The Bugmen of Insecta, Megabug Gladiators, and Glyos Insects

NOTE: I blame Matt Doughty (Onell Design) for this entire entry. What started as a simple chat on the phone exploded into a conversation about these obscure toys . . . and before you knew it Matt was building stuff and taking pics and I was hammering out words. Yeah, this entire post is Matt’s fault, so blame him if you don’t like what you see.

So now that the Masters of the Universe-styled Twitch action figure is in stores — and generating interest at site’s like Poe Ghostal’s Points of Articulation and Toyriffic — it’s time we take a look at two obscure insect-related toylines of the seventies and eighties. I’m skipping the obvious insect toyline, Sectaurs (Virtual Toy Chest), and instead zeroing in on two lines that I didn’t even know about until recently. Why? Because I can.

Who are the Bugmen of Insecta?

Released in 1983 (or 1984, depending on which source is correct) by Multi-Toy Corp, these unusual action figures known as Bugmen of Insecta are suddenly becoming a line that toy geeks everywhere are starting to investigate. Why? Primarily because of the Toy Story 3 character, Twitch, but also because the designs are just so ridiculously cool.

So what are these? A series of six action figures and two vehicles, the Bugmen of Insecta were a cheap run of insectoid warriors that, if released today, would likely appear only in dollar stores. Not exactly mainstream in any way at all, the Bugmen are both ugly and gorgeous to look at and, unfortunately, very hard to find. Right now at eBay there are two of these up for sale — at $100/each — and a search of completed listings shows only one of these having been available in the recent past. $100 for a cheap action figure? Why would someone pay $100? Well, I wouldn’t and I doubt anyone else will. $30 or so for one of these MOC I could handle — after all these are almost 30 years old — but $100 is too much to swallow.

Both Action Figure Archive and Toymania have photos and information on the Bugmen of Insecta, but neither one goes too far in-depth on the line. Which isn’t a shock, since the toys and manufacturer — Multi-Toys Corp — aren’t exactly the sort of things that generated much interest when they were around in the eighties. But if these had been lucky enough to score a comic book or a short-run animated series there would no doubt be Bugmen fansites online right now . . . but instead these were forgotten to time, only to be loved by those lucky enough to have owned one in the eighties.

Every figure’s card was identical, which is sad since it would have been great to have seen each of the six insects painted up in the classic, beautifully-terrible artwork that we get on the card front. If you look at the card shown earlier in this post I think you’ll see what I mean. The concept is great, the execution not so great, and the entire package is cheesy enough to make me think that this would have fit in perfectly with my old Dungeons & Dragons game sessions in the eighties.

For a look at more figures in packages take a look at the Virtual Toy Chest page. Yeah, if these toys had been semi-popular in the eighties I’d be able to get that front artwork on a shirt. And I would totally wear that shirt. Maybe I can convince the guys at Zombie Liquorice to create us a zombiefied homage of this artwork. Imagine that bug-man in the in a zombie-like version with their awesome colors and art styles. I’d buy that shirt.

And What are Megabug Gladiators?

I’m glad you asked! I didn’t even know about these until this morning when Matt started raving about them. It seems our favorite insane toymaker loves the Megabug Gladiators; especially the Megabug Dragonfly. And I can see why, because how could someone not love a toy that looks as crazy as this thing?

A series of three mechanical insectoid vehicles/monsters, the Megabug Gladiators were released by Kenner in 1979 and they just never took off. Not surprising, since we had Star Wars action figures to keep us happy in 1979, but I’ve gotta say that if I had ever seen these when I was a kid I would have wanted them. A scorpion, a dragonfly, and a spider — all with drivers and tons of gimmicks — these toys are dying for a rerelease. Don’t tell me that you wouldn’t buy at least one of these if Hasbro uncovered the old tooling and put them into production for a short run.

So according to the text on the instruction sheet the Megaspider landed on Earth in 2003 and started causing trouble. So humans created the Dragonfly Megabug and Scorpion Megabug to fight the spider. Yeah, this should have been a comic book.

There’s not a lot of info about this series online — not a shock — but snowcrest.net has a few words. If anyone out there has some of these toys and wants to write a review I’d be happy to host the review; this line needs some attention because what I can see in the photos makes me think many of us would love these unusual vehicles/robotic toys.

And Glyos Bugs?

And now we get to the final chapter of this unexpected and ridiculously long post about insect-related toys. Matt Doughty’s Glyos System series (Onell Design) is a huge construction system . . . if you know how to use the parts. And if there was ever any question at all as to whether or not Matt knows how to use the parts I think these new builds prove that he is the master of his own toy line.

First up is the Bugmen of Insecta action figure, Lord Grassa, created using Glyos parts. That’s a great use of clear bits to represent the wings, and I love how he’s built entirely out of Buildman parts.

Next is Black Widow in the Glyos System. And it wasn’t enough for Matt to build Black Widow as a humanoid beast. No, he also had to give the toy the ability to turn into a spider. Nice! I keep trying to design transforming toys using the Glyos System but so far I haven’t had any luck at all.

Damn, look at the size of that thing! It’s gotta be 60-80 individual parts used in the construction, and that’s just what I can roughly determine by looking at what we can see in the photo. There could be more than that, depending on what’s going on with the body, but regardless of the exact number this is one complicated and fun build.

Huge, huge thank you to Matt Doughty for the toy talk today and for taking time to build these fun toys and take photos for me. This isn’t the way Matt had planned to spend his afternoon — he’s supposed to be working on the upcoming Glyos System toy launch — but as always happens when Matt and I start chatting the insanity leaks out and cool things happen.

More Bugs?

So besides Bugmen of Insecta, Megabug Gladiators, and Sectaurs, what other bug-related toylines are out there? (And the Insecticons don’t count.) Anyone have any ideas at all about other bug action figure toys? Links!