Does a Micronaut/Microman collection book exist?

[mazinz]

Does anyone know if a Micronaut/Microman resource book exist? I am sure something must be out there with a ton of pictures from the toyline's still on going production?

I love Micronauts and their amazing design and great use of colors. Later on in years from magazines and online sites learning /seeing the huge amount of items out there and variations (mostly all Japanese), I would love to know if a book exists that displays most of them

[geotroid]

Hmmm. There aren't any dedicated English language resource books specifically for Micronauts.

There are several incredible Japanese language books that catalogue Microman. I'm not sure what you've seen already, but I'll list the usual tomes:

"The Official Guide of Takara SF Land" (With CD-ROM)
Microman 30th Anniversary Since 1974-2004
Microman Style (Historical Microman figures since 1974)
Microman Perfect Works (2003 + line only)
Microman Magne Powers (1999 Magne Powers line only)

There are a few Japanese toy trade magazines with Microman features. The most notable is the Roman Album Hyper Mook 6. On a personal note, this mook is responsible for my Micro-resurgence. A friend brought a copy back from Japan back in early 2000 and it blew my mind ;-) Several Hyper Hobby magazines also have some decent Microman showcases.

Japanese Quanto magazine also has a few Microman features, and they worked closely with Takara to promote the newest release when the 2003 body style was in continued production.

Regarding English language publications - I'll try my best to list the pertinent publications that I have & whatever else comes to mind (Readers, please chime in with anything else I missed!)

John Bonavita's "Mego Action Figures" book has an OK Micronauts section. It's probably the best one in English language "book" form.

Tomart's Action Figure Digest ran a multi-issue Mego Story which is available for purchase as a packet insert collection (Part 7 has the Micronauts).

Tomart's #132 had a Micronauts Evolution cover (The aborted line from SOTA). And who can forget issue #60 which featured a grinning Marty Abrams on the cover showing off his gold plated Geag statue ;-)

Super 7 issue #13 had the Ken Kelly Antron painting on the cover and a nice Micronauts section by collector Dave Waugh.

Ron Pringle's Micropola #00 is a nice fan-made magazine with great info. Number 1 was a CD-ROM only edition.

There are a few other fun, fan-made English language publications out there but nothing of the "catalogue/resource" type.

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Chris Farley: "Mother of mercy, I don't speak Japanese!!!"

[mazinz]

WOW! Thank you for the huge bit of info. I had a feeling it would mostly all be Japanese (and that is fine with me). I have never really checked to see what was out there in book form, but you listed some resources that I am going to try and track down

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

There are tons of good sites in the internets. There was one that went year by year and listed all the Microman sets; but I can't remember the addy. (Hopefully Ray's reading this....)

Don C.

[geotroid]

For those who haven't yet seen these sites, below are some of the best Micronaut/Microman reference links on the web:

Inner Space Online homepage

Microman Forever

Micropola - A Micronauts/Microman Fan Site
http://www.micropola.org/archived/index.html

RocketTubes LJ

http://www.edit.ne.jp/~sashida/MICROMAN/micro.html

There are TONS of links to other Micro tidbits (Art, toys, customs, blogs, etc etc) out there on the web. Bryan Wilkinson (rocketubes.livejournal) used to maintain a portal that gathered all Micro links alphabetically by site, but it became too time consuming so he retired the portal. Its still up at a new address for posterity:

Rockettubes.net

Micropolis Rocket Tubes Transit System

Sadly, a large number of those old linked sites are now defunct. The portal pre-dates modern sites like Flickr, Picasa, and Photobucket, so there is still an enormous amount of fan material to explore via other sites.

But no web site beats the esoteric feel of a good book.

Oh, wait, time to get an iPad. . .

[mazinz]

thanks again.

I was able to find a few books on ebay (if you check do not search under book, they have them listed under the toy section) and I will be checking out those sites.

For the defunct ones, the pages might still exist using archive.org's wayback machine which is a insane webtrawler that archives websites going back as far as 1995. Just enter the url for what it did exist as and see if it comes up

[Bill]

Dave's Innerspace site is a favorite of mine. There was a book planned, but things never panned out. Not sure if Dave is still interesting in doing the book at this point, went and bought himself a house. Responsibilities can be annoying some times.

[palitoy]

I was excited and tried to help out in the initial planning stages of Dave's book, sadly, there hasn't been much rumblings about it in years.