This is a deluxe figure. He is packaged with a small vehicle to raise the price point. But the figure is meant to be more important than the vehicle. Some other examples of deluxe figures that were clearly more important than their vehicles would be Sergeant Slaughter, Zartan and Serpentor. Since the figure is the main focus of this set, we will look at Overlord first and we will set the Dictator aside for now. Overlord is no ordinary Cobra Troop nor is his position in Cobra Command clear. He is a usurper. He is openly positioning himself to take over the organization. That isn't unusual for Cobra. Cobra Commander was, of course, the founder of Cobra and its original Supreme Leader. Destro was a weapons supplier with his own ambitions. He attempted to take over Cobra on more than one occasion, often in concert with the Baroness. The Baroness had divided loyalties between Cobra Commander and Destro. Serpentor was a composite clone designed to be a super soldier, but he eventually deposed Cobra Commander and became the Cobra Emperor. Fred Seven, a Crimson Guardsman, impersonated Cobra Commander for a while in the battle armor until the real Cobra Commander returned and retook the throne. Where exactly does Overlord fit in all this? Prototype code names for Overlord were mostly anagrams for Cobra Commander. It may be that he was originally conceived as the return of Cobra Commander. There had not been a Cobra Commander figure since 1987. There was to be a new Cobra Commander figure in 1991 the following year, so Overlord is in the gap. He appeared in a couple commercials in 1990 in which he seemed to be an important character. It's strange that he had so little impact. Let's take a look at Overlord's accessories starting with his helmet. His helmet is removable. It is in gold plastic. It looks kind of like a Gladiator helmet. It has some nice details. I can't really complain about the helmet. It's a good design. When it's on his head, the gold helmet kind of blends with his gold face mask. Overlord also includes two claws that attach to his four arms. Each of these claws has a pair of sea clips that simply clip onto the arms of the figure. They are removable. Do be careful about those sea clips. They seem to kind of not fit very well on mine, so that could be a break point. These claws are both the same. There's not a left and a right one. They are in gold plastic. They have three tines. There is some plastic between them to add some stability. Those tines are attached to what looks to me like a sculpted three-toed reptilian or bird foot. There's definitely an animal quality to that sculpting. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not. Even artwork did not include the claws, so it's hard to say exactly what they were going with here. He is a vehicle driver after all, and it cannot be easy to drive a vehicle wearing Wolverine claws. These claws are not copies of the claw that came with 1988 Storm Shadow Version 2, but they do work in basically the same way. Let's look at the articulation. On Overlord, he had the articulation that was standard for GI Joe figures well before 1990. He could turn his head left or right and look up and down. He could swing his arm up at the shoulder and swivel at the shoulder all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow that allowed him to bend his arm at the elbow about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep that allowed him to swivel his arm all the way around. This was an O-ring figure, meaning it was held together by a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside. That allowed him to move at the torso a bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could bend his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt design and color of Overlord, starting with his head and the head is the most remarkable part of this figure. He has a Caucasian skin tone. He has black hair. He has a high hairline and a deep widow's peak. He has a silver monocle over his right eye. Cobra had another character with a silver monocle over his right eye, Dr. Mindbender. So this, of course, would raise the question, is this Dr. Mindbender in disguise? I don't think so, not with all that hair. Overlord has a gold mask that covers the bottom half of his head, wrapping all the way around the back of his head and covering everything from the nose down. His nose has some paint wear on my figure because his nose is very pointed. Overlord looks like a cartoon villain. He couldn't look more like a cartoon villain if he had a handlebar mustache under that mask and his real name was Snidely. On his chest, he has gold at the shoulders with a lattice texture pattern, probably to simulate snakeskin since he is a Cobra operative. Then he has this funny science fiction looking raised armor plates in gold that go around his arms at the shoulder. The rest of his chest is a plain orange shirt, plain on the front and the back. The whole chest is quite plain other than the gold at the very top. His arms are bare with that Caucasian flesh tone and a muscular build. He has long black gloves that cover his forearms. His arms are kind of plain too. The waist piece is black. It has a lattice texture pattern on the front but not on the back. He has a red belt with a diamond pattern that goes all the way around. He has a belt buckle in the front that has what looks like a three-pronged Y. The design on the belt buckle appears to mirror the three-toed design on the claws. I don't know if that's intentional or just a coincidence. Why is the waist piece black when the torso and the legs are not blacked? For an O-ring style figure there is a temptation to use a different color plastic for the waist piece than the legs. It allows the colors of the upper and lower half of the figure to be broken up without using an additional paint color. This is a temptation toy designers should resist because it always makes the character look like he's wearing his underwear on the outside. It looks a bit silly. His upper legs are gold. On his lower legs there's some gold just above the boot with a fine texture pattern that does not appear on the rest of the legs that may be part of the boot but I'm not sure. On the front of each thigh he has three black squares. The upper legs are otherwise quite plain. He has tall black boots and on the front of the boots he has some sculpted on squares that kind of mimic the squares on the upper leg and on the back of the boots he has buckles. Not sure what they were going for on this figure making him so plain with not much sculpted detail when this character was supposed to be a rival to Cobra Commander. Some pre-production artwork has surfaced artwork by Dave Dorman although I don't think he designed the figure itself and in the pre-production artwork he did have a few more details but not very much. Let's take a look at Overlord's file card. This file card was an insert inside the box for the dictator. This is an uncut file card. It is plain cardboard on the back. It has his faction as Cobra. There's a portrait of Overlord here. His codename is Overlord and he is the dictator driver. This first paragraph says, rising up from the ranks of one of Cobra's elite legions, the Overlord is a power hungry authoritarian, bent on becoming Cobra's supreme leader. He is a diabolical individual who expects nothing less than complete obedience from his troops. At this point in time he is the only one with enough strength and charisma to reunite all the sinister personalities within Cobra's hierarchy to form a more dangerous, more vicious Cobra than ever before. This bottom section has a quote it says, as far as we can ascertain, the Overlord was a high ranking officer in the feared crimson guard now planning to seize control of both the Cobra organization and its expanded treasury. Of course, like any corrupt politician, he cloaked his back room dealings and improprieties with a platform of reform, righteous indignation, and a return to traditional values, Cobra values. At the end it has a bit of social commentary and I don't mind that, it's fine. I'm more interested in what this file card doesn't say. The file card does not say who Overlord is trying to seize power from. In some forms of GI Joe media, Cobra Commander had returned. But in the GI Joe toy line itself, there was not a new Cobra Commander figure yet. So is he trying to seize power from Cobra Commander? Or Serpentor, or Destro, or the Baroness? It leaves that open. If this guy is as important as advertised, he should be in the pantheon of Cobra usurpers with Destro, the Baroness, and Serpentor. But I question his path to power. For one thing, he partially borrows the backstory of Fred Seven, a crimson guardsman who became the imposter Cobra Commander represented by Cobra Commander v3 in the battle armor. Fred Seven though had a unique path to power in that he shot the original Cobra Commander in the back and left him for dead and that left the opening for him to impersonate Cobra Commander. This idea that Overlord would start as a regular crimson guardsman and just gain the loyalty of troops and use that as a path to the supreme leadership of Cobra seems unlikely to me regardless of who the supreme leader was at the time, be it Serpentor or Cobra Commander, Destro, or even the Baroness, as soon as a troop starts to gather loyalty to himself rather than the leader, the supreme leader will have that person executed. Real dictators are extremely jealous of their power and will not tolerate such insubordination. Looking at the other challengers to leadership while Cobra Commander was in charge, he tried to assassinate both Destro and Serpentor. He was not successful, but he tried. The only reason the imposter Cobra Commander was successful is because he had inside help. He was not a natural leader though and eventually Destro had to step in and sort things out. When the real Cobra Commander returned, he eliminated the imposter. Maybe that's why Overlord had no impact in the G.I. Joe mythos. When the real Cobra Commander returned, this guy's lifespan would have been about five minutes. Now let's look at the vehicle that was included with Overlord, the dictator. This vehicle was designed by Frank Caronius for Hasbro. At first glance, it is almost a motorcycle. It joins the tradition of G.I. Joe and Cobra vehicles that are almost normal vehicles, but not quite. It is similar to Darklawn's Evader, both in design and size, but the dictator has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. The overall color of the dictator is this grayish blue, which is fine. It's a reasonably subdued color and it works well with the black. And the stickers are a bit brighter for some extra pops of color. Let's look at the parts and the features of the dictator. Starting in the front, we have a tapered vented hood. And instead of a front wheel, we have a front tread. It has a single wide front tread. It's very long too. It's in black plastic. Of course, that's a fake tread. It rolls on two black wheels. On the brace piece where that tread attaches, there is an angry teeth sticker. There's one on each side and that looks kind of cool. And then on each side of that tapered hood, there is a bright yellow Cobra emblem. Atop that hood, there are two long black guns. The blueprints refer to these as rapid-fire 40 caliber high-impact machine guns. These guns are removable. They each have a C-clip that attaches to this bar in front of the cockpit. When you remove each of those guns, there is a cutaway section here that shows a vent through it. Each of those two long black machine guns appear to be the same. There is not a left and a right one. In addition to attaching to the vehicle, there is also a grip. And that grip will fit in the action figure's hand. So Overlord can carry this as a personal weapon, I guess. That grip is a little bit thick, so be careful about breaking the action figure's thumbs. That brings us to the cockpit. There is a molded-in instrument panel, which you can't see very well in this mold. The seat itself is not very detailed, and there is a seat clip. The infamous seat clip. The backside of that seat clip is accessible from the underside of the vehicle. So if you press from underneath, you can pop that seat clip out and remove it. Let's demonstrate putting the figure in the vehicle. The way they intend you to do it is to put the seat clip on the figure around his waist. And there are some spaces there for his legs inside the cockpit. First of all, I think it's impossible to get the figure in with these guns on. So remove the guns first, get those out of the way. And what they intend for you to do is to put the figure in a seated position and put his legs in those slots. And then clip the seat clip back on, like, well, it's not perfectly easy, but there it goes. So now you have the figure in the vehicle. There's not a lot of space for these claw accessories either, so I would leave those off. Once the figure's in, then you can place the guns back on. And he is ready to ride on his dictator. Let's put his hat on safety first. In my opinion, the seat clip is really not necessary for this vehicle. With the guns attached, that will hold him in the seat pretty well. And the seat is actually quite deep with spaces for the legs. So the seat clip can be left out. You really don't need it. Moving on toward the back, we have a pair of black missiles. The blueprints call these low-to-the-ground air-to-surface missiles. I don't think that description makes a lot of sense. There is a missile on each side, and they appear to be the same. And they peg on with these dumbbell-shaped slots. But the missiles each have stickers. The stickers go on one side. So even though the missiles are the same, of course you would want to place the missile on the side with the sticker on the outside. The pegs for those missiles are attached to black vents, one on each side. And that's a nice idea. It adds another black accent to break up the gray-blue of the body of the vehicle. Good idea, but note the white plastic stress marks on one of these pegs. The pegs do stick out pretty far, so be careful about those. They could break off. In the back, there are two black wheels. They're pretty far apart. There's a gap between them, and there's no axle, so they each roll freely. They are each attached by mushroom clips. And I'm not a big fan of these exposed clips on these vehicle wheels that happened a lot on 90s vehicles. In this case, though, the clip is pretty deep in there, so it's not as bad as on other examples. I mentioned before the dictator has some tricks up its sleeves. It's not just a fancy motorcycle. It actually has three different modes. It's a transformer. This is the motorcycle mode, as I call it. It sits low to the ground, and it's a good look. The second mode is the elevated position. The front tread and the back wheels kind of swing toward each other, and you kind of have to stabilize that cockpit section. But moving the wheels and the treads together puts the cockpit in this raised position. The elevated position, in my opinion, is not very stable. According to the description on the back of the box, it suggests Overlord uses this elevated mode to survey subjugated people. There is one other mode. This vehicle has a flight pod. Basically, the cockpit section detaches. So the cockpit section is supposed to fly, powered by magic, I guess. There is an engine here in the back, and that does pivot, so I guess that's supposed to provide vertical takeoff and landing. But yeah, that tiny engine is supposed to get this thing in flight and maneuver it around. It's not very realistic, but I guess it adds a bit of play value. But because this section is removable, this whole thing, even when it's all together, is not very stable. It's always wanting to come apart. Because this cockpit section holds the rest of the vehicle in position, without it, it's just kind of useless. You can move the tread all the way back to where it's directly between the back wheels. And it is somewhat stable that way. And I guess you could imagine, a figure could ride it like a segway. But there is no footpeg here, and there are no guns here. And the only armament it has would be the missiles, and they are pointed straight up. Let's take a look at how Overlord was used in GI Joe Media, and that does not take long. He had no appearances in the animated series. He was only animated for commercials. Between those commercials, he seemed like a very important character, but he had no impact in other forms of media. He made no appearances in the GI Joe comic book series published by Marvel Comics. He appeared in the GI Joe series published by Devil's Do, but I don't cover post-vintage comic book series on this channel. If you had this figure, and you loved this figure, and you played with this figure a lot, that's great. But in terms of media, this guy was never a star. Looking at Overlord and the dictator overall, what is this? When I got back into collecting GI Joe as an adult, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the toy line. I mean, I didn't know everything, especially from the later years, but I looked at yojo.com to see what came out after I stopped collecting as a child. I saw a lot of characters I didn't recognize, so I looked at a lot of them to learn more about them. Overlord was apparently overlooked, because I had no idea about this guy until I saw that 1990 commercial where not Cobra Commander was talking with Sergeant Slaughter. Maybe that should be Overlord's real codename, Overlooked. This should be a really important character, he's a challenger to the supreme leadership of Cobra. Yet, he's never mentioned in the same discussion as Destro and Serpentor. The other usurpers were all important characters, but for some reason, not this guy. It didn't help that he was barely used in any GI Joe media. No animated series appearances, no comic book appearances, only a couple commercials, and he was in that video game. He is an enigma, even though I've taken a closer look at him now, I'm still not sure I understand him. Why does he have Wolverine Claws? How does that help him as a vehicle driver or as a leader? Yes, I guess he could scratch people with them, but he could also shoot people because his vehicle comes with big guns. Have you ever driven your car with big Wolverine Claws sticking out of your hands? Me either, but I imagine it would be very difficult. The Dictator is a fine vehicle. It has a fair number of play features. I guess it's kind of cool that you can switch it to different modes, but it's mainly there to compliment Overlord. Overlord being a leader of Cobra should be a deluxe figure. So the Dictator is akin to Serpentor's air chariot or Zartan's swamp skier. How do I rate this set? The figure and vehicle are inoffensive, but uninspiring. It's a bit confusing to figure out how they fit within the larger toyline. On their own, they're fine. I guess I would rate them middle tier. That was my review of Overlord and the Dictator, I hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget Timmer's Charity Drive. Donate to a charity that benefits children, send proof of that donation to this email address and you can be entered to win some stuff. Thanks again to David Jones for donating this set and for your long support of the channel. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, hit the notification bell and share this video with your friends, that's what helps this channel grow. You can find me on social media, on Facebook and Twitter and I have a website, HCC788.com. Thanks as always to all my patrons, I could not do these videos without them. If you like G.I. Joe and you'd like to help me make more videos about G.I. Joe, please consider supporting the channel on Patreon. You can get some special perks there and find out how to decode the secret messages you see in these videos. I'll be back next week with another vintage G.I. Joe toy review. Until then, always remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe.