Micronauts board game

[samurainoir]

[ctc]

>I find the licensing fascinating regarding the micronauts... particularly when it comes to the comic books...

Yeah; it gets kinda weird, but I think a lot of that is 'cos the process of marketing tie-in as we know it was just coming around at the time. Star Wars really lit that one up.

>where Red Sonja does not end up belonging to Marvel (I'm assuming due to her being based on a similar Robert Howard character), yet partly owns Kulan Gath?
>Marty Abrams and co own Micronauts, Acroyear, Space Glider, Galactic Defender, Baron Karza and all the other toy names, but NOT Commander Rann, Mari, Bugg, etc.

I'm thinking it's 'cos at the time; the comics were considered an afterthought by the license holders, so the copyright holders farmed out the established stuff, and diodn't hold the reigns on any related developments....

>Meanwhile Lucas owns Jaxxon and all the other characters created for the Marvel comics.

....but Lucas held on to the merchandaising rights to Star Wars with the proverbial Vulcan death grip. Which he COULD do, because nobody thought merchandaising the property was a big deal. Ooops.

>Plus you also have other toy tie in characters such as Dire Wraiths, Space Knights (just not ROM), Doctor Demonicus and Red Ronin still running around the Marvel U long after ROM, Shogun Warriors and Godzilla have departed.

Those ones are weird though. Godzilla was farmed out to a LOT of different places at the time, which is why you get so many sub-worlds: the cartoon was different from the movies, which were different from the Marvel book, which was different from the Godzilla Gang.... Same with the Shogun Warriors. Basically, all you had licensed were the names and images; everything else fell outside that. And Marvel was cagey setting both in the regular Marvel universe, which allowed them to claim anything extra they added. (This happened sort of backwards years later with the character Circuit-Breaker from the Transformers comic.)

As far as I know, Marvel now owns Rom.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

^^^
Rom would be owned by Hasbro now if we follow the ownership thread of Parker Brothers through from General Mills, to Kenner, to Tonka, and finall Hasbro.

Which one might imagine might open the door up to Marvel action figures since Hasbro has that license.


Marvel did assert their rights on SpaceKnights, but not ROM himself recently. The main character is the son of ROM in everything but the name ROM... ROM's girlfriend Brandy is the mother.



It would seem that Marvel's deal with Hasbro might be similar to Lucas' in that you do have characters created by Hama for example in the Marvel comic that stayed with the Hasbro ownership... non Toy ninja clan members such as Hardmaster and Softmaster, Tommy the son of Cobra Commander (and I think is now Snake Eye's apprentice?), the Oktober Guard.

Marvel UK made a very distinct decision over Death's Head... who was originally created for Marvel UK's Transformers comic... they went back and created a solo Death's Head strip to appear before they published his Transformers appearance so that they could retain the rights and publish a Death's Head comic book owned by Marvel.




Death's Head also crossed over with Doctor Who's Marvel UK strip apparently.

[Bruce Banner]

I remember Death's Head appearing in the Dragon's Claws series... and I also had a few issues of his solo run.