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ISO: So for the first wave, you’re going to do Baron Karza, Space Glider and you had previously mentioned Lobros. JM: Lobros, I know…(laughs) ISO: Yes, very interesting that one. So for the first line you’re just going to hold off and see how it does. Do you have any other characters as a “wish list” you want to do? JM: The character I wanted to put in the first line was Acroyear. But I thought we needed his kind of…fan power, and that the fact that he’s so cool…for the second wave. We need something really strong to kick off the second wave. We couldn’t put Karza and Acroyear in the same line, and I did a real quick informal poll on the Internet on one of the action figure websites. All I said was, “who is cooler? Baron Karza or Acroyear?” That was the whole thing…no mentioning of toys or anything like that…so to me it was kind of a toss up. I mean, I love both of them. Personally, I love Force Commander. I’d love to put him in, but I knew it was between those two. ISO: Well you know, Force Commander would be an easy one to add in…just get a different head sculpt and mold the same body in white… |
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JM: Right, except for us I just won’t go that way. He would be similar, but we just wouldn’t use the same one. ISO: I don’t think fans would mind that too much though… JM: Yeah, but I would. If it bugs me. I try not to do it. With Street Fighter people said, “Ken and Ryo are arguably exactly the same except for the head and color, so just put a new head on Ryo and we’ll have a Ken.” But we didn’t. We actually re-sculpted a lot of the pieces for Ken and it surprised everyone. And I think it boosted our stock a little bit in the fact that we took the effort to do that. ISO: It sounds like a toy company that cares a little bit more about making a quality product than making maximum profit by re-using the same molds in different colors. That’s kind of how the old line was done, you had figures like Space Glider that came in three different colors…do you have plans to do that with these characters? Will Space Glider be more of an individual or…? |
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JM: That’s the theory…for me, because we have to kind of come up with a story at the same time legally, we can’t use the Marvel story, or the Devil’s Due because the designs are totally different so we have to internally come up with our own stories for these characters. So when I do that, I just go all the way back to the original toys. There wasn’t much there in terms of a story, but somehow when I was a kid I knew what the story was. So to me, Space Glider isn’t “one” person. Space Glider is a sort of military corp. ISO: Part of a team…so you will be doing different color versions? JM: Yes, we will be doing different colors, different variations on them. Blue may come with “these” weapons, Red come with “those” weapons, Green with “these”…
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 Space Glider on display (top) at Toy Fair 2/21/05 and new sword and gun accessory (l) |
Space Glider hand painted prototype courtesy of and © SOTA Toys |
ISO:
Will Space Glider have the trademark Micronauts "chrome head"? ISO: A character like Lobros…do you see him as an individual or part of an Alien race? JM: I see him as a kind of foot soldier for that race, and if we ever got far enough I imagine there would be the, you know, “Ultra Lobros” somewhere down the line, which would be the leader of that race. ISO…a “king” Lobros… JM: Yeah. I just have a huge plan; I just hope we get to implement it. ISO:
Speaking of Lobros… |
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ISO: (laughs) Yes…why one of the rarest, more obscure, ugliest, most ridiculous looking characters from the MEGO line…why would you choose him as one of your major bad guys? JM: We thought we wanted to put a “monster” in the first line, because like I said, we’re trying to bring in new fans. And from as business standpoint, even though 90% of the time I like to consider the fan, 10% of the time I look at it from a business and say, ok; we got Karza which in essence looks like a robot. He’s not, but he has a feel of a robot. A big armored, mechanical kind of look. Space Glider looks like a futuristic military kind of guy, so we’ve got those two things covered. We’ve got people who think robots are cool, people who think futuristic military kinds of stuff is cool straps, bandoliers and such what’s the third group? The monster group. Micronauts has great monsters to choose from. My initial instinct was Repto. I’ve got Repto sketches coming out my butt…but then I thought, you know what? Let’s do something weird. Let’s just go with Lobros. I love the fact that his brain is in his mouth! Ours still does that. It still has the opening shell with the brain inside… |
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 Lobros hand painted prototype (click to enlarge) courtesy of and © SOTA Toys |
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ISO: …any chance of a glowing brain?
JM: Oh yes. More than a chance…it’s a given. But…the way we’ve done it, I think people are really gonna dig it. It just looks really cool. People have come in, and have no idea what Micronauts are, and love it. Love what we’re doing with it. I had Sandy Collora design it for me. He too is a huge Micronauts fan/collector. He also directed the movie short “Batman Dead End” and “World’s Finest” ISO: Wow! You gotta be kidding me…that guy? JM: Yeah, he’s one of my best friends from way back when we were kids. He’s also a major film creature designer in the movie industry. He was really excited about doing designs on all of the guys, and he did some stuff for Baron Karza and Space Glider, Biotron, Repto and Acroyear…he did a ton of sketches. But the one we really fell in love with was his first design for Lobros. We were just like, we have to make that figure. I should also mention at the same time that Randy Queen, a major comic book artist who did the character “Darkchylde” he ended up doing most of the design work on Karza and Space Glider. We sat down with both of them, me and the sculptors who are working on this line - because we all have ideas - everybody just sat down at the conference table for a few days and went over ideas and that’s about how it started. We just kept refining and refining and got to where we are now. I can’t draw, but I can sculpt really well. So when we start to get into it, I start to change certain things that work better in 3-D than on paper. ISO: I see that Space Glider takes on a lot of the properties and design elements that the original version does, with the angular lines in the legs and chest, the helmet looks amazing. The same characteristics, yet updated… |
 Space Glider concept art courtesy of and © SOTA Toys |
JM: Thanks. We were trying to come up with back-stories, and there’s kind of an Egyptian theme kind of going on that original line in some ways, I mean look at Pharoid. You can’t get more Egyptian than that! I picture Pharoid as being in league with Space Glider and Galactic Defender and those guys, so we took that Egyptian influence and we tried to carry it over into certain parts of Space Glider’s helmet. There’s just a little bit of an Egyptian feel…there is a scarab on Space Glider’s chest right now, but that’s not going to happen. That’s just too blatant for me. We were working on his back yesterday; his back has layers of armor. It ended up looking like a segmented beetle’s shell, and that’s good for me because it kind of goes along with the whole Egyptian thing. We’re gonna work that in subtly… ISO: So will Space Glider have the wing pack? JM: Yes, probably wont be spring loaded though, but it will open and close. |
 Space Glider partially hand painted prototype courtesy of and © SOTA Toys |
ISO: And with Baron Karza, you mentioned to me you were eliminating the Magno joints, but you intended to have those to begin with? JM: Well, we didn’t know. We loved that concept…I have my old Karza sitting on my desk right now, we love playing with it, but in terms of pose-ability, the magnet joints aren’t actually as poseable as the types of double disc ball swivels that we do now. So we just chalked that up to being a great novelty from 1977, and let it go. The one thing though we are carrying over is if the line does well Karza is designed to come apart at the waist… ISO: For an Andromeda/centaur combo possibility…? JM: …if the line does well, Karza is designed to come apart at the waist so that he can be plugged into something else. ISO: The Karza sketch shows a cape as well, Are you going to integrate that, will it be cloth or plastic? JM: It will probably be cloth. The reason I go with cloth is the same reason I did it on Street Fighter; a big plastic cape will keep him from being able to be posed, it’ll destroy his balance because real capes are not giant and plastic. So it will more than likely be a cloth cape. |
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ISO: Will Lobros have the interchangeable hand weapons that the other Alien characters are known for? JM: Oh yeah. I’d love to do this line for 5 or 6 years, I hope to hit everybody including the other Aliens, and I hope we get the chance. ISO: How far along are you into production as of January 28th? JM: We’re still sculpting, not into production at all. We’ll be sculpting probably until two days before Toy Fair! Then there will be a marathon paint session getting them ready. ISO: Do you have any packaging ideas? JM: Clamshell, although I don’t know what type of clamshell yet. We haven’t even started it yet. Part of the reason being we really don’t know what they fully look like yet, and we won’t know until the figures are done. ISO: How heavy do you think these figures will be? JM: They’ll be heavy…very heavy. If anyone has picked up any of our Street Fighter figures, basically imagine one of those. Probably the heaviest figure for their size because we’re the only company I think that does every single part in solid plastic. That heavy, but with an insane amount of detail. ISO: You mentioned armor…will parts of the armor be removable? Will this carry over with Space Glider as well? |
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JM: Yeah, certain parts will be interchangeable. I picture Space Glider as a part of a military type group, so shoulder pads and things like that will be representative of different lieutenant/corporal different ranks. “Blue” may be a corporal and he may have different shoulder pads than the red guy… stuff like that. ISO: What do you think is more important, the overall look and esthetic of the figure or the pose-ability and articulation? JM: Both. Absolutely equal! With Street Fighter it was pose-ability, with Now Playing it was the look, with this one, it’s equal. What we’re trying to do is set a new standard for the combination of both. I hope we pull it off…who am I to say we have pulled it off…we’ll let the fans decide if we pulled it off or not! ISO: The recent Palisades effort had an addition of “file” cards, collector cards in the packaging… JM: I hope to do that, but I gotta check with Mr. Ken Abrams about creating my own story. That’s a little bit up in the air right now, as is the name… ISO: Do you have a working title? JM: Originally I wanted to go with “Micronauts: Rebirth”, but Ken and Marty shot that down. Now it’s “Micronauts: Evolution”. I don’t know why they shot down “Rebirth”, but they hated it, so we’re going with “Evolution”. And that’s truly what it is. |
