Today we feature the original toy trade catalog given to buyers when Mego launched the Micronauts in February of 1977.
It's a wonderful and rarely seen piece, more after the jump.
Micronauts really was an ambitious and risky gamble for Mego, it's a sprawling toy line with aggressive TV advertising. Luckily kids were drawn to it's combination of Science Fiction Adventure and Construction play. Also, a little movie called Star Wars made the majority of grade school children ravenous for Space toys later in the year. That probably didn't hurt......
My first introduction to the line was a four foot end cap, it was like BOOM! there it was with no warning. I remember being captivated pretty quickly, the Photon Sled was my first purchase.
It's interesting this piece mentions that there were two ranges of commercials, I had wondered about that in our upcoming podcast, which lands this Friday. In it, Jason and myself are joined by Actor/Comedian Chris Tallman and we talk all things Micronauts. I hope you'll check it out.
4 comments:
Micronauts spent some time as my favorite toy line. My introduction was a yellow Time Traveler figure that was given to me by my best friend as a birthday present. The rest of it is history. However I remember the rollout differently than presented in this 1977 roll out. I remember Pharoid, Force Commander/Baron Karza, the Orbiter Vehicles, Battle Cruiser, and the Building Sets as coming later than the rest of the items pictured. Maybe its just my failing memory. Next for me was Space Glider and a Photon sled, but I eventually had almost everything pictured in these pages.
what a great toy line, in so many ways well a head of it's time. the innovation, the articulation and interchangeable parts I just loved em.
I received the Astro station and a handful of vehicles and figures for Christmas of '77 or '78. My Astro Station had the bulbous darts as shown in the catalog, but I've seen pictures with pointed darts like these: http://www.microforever.com/images/connig-4.jpg. Was the Astro Station ever released with these darts or were they pulled after the Colonial Viper incident?
I'm happy to say that I recently bought all three of the Trons- Alphatron, Betatron, and Gammatron, with the original boxes, catalogs, and all working. They now join my Biotron, Microtron, Giant Acroyear, two Time Travelers, Membros, Antron, Repto, and the robot from the Rocket Tubes. I also have a Cosmo-man (Time Traveler lookalike) and Mighty Max (by Tomy), who looks a lot like a Micronaut.
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