Micronauts, Star Wars, Barbie, and Spider-Man for Christmas, 1977
The November 27, 1977 issue of the Daytona Beach Morning Journal includes this article by staff writer and grandmother Anne-Hicks Marsh, with a teasing of information on toys of the season to help parents know what to buy for Christmas that year. The Kenner Star Wars “Early Bird” set (see rebelscum.com) gets a mention, but it’s the revelation that Micronauts were selling better than I realized that really caught my eye in the article.
“Meantime, local sellers say say they ‘can hardly keep Micronauts in stock.” Time Travelers and Acroyears are about $2 and Galactic Warriors and Space Gliders go for just over $5 You can also buy a space station from which Micronauts can woop forth into lashing intergalactic battle.”
(NOTE: Lack of punctuation and phrases like “woop forth” really are from the article. Were there scanning problems, or did Daytona Beach have some strange practices in the seventies that I don’t understand?)
Additionally, the article goes on to mention how Barbie is “fading fast,” making us realize just what a survivor Barbie really is. The latest news that Barbie sales are down (see this Fortune article from January) could be signs of a permanent change for the toy’s place on shelves, or maybe it’s just the sales cycle repeating itself yet again. I’ve no idea, but I did find it entertaining that almost forty years ago Barbie was “fading fast” and then went on to earn billions of dollars in the time since then.
Related articles
- Affiliate Link – Toys of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s (battlegrip.com)
- Mego and Star Wars: A Galaxy Far, Far Away… (thefwoosh.com)
Yep! Even after Kenner got its toys out on shelves as immediate top-sellers, Micronauts held its own as the #2 spot for boys’ toys sales for most of its run. The only reason it fell from grace in the 80s and became so largely forgotten or misremembered was because Mego went under due to crooked management getting caught in fraud over other shady business at the time, and that it never had a cartoon or movie tie-in. Sales were still doing fairly well up until that point, and Mego was preparing to shift the toys into a more fantasy-themed direction next when they were cut short.
The Marvel comic (which was already only very, very loosely based on the toys) survived long enough though to overlap briefly with the launch of Transformers…there’s some suspicion that the cancellation had much to do with Takara’s attempt to reclaim ownership of the series during that period and the various trademark conflicts that resulted and would continue for the next couple of decades.
@microbry – There’s a 2010 book — Toy Town — that goes into deep research on the Hong Kong plastics manufacturing and toy industry. In there is some info on Mego that’s quite enjoyable.
I’d not yet thought to search for “toy bankrupt” in the Google Newspaper Archives. That should lead to some fun results.
I will have to look into “Toy Town”, that sounds quite an interesting and pertinent read, thanks!