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ISO: Are you hoping for any kind of tie-in with a cartoon, movie or comic book series? JM: In my dream fantasy world where everything works out, it would be great if these toys became a success and inspired Hollywood to get on the ball and make the Micronauts movie. I mean it would be great if we were part of all that, I don’t know if that will come to pass. Everybody knows that Ken has some kind of Micronaut movie in the planning stages… ISO: There’s a lot of different takes on the Micronauts continuity… JM: That was Ken’s only concern, that if we came up with a whole new story that might be really confusing…but my feeling is that the toy market is a lot bigger than the comic market right now, and the toy market could almost determine, and I don’t mean to be arrogant, but I think we have a much better chance at reinvigorating the line through toys than the comics right now. ISO: Yeah, if you make a badass toy and fans like it, then it opens up a lot more possibilities for a comic tie in or whatever. |
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JM: That’s how I think… ISO: You gotta grab them somehow, and for instance, the Devil’s Due comic started out ok, fizzled, then they tried to work it again and ran into so many problems mostly with Pat Broderick, and it just went down the toilet again…and fans are real picky about what they’re going to accept as “legitimate” story. JM: I have a real hard time getting into anything that’s not the Marvel story. I picked up the first issue of the Devil’s Due but only out of respect or tribute…to me the Marvel story was the real one, but I would still buy the toys. ISO: Yeah, being close to the same age, we grew up reading the comic book and playing with the toys at the same time, so you’re admittedly a big Marvel comic books Micronauts fan, right? JM: Mm-hmm. |
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ISO: So how closely are you working with Ken Abrams and A.G.E. on all this stuff? Are they letting you go off on your own? JM: That was kind of part of the deal, is I didn’t want my hands tied…I’m a pretty big fan, and I know the characters pretty well, and obviously if I totally veered off…I’m not gonna put Karza in a pink dress you know… ISO: Is there a major approval process you have to go through? JM: Not at all. That was just part of the deal, I just wanted to have a lot of freedom on this but yet Ken needed to trust me that I wasn’t going to disrespect the characters or do anything like that. I’m doing it because I’m a fan, if I wanted to do something totally original I wouldn’t have even bothered to get the license. So my goal is to just evolve the characters and bring them up to standards of 2005, but still keeping them look the same. When people see Space Glider, they’re gonna know it’s Space Glider. I don’t know about Lobros, but once they see that his head opens and his brain is in there, well then obviously yeah …but when you first look at him the only similarity is the hand weapons and that he looks like a lobster. |
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ISO: With each figure there is a defining characteristic, with the Aliens it’s the glowing brains and hand weapons, with Space Glider it’s the wing pack, etc… JM: I hope the traditional Micronaut fans my age dig it, but it’s a hard call, you know? Some of the designs we came up with in the beginning just weren’t different enough. They were just too much like the original toys, just sculpted better. I mean they were literally just the same, and I felt we needed to push it further than that. ISO: So you totally weren’t interested in doing another take on re-issuing the vintage toys? JM: No…no we definitely were not going to do that. I guess my feeling is that if you’re a fan of the Micronauts, you probably have most of them. And if you don’t, then the only ones you don’t have are probably the really obscure ones. You don’t have your Red Falcons, your Ampzillas and stuff like that…but how many are you going to sell, you know? 300? |
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Lobros weapon (above) and Space Glider blaster (r) |
ISO: Do you have a production run that you’re shooting for with these? JM: I think we hope to do maybe 20,000 total figures for each series? So that’s about 7000 of each character? ISO: You talked about 3 different colors of figures, will there be any kind of short packed figures? Exclusives planned? JM: There will definitely be “chases”…I don’t think we’ll be able to get anyone interested in exclusives on the first line, but there will be chase figures in the box if we can get it to retail. ISO: Well, if you sell them on-line, a chase figure could be a limited edition kind of thing… JM: We’re making so few of them, even at 7000 they will all kind of be limited…I mean at 7000 with three colors, your just over 2000 per color which makes them more limited than a variant of Street Fighter. So they’re going to be limited no matter what. Of course unless the thing is a home run, and then we’ll go back into production. Because I want the people who are just discovering them to get them… ISO: We touched on this earlier…do you have a wish list on a series 2 and series 3 assortment? |
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JM: I do, but I’d rather not announce it other than Repto would be in series 2. And Acroyear. ISO: Well, you’re missing a good guy in there… JM: Well, that’s the one that’s up for debate. ISO: So your assortment theme is: robot, good guy and monster… JM: Sorta…as it goes, it changes. What we learned on Street Fighter is that put some really good characters in series 1 to get the hype going, but put equal if not better characters in series 2 to lock it in. Then on series 3, you can start to relax a little bit. ISO: Do you have plans for your own characters within the Micronauts universe? JM: Yes…the line is missing females. There’s at least one female character that we’d like to do. The other thing I’d like to do is vehicles. I’d love to do a new Hornetroid! I mean, could you imagine…? ISO: A
6” figure scaled Hornetroid… JM: Could you imagine what that would look like? It would just be…the coolest thing ever. ISO: Obviously, with the 6” scale, the cost would be pretty big…the whole reason these guys were shrunk down to 3 3/4” to begin with was to accommodate for room and to be able to cost effectively make vehicles and play sets…but you would like to do vehicles then? How about a Terraphant? You know how massive and bulky that thing would be? (laughs) |
 Lobros hand painted prototype courtesy of and © SOTA Toys |
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JM: Yeah…(laughs) ISO: Do you have a projected date for the toys to be released? Other than as soon as possible? JM: Late summer… ISO: Do you have any other final thoughts or comments you would like to pass onto the fans? JM: Well, just give them a chance, you know. They’re not your traditional Micronauts. We’re trying something new, but still trying to be completely respectful and true to what the Micronauts are, which to me is the interchangeability, which is such a major part of the design. So hopefully people will not critique them to harshly…(laughs) |
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Many thanks goes out to
Ken Abrams and Jerry Macaluso for taking the time out for this exclusive
interview with ISO 01/28/05 |
