Micronauts are a line of action figures from Mego, actually a rebranding of Japan's Microman series of toys, which lasted from 1976 to 1980. After that, Microman spawned New Microman and then Microchange; many of the Microchange toys became part of the initial Transformers range (specifically the ones that turned into objects, like Megatron (a gun) and Soundwave (a cassette player); many of the Minibots were also from this line). Microman was revived in Japan in 1999, then again in 2003 (the 2003 series has been aimed towards collectors rather than kids).
The toy line provides examples of:
- Chrome Champion: All of the "human" figures still had shiny metal faces.
- When the toyline was briefly revived by Palisades in the mid-2000's, a special edition of the original Space Glider figure was produced, colored to match his comic book counterpart — with a blue jumpsuit and yellow stripes, and a flesh-colored head with brown hair.
- Easily Detachable Robot Parts: The toys' main selling point was their modular parts. It was "The interchangeable world of the Micronauts!"
- Mechanical Monster: Ampzilla, the Hornetroid, the Terraphant, and others.
- Palette Swap: Baron Karza is pretty blatantly Kotetsu Jeeg, except black and red and with a slightly different head. The comic design is somewhat different, but the toy is for all intents and purposes a repainted Jeeg, down to the magnetic joint-based Detachment Combat and a centaur mode.
- Something-Nauts: The name "Micronauts" literally means "small sailors" (which was really not descriptive of the toys). Clearly, the "-naut" in Micronauts was just taken from the words "astronaut" and "cosmonaut". (They were pretty small, though.)
