M is for Micronauts

Not me at all, 1980, I was leaving school, wearing a denim-cut-off over a leather jacket growing my hair long, gardening and cutting trees at the weekends and going to art collage in the week, I wasn't interested, in bitty, lanky, movey, placky, Hong-Kongy and - looking at some of the vehicles - frankly, whacky, slightly tacky, large-scale figures which didn't tie-in with any frnachise I might have been interested in, but they need to go in that Tag List!

Airfix Micronauts;

And my view hasn't changed one iota since! You see them in rummage bins at toy shows, or looking forlorn and one-armless in charity shops, and I just walk on by! Sometimes one - presumably 'rare' - is sitting on a silly-money BIN-price on evilBay and I just walk on by! But, if they are your thing, I get it, youngster! I'm a man fathered by a child of the pre-Palitoy/General Mills iteration of Airfix, me!

 

The full - well, a potted - history's here (Airfix/Palitoy don't get a mention - bought-in end of line?!);

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronauts

 

The funny thing is you can see the Takara heritage in the robots and smaller vehicles, some of which design-lines would reappear in the Bluebird-Kenner-Tomy stuff a few years later, the tracked robot looking very similar to the grey Tomy version of the  Blue Sharks one-man submersible from Manta Force, or the little robots from the same line.

B is for Billions of Blistering Blue Bi-Trons!

Well, over a dozen, and they're not all blue! Just a quick follow-up to one element of Chris Smith's recent donation to the Blog, purely to get them in the tags and attached, that way, to the previous posts as extra imagery for Pikit Toys/Gordy International.

I know that my storage sample of loose ones has more blues, or paler blues to be precise, and while the camera's flash has washed them out, the front pair of red ones are a discernably darker-red than the rear trio.

 

I mentioned last time how the turrets of the little micro-AFV's can be used as back-packs for the Bi-Trons, whether as turrets (which would require some severe bending forwards and looking at the ground around their feet) or as comm's packs is - I guess - down to the owner's imagination!

 

A small patrol of those AFV's out of their blister-packs! And as last time, a reminder that  there is a resemblance to some of the Votom stuff from Tomy-Takara, beyond the similarity of the line's name!

B is for Battle of the Bi-Trons

You may remember that back in 2020, Chris Smith sent us some robots in one of his donations to the Blog, and at the time I didn't have a maker, but a few months later (2021) I found this set, too expensive, on a Buy-It-Now, told Chris, and put a note on the original post and have since mentioned it cryptically, as and when we've seen bits from it, in other posts, I kept watching until the price came down, and I've now got one, so let's have a look at it! Robots & Space Tanks!

 

Due to the lighting on the day and/or the colours, photographing the whole card wasn't easy, but between the two shots I think I've done it justice, and you can make out most of the elements, the Pikit Toys sets (for that is where we still are, this early in RTM) with this bordered cartouche card-art, were also issued by Gordy International in the USA, with their info' overprinted along the bottom edge.

You get two sets of Bi-Tron robot battle suits, obviously ripping-off several Japanese Anime series including - I suspect - the 'mecha anime' series Dougram or Votoms? One set, here in blue, are the 'good robots' the other; bad!

 

As I wondered at the time, the plugs in the backs are for the turrets which come with the accompanying accessories, a slight daftness, as being single mouldings they can't be bent or animated into a pose where they can realistically fire at anything other than the sky!

Bad 'Bots are red! Whatever colour each 'army' is, you do get four unique sculpts in each quadrigeminal (it sounds more spacey!) team, Only two are carrying weapons, one in each team, here it's the chap on the right.

Early indications were that these yellow versions of the good 'Bots are Gordy and the Blue; Pikit, but then I was reminded that Chris's donation came in three distinct shades of blue (from more than one set, there were duplicates), so I suspect it was a bit more random, or they were issued by another brand, maybe at another time?

 

But this lot did come from the states, with 'normal' red Bad's, and I've seen a second set with yellow 'Bots, also across the Pond, so it may be a 'rule'; certainly a guideline?

Space Taaaaaannks! These are always green/red, and the same oxide-red as the naughty robots, some of which may be copies of the old Kenner Mega Force sci-fi'ish armour? Slightly larger than 1:600 micro-armour, they might be around 1:300?

AT-AT . . . not! There's also a walker, who comes with four jointed legs to be assembled by Junior, and then lost forever in the garden! I'm really not sure on any of the specific origins of any of these models, but I'm sure they are aping other toys, maybe Tomy and/or Takara stuff which never got Western distribution?

For instance, I thought this robot transporter was from the Takara Votoms range (as I pointed out previously; Bi-Trons - Vo'Toms . . . geddit!), but the one I was thinking of, has a rigid chassis and eight wheels/four axles, in-line, but I'm sure I've seen this prior to the Pikit set, so it's probably out there as something else!

Likewise, I think this might be ex-Takara, or certainly I think I've seen it in a Mecha' cartoon, it's a twin-rotor, very sci-fi, heavy-lift helicopter/sky-crane for recovering damaged 'battle suits', and a rather nice thing to find in a rack toy!

The final item on the set's card is an attack helicopter, and given advances/changes in real life attack helicopters since this toy was issued in the 1990's; quite similar to some in service or heading for service now!

 

As rack toys go, with or without piracy, this is a really nice little set if you have the sense of imagination for sci-fi/futurism, or are a fan of anime Mecha's, however, for simpler minds it would be a bit of "shit" to be left on the peg in favour of a farm, zoo or 'Army Men' set, or some Chinasaurs!

N is for New Arrivals I - Figures

All these came in during Rack Toy Month, or the last week - it is a fact that you will never have 'one of everything' unless you chose a narrow field or genre. If you do choose the latter path, you will soon get bored!

This was in the Toysaurus clearance bin, for 49p! I'm not sure it's worth 49p, but I have a Blog to feed so I bite the bullet . . .

. . . as it has a Hummer, and you may remember; it's one of many 'side collections'. The other three vehicles are a '40's Willy's, and '50's 'Wrangler' type (M38? Or something?) my favorite jeep as a kid - Entebee, Aurora's Rat Patrol, Congo, Brazzaville, Yom Kippur! And a 1990's pick-up/'Technical' type.

It also had more Matchbox clones, although the cloner seems to have dropped a lot of the DNA on the lab-floor! Four poses from three different Matchbox sets; about 45mm.

50p from a charity shop last week, he's a softish PVC around 70mm and well detailed, marked 4M, you may remember they produced a nice pirate set with mould-your-own bricks, around Christmas, about four years ago?

Under the eye-glass traces of gypsum-plaster were revealed so he's probably from one of those dig-out sets. Pity the Pucator pirates weren't made in a similar material! He also has the same hexagonal mounting-hole as Galoob/Kenner/Hasbro's Micro-Machines, which both suggests the same vinyl-factory and/or a missing base!

The Hasbro/Takara Battle-Beast has actually been around for a while, but he got left-out in a recent sort, so he's ended-up in this shot. Don't know if the two foam-ball figures (another 50p) are craft or factory, nor whether they are Japanese or Chinese, I began by thinking the latter (Eastern-Chinese muslim Uyghur or Hui and an Imperial court lady), but now suspect the former, Imperial court lady and Ninja?

The final one (10p) is marked Tomy, so might be a poky-man or some TV/Movie tie-in?

 

In the course of the exercise I noticed the Battle Beast was bloody filthy, so had him go into the robot workshops for a service and full valet!

My only evilBay purchase in months was a dodgy-photographed lot of apparent 'chuck-out crud' I was worried might have been shot deliberately to entice, but when it arrived not only was the barman (the only decent figure in the photographs) in one piece, but half the set (Cherilea Bar Brawl) was there!

Although 'Blue Boy' is posed to hide the fact that he lost a hand in a tragic 'sheep-rescue gone wrong' incident! No chairs though . . . but there was also a bunch of Cherilea Romans we will look at as a box-ticker in a day or two and three Britains Musketeers (with two swords, doh!).

V is for Votoms

These turned up in a mixed lot the other month, modern production tied-in to a Japanese Animé cartoon, they are tiny; about N Guage!!

I haven't the faintest idea what any of them are called or who is on which 'side', but they get their own tub in the collection as a piece of the picture of overall toy figure production...Photographed on a 'moon-base' that I suspect came with a Kit as part of the stand for a space ship, or the base of some kids scientific educational toy type thing? Anyone recognise it?

This is clearly a recovery/robot launch vehicle of some kind, with a hook-equipped hydraulic lifting-arm and flat-bed. I side-lit with a red bicycle lamp to give an effect of far-off battle. Click on the photo and tell me the guy in the right foreground isn't sulking because the robot lost an arm and a leg!!

These are the robots, or; are they battle suits? Something that looks like a Gundam anyway (and; No, I don't know what a Gundam is either!!). Anyone tempted to rush out and buy some would be advised to glue them, as otherwise they will keep falling apart, and with most parts smaller than a 1:76 figure, they are easily lost (still - it gives the recovery vehicle a purpose!!).

I love the elephant-eared gun-platform!! There's another one in grey. Made by Takara, they are here photographed with an HK copy of the Matchbox US flame-thrower for scale.

Votoms - Wikipedia

[Now I know more than I needed to!]