2006-10-04 - THEY CAME FROM INNER SPACE

The year was 1976, and Mego was ruling the toy world. Their "World's Greatest Super-Heroes" action-figure line, combining both the Marvel Comics Group and DC Comics licenses in a series of cloth-costumed 8-inch-tall dolls, had been an unexpected runaway smash hit, allowing the company to branch the line out into a number of different genres, from horror to pirates to cowboys to legends, resulting in a company at the height of its success, both financially and creatively. As a result, Mego was looking to branch out in a new direction and take a few risks along the way.

Looking to launch a science-fiction-oriented toyline, Mego turned to the Japanese toy company Takara, acquiring exclusive North American rights to their extensive "Microman" line, a huge series of action figures, robots and vehicles, all centered around a universal plug and socket system that allowed nearly every figure and vehicle to be disassembled and combined however the child desired, allowing for an unprecedented level of playability. Mego also incorporated some of Takara's other toys that weren't part of the Microman line, a magnetically jointed robot toy called "Iron Hero" and his horse. Where Mego's true genius came in, though, was in two places: the concept and the marketing. (And I promise this all comes around to comics eventually, so just hang in there if you're not a toy buff -- I promise, it'll be worth it.)

First off, Mego didn't just blindly reproduce the Japanese toys under their original Japanese names and likenesses. Instead, Mego redubbed the line "the Micronauts," or more formally "The Interchangeable World of the Micronauts." The central character in the line was a transparent fellow with a silver head known as a "Time Traveller," who would populate the Micronauts' world, manning the various vehicles, playsets and headquarters.

And here's where Mego's other brilliant concept came into play: Mego was the first toy company to make use of variants as a sales tool. So rather than just having a single Time Traveller available, there were a rainbow of different-colored Time Travellers hanging on the rack at your local Toys R Us, subtly reinforcing the notion that Time Traveller wasn't just a single character, but instead a virtual army, and you needed to buy a pile of 'em! And at only $1.98, you could afford to, too.

Further reinforcing that was the first batch of Micronaut vehicles, each of which came with a Time Traveller as well, be it the Ultronic Cycle, the Photon Sled or my personal favorite, the Crater Cruncher.

Also available were other action figures, such as Galactic Warrior, a die-cast metal figure with a spring-loaded cannon, and the Space Glider, another die-cast metal fellow with a set of spring-loaded glider wings and a snappy blue plastic helmet.

Rounding out the line were two large motorized robot companions for the Micronauts, Biotron and Microtron, both of whom could be disassembled and rebuilt as vehicles for the Time Travellers to ride on (including a disturbing bit where Microtron's head converted into a plush driver's seat).

And because every toyline needs a bad guy, there was Acroyear, probably the coolest-looking of the initial release, an armored type with a mysterious featureless face, large circular glider-wings, and giant wheeled boots (and like every other figure, he came in a variety of colors, encouraging kids to buy an army of them).

Since the Time Travellers only stood about 3 ¾", it was affordable to market large playsets and vehicles for the line, like the Mobile Exploration Lab, a kind of rolling high-rise, and the Stratastation, a kind of Micronaut public transit system with a motorized car that would circle a track surrounding a central tower. However, the coolest vehicle/playset in the line was undoubtedly the Astro Station, a kind of floating RV for the Micronauts, with seating for four, a cryo chamber, missile launcher (most Micronaut toys fired spring-loaded "safety" missiles with giant rubber swallow-proof mushrooms on the tips) and best of all, an ejector cannon that actually worked, firing Time Travellers across the room with surprising height and velocity.

When the Micronauts flew off the shelves in '76, a second line quickly followed in 1977. There were several new 3 ¾ inch figures, the Egyptian-themed Pharoid and the new bad guy Acroyear II (who with his thinner, more fragile frame and bewildering ball-bearing hands never looked quite as intimidating as his predecessor).

An array of new small vehicles made their debut, like the Neon Orbiter and the Aquatron, which actually sped along on the water quite well thanks to an ingenious little battery-powered propeller. Several large vehicle also premiered -- Giant Acroyear was a towering robot that also converted into a series of smaller robots and vehicles, while the Battle Cruiser could split into several smaller vehicles, holding three Time Travellers, and even featured a crude wired remote control.

But the real star of that second line was the aforementioned magnetically jointed figures, in the form of the ultimate Big Bad in the Micronauts universe, the villainous Baron Karza.

Sure, he had a good counterpart in the ivory-colored Force Commander, but he always seemed like an afterthought. It was Karza who was the star, along with his horse Andromeda. With the magnets in Karza's hip joints, you could attach his torso to Andromeda's body, making a truly wicked-looking Karza centaur.

(Even weirder, you could replace the horses' legs with wheels. Go figure.) With his jet-black finish, orange appointments and slightly medieval-styled helmet Baron Karza just looked like bad news: sleek, streamlined and dangerous. (Dangerous was right: not only were the spring-loaded missile launchers in Karza's torso and forearms torqued out to the hilt, firing the projectiles with clearly unsafe speed, but the chest missile and fists were tiny in comparison to the earlier mushroom-tipped safety missiles. It's a wonder we didn't hear about kids nationwide putting out each other's eyes back in '78.) Force Commander had a horse too, a white stallion named Oberon, but they just didn't have the panache of Karza.

There was another factor in the Micronauts' success that can't be ignored: the beautiful art direction on the package design.

For the first three years of the line, the Micronauts packages made use of very striking optically blurred close-up photography of the toys usually set against a black background, giving them a modern appeal that was like nothing lese on the toy shelves (in fact, I'd speculate that it was this that led to the creation of the comic -- but we'll get back to that).

Speaking of the Micronauts' third year, 1978 was more of a building year than a real expansion of the concept, with only one new 3 ¾ figure introduced, the enormously helmeted Galactic Defender. Instead, Mego went whole-hog with vehicles and playsets, offering not just repaints of Biotron and Microtron (named "Phobos and "Nemesis") but also the Star Searcher, a kind of armed-to-the-teeth Micronauts Winnebago that held an army of Time Travellers, and a series of new headquarters sets like the Galactic Command Center and Microrail City, which utilized a plastic-rivet construction system that was murderously difficult to put together. Nearly three decades later and my thumbs still hurt just thinking about it...

Sensing that the line needed refreshing, with sales growing stale, Mego rejuvenated the Micronauts in 1979 with some new adversaries: an all-new assortment of 3/34 Aliens: Antron, Repto and Membros, three Day-Glo colored creatures with glow-in-the-dark removable brains.

Also introduced were some wildly creative vehicles for the new critters, the insect-themed Hornetroid and the pachyderm tank the Terraphant.

In keeping with their previous emphasis on package design, Mego hired fantasy artist Ken Kelly (probably best known for his album cover work on KISS' DESTROYER album, as well as hundreds of EERIE and CREEPY covers for Warren Publishing) to paint the package art for these new characters.

This batch of toys were ingeniously designed and manufactured, with the Hornetroid in particular being a marvelous piece of sculpting and engineering, but they weren't enough to postpone the inevitable. The year 1980 saw three more Aliens see very limited distribution (including maybe my favorite Micronaut in the whole line, Centaurus, a very cool-looking horse alien), before the Micronauts were officially no more.

However, although Micronauts were no longer being produced, they weren't out of the public eye. Why? Because back in 1978, a man named Bill Mantlo walked into a toy store and saw those outrageously eye-catching packages, and was suddenly struck by inspiration.

But we'll have to get to that next week.

And if you'd like to see all of these amazing toys up close, you should head over to Dave Waugh's marvelous Web site, Innerspace Online, the source of many of the above images.

Scott Tipton managed to find a complete Centaurus at a convention not long ago, and snatched it quick as a hiccup. If anyone out there has an Astro Station they're willing to part with, I'm listening. If you have questions about Micronauts or comics in general, send them here.

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