In this video I'll take a look at everything that's happened with the Micronauts property since the end of the origiinal Mego toy line. Follow me on Instagram - / gojitron Check out my Redbubble sticker shop - www.redbubble....
The basic figures- Time Traveler, etc, were great. As a kid, I used them side by side with my Star Wars figures. The more complex figures were fun, but broke so easily, they were hard to even play with.
As a little girl, I loved Micronauts! I wanted the metropolis so bad but it was too expensive. As a consolation prize the next year I got the rocket tubes and those were such a huge disappointment! As a whole, though, this was my favorite genre of toys when I was little. Right now, I’m am under employed nursing student and money is pretty tight. If I ever could, I would buy up a bunch of Micronauts and their accessories and make a huge city of them. I picture a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood with the city scape all laid out with figures. I particularly loved the alien figures specially. I wanted the Wass man but he was never available in my area. I had the aunt the brain in the flying reptile. I love them!
THE MICRONAUTS cartoon series has been made. HASBRO are just sitting on it. There was also a MICRONAUTS live action film to be written and directed by Dean Debois. The last MICRONAUTS project mentioned by HASBRO was a computer game version. There was also a MICRONAUTS motion comic which used sound effects.
Just found this. Very well done! I worked as a freelance consultant and designer on some of the Palisades project and was glad to see the events around that accurately recounted. Thanks for putting together a well-researched and comprehensive history. Next year is the 50th anniversary of Microman, so hopefully we'll see some kind of news in the months ahead and more recently Marvel announced finally having the rights to republish the original comics. so things might get a tad brighter, though I agree with you overall assessment of the future of the property. I hope I'm wrong, but I just can't imagine a revival that has much to do with the original way the toys and comics were presented. But at least Takara has done some wonderful things with the original property over the past half-century.
I only had one Micronauts toy as a small child - the Crater Cruncher with a blue Time Traveler. But I became a massive comics fan in my early teens and amassed an almost-complete collection of the Micronauts comic, which I came to adore. (So I am beyond stoked that Marvel will soon be releasing omnibus editions.) Fortunately, I was also able to acquire a purple/gray Acroyear and yellow/gold Space Glider from Palisades ... along with the 1.5 "Marvel Acroyear" and "Arcturus Rann." Fingers crossed that we may see something else down the road...
1.5 Rann was one of my proudest contributions on the project. I literally took the way I saw the comic colors mapped onto the toy directly from my childhood imagination. :D
given how many stumbles the micronauts line has been victim to over the years, it has always really surprised me that no independent start ups have made the move to muscle in on their abscence and sell new figures in the vein of the vintage toys. we've seen similar things happen with so many other vintage toylines over the years, MOTU alone has spawnes a myriad of homage copycat toylines in its long dormancy. yet micronauts and even microman proper somehow elude that same devotion.
What a fantastic vid! Micronauts were a pre and post SW joy for me as a kid. Loved the aliens and the vehicles. Toys were magical. I've been watching for a reboot. I'm actually glad that cartoon you highlighted failed to see the light of day; it looked terrible from what I could see of the concept art.
I had all the Micronauts toys and even some X-Men vs Micronauts comics which were very good. I collected Micronauts from the time they hit the market in '76 to '84, eventually owning all of them. I also had the reissue time traveler which came with this sort of easy chair with a plastic canopy. I loved that one. Very simple but cool. The way to bring Micronauts back is with a good story, perhaps bringing them into the Marvel universe via Ant-Man or something else.
I was born a little past the line's heyday. I would have loved to get these. If you sold these today, kids would play. Just tell the parents they would get five toys in one.
Enjoyed the video but you forgot to mention the prototypes that was made of Commander Rann, Bug, Acroyear and Huntarr in the Marvel Legends style. They were showed off in 2020 and were suppose to tie into the Micronauts - Enter Marionette live action movie.
The only place that was ever reported was a website called Sneak Peek. The report was not verified by any other source and one of the photo they used was of custom Micronauts figures. No evidence of the existence of anything official.
You should check out the Japanese Microman figures. If you like the vintage Micronauts then the vintage style Microman figures will feel like a huge extension to the line. And the Microman reboots were some great figures.
@@betaraybob I have dipped into Microman and have a couple of small figures - can't remember their names but will definitely explore further - thanks 👍
As a side note: Marvel just released a hardcover Omnibus, reprinting roughly the first 30 Micronauts comics. They are intending to do 3 volumes that cover all of the Marvel comics.
Great history! Cool toy line I know almost nothing about, though the skinny blue guy with chrome head looks familiar. I think I may have had him as a kid.
Great video, thanks for making it. I am a life long heartbroken fan of the micronauts, both of the toys and the comic. Heartbroken because we’ll never see them as part of the MCU, and because every comic made by other companies have been disasters! The best thing to happen to the property in years was the release of the IDW artists edition of the original Michael Golden art, incredible book and worth every penny if you can find it!
Thanks for this Gojitron. When you think about all the failure it just seems like marketing blunders and production cost increases. If Hasbro were to get Marvel onboard and do another line of comic books it might help, but i havent liked many of Marvels reboots in the past 20 years. Those original toys and comics are rhe best. I hate to say it but ive lost hope after seeing Antman Quantumania and seeing absolutely no clever ties to the Microverse. Great video.
Awesome video with a great information about one of my favorite toy lines of all time. Thank you. It's such a shame what happened to Palisades. They got so involved with the community at the time and would keep us posted with updates all along the way and apologized to the community for what happened with the first wave. If Hasbro ever wants to do something with the Micronauts license (which they may not while they have Star Wars and don't want to have two sci-fi lines competing against each other from one company), I think they need to start over from scratch, they can still draw some ideas for the character designs from the vintage figures but start all new lore, characters and figures. Trying to appeal to the vintage Micronauts fans would be a mistake in my opinion, and I'm one of those fans but we are way to small a demographic to really support a reboot (and we aren't getting any younger). Targeting a new, younger fanbase is the way to go to keep the line alive in the U.S. Any plans on doing a video about the Microman lines?
Candyland??? i don't recall that, but it sounds like a horror stories...like kids trapped in a candy line where they are in heaven at first, but then start noticing their friends are disappearing. Little did they know that Candy Land eats you.
Thank you for making the this video. Micronauts seem to be the forgotten toy line. Micronauts were one of my first toy lines. I had almost the entire line (minus the city). Unfortunately, they were apparently lost in one of my moves. Thanks for the memories.
Micronauts = Maxiproblems! Loved this line as a kid in the UK, although we never got the full line due to UK toy companies cherry picking which items they wanted to market owing to costs (for instance we only got the Time Traveller and Pharoid figures because they were all plastic). As you point out, the copyright issues are so tangled it seems impossible to separate them out in order to achieve anything realistic in terms of product. At one point I even entertained a glimmering hope that the references to 'The Quantum Realm' in the MCU might bear some fruit, but the reason you become pessimistic in your old age is that it saves time. But can you imagine the Micronauts officially being part of the MCU? It would be relatively easy (if costly!) to re licence Microman from Takara and market a line mixing re releases from the classic line, reimaginings specific to the MCU and the modern Microman toys to create a truly spectacular line! Meanwhile, back in the real world... 😂👍
I love Jerry's vision of the Evolution line, so much so that I call one of my versions the 'Evolution' line. My Space Glider, from that line, takes a lot of inspiration from Jerry's Space Glider. I have hope that The Micronauts will come to our current and future generations that they can have the imagination garnering toys that we had. Till then, I'll keep printing them till I get them just right.
I remember seeing the initial comic run up on the wall on comic book shops when we would drive into the city to the larger comic shops in like 1982, 83. I would get my 1982/83 joe comics with my dad. My brother who was 4 years older would get the model kits there...ones we couldn't get in my small town. Light sticks - Rambo III : "what's that? ...It's a Blue light.. What does it do? .. "It's turns Blue." :)
Great to see more Micronauts RU-vid content. A very informative and well researched video. Some bits of info I didn’t know like Palisades plan to add new characters to the line. I would loved to have seen these. I wonder if any concept art exists. Such a shame the movie and animated series never came to fruition in the end. I came to the micronauts brand later than the 70’s but I have to say, they are some of my favourite toys and deserve a reimagining.
I never had any Micronauts. In fact, the first I knew about them was when I started watching Toy Polloi. I did recently pick up a Takara Microman/Godzilla crossover figure, where the Microman is meant to act as the actor and fit inside a rubber Godzilla suit. Problem is, it's incredibly difficult to get the figure into the suit without breaking something. Several rips and cracks later and the whole thing ended up in the bin out of frustration.
Honestly consider Hasbro’s SDCC release one hell of a closure. I give the designers a lot of credit going the the level of detail that they did. It was a fun ride while it lasted!
INCREDIBLE VIDEO! So much information. The detail of the history presented here is incredible! As a kid, I actually had the Mego Repto and my brother had the Rocket Tubes. Repto was my first introduction to the 5 mm port system. Later, I do remember getting the Interchangables Magna Steed. You are correct about the poor quality. I do remember the Palisades releases too. I almost bought the Repto, but I heard of the quality problems and did not buy it. I wanted to remember the fun I had with the original and not be disappointed in some new re-issue. Again, GREAT WORK! Just a fantastic look into the world of the Micronauts. (I personally think the Name Micronauts sounds better than Microman anyway.)
I have read elsewhere that there are 2 reasons why we are not getting new Micronauts. Reason 1: failure of the GI Joe live action movies. This was the first step in the "shared universe" movie franchise. Reason 2: Shelf space. Hasbro owns some MANY properties, they can't afford to lose or give up shelf space to a less selling line. As usual, Hasbro is it's own worst enemy.
The main problem with a Micronauts movie is... who's the audience? On one hand, you have guys who like the Marvel "Microverse" universe they created, whereas I find it kind of... Well, I don't find that as interesting as the "Microman" origins, where you have these clear-bodied, chrome-headed, advanced humanoids who've built a shining utopia... that's been disturbed by an alien presence (or even corruption from within due to mutations!). It's like... you COULD make a Micronauts movie, but one half will be happy, another half will be sad. And I know... I KNOW that the way Hollywood is now, that whatever they put out will almost certainly be drivel. It won't be until a few years from now, when AI lets us make our OWN movies on-the-fly that we'll ALL be happy in our personal bubbles of which Micronauts you see them as.
And when it comes to the toy line, more or less the same thing. For me... ...If Micronauts can't be disassembled with a screwdriver to swap their parts around... If Micronauts aren't made in fun, candy clear colors... If they don't have a lot of chrome heads... I don't want'em. Part of the fun as a kid was feeling like you learned a CRAFT, actually using real TOOLS to take them apart and swap limbs. If you brought a toy exec what I just said, they'd STILL screw it up, thinking I meant, "Oh, they just want limbs that can be popped off and popped back on". Just like with movies and AI, it won't be until WE create our own personal toy lines through advanced 3D printers (with the help of AI again) to print our own figures out that we'll be happy.
Hasbro should sell to Marvel and just do a quantum realm microverse movie follow the story of the first 14 issues of the original comic .. it could be like GOTG
at this point I'd rather a Lords of Light revival since that series never got a fair shake to begin with! every subsequent attempt at reanimating the remains of the micronauts always results in diminishing returns. micronauts overal has become a picture perfect representation of the ship of thesus. if you remove the micronauts from marvel, deny them of their supporting cast, fail to reissue the vintage toys, and then completely remove them from their source material to top it all off can they even still be considered micronauts?
