Glyos System Influences: Mantech Robot Warriors

So just where did the Glyos System (Onell Design) come from? What influenced the creation of the toys and the setting? Well, Glyos System Influences is a speculative series in which I look at toys of the past and try to connect them to today’s Glyos System action figure series.

With Mantech Robot Warriors we start to explore the concept of action figures with interchangeable parts. Now I know the accepted practice when talking about this concept is to point at the Micronauts (see micro-outpost.com), but Matt Doughty (Onell Design) is such a known fan of that series that I wanted to try looking at something different.

And with Mantech Robot Warriors we definitely get different. Arms and legs swap around, and as you can see in this review at CollectionDX there’s just something terrible and wonderful all at once in the design of the figures. And while the look is nothing like the Glyos System action figures, that interchangeability of the components is just a hint at things to come in the toy world.

Comics!

And our journey into the series can’t stop there. As this post at Brent is Angry demonstrates, Mantech Robot Warriors even took a walk into comic land with a mini-series from Archie Comics. The post — and look at pages — is enjoyable, but when digging into action figures it’s the old ad that’s most entertaining. Man, I hope the next time Onell Design creates a Glyos System comic they give us some illustrated ads for the toys.

Back to Toys!

And while interchangeability of parts is important to the Glyos System, there’s one feature of the Mantech Robot Warriors line (and, in fact, almost any toy line of the eighties) that I want to see inspire the Glyos toys. It hasn’t happened yet, but I want a playset! Or, knowing how Glyos works, the building blocks to create my own playset! Rig stacking (see this post) doesn’t quite work, but it could be the start of a concept. And while we certainly don’t need anything as ridiculous as the Mantech Battlestation Laser II (see Zeroidz and A Living Dog), getting a playset for Glyos toys would really help inject that eighties playstyle into the line.

Mantech!

While Mantech Robot Warriors may not have had a direct or powerful impact on the Glyos System (Onell Design) toys I suspect that it impacted some of the creation of the concept and series. And maybe not even directly, since looking at this series makes me think that Mantech influenced the Centurions series (see X-Entertainment), and I’m almost positive that Centurions had an impact on the Glyos System.

So while Mantech Robot Warriors may not have had a large impact on today’s Glyos System, if any, I feel that somewhere behind the curtain of the eighties it sits in the family tree.

Related articles

• Glyos System Influences: Starcom (battlegrip.com)
• Glyos System Influences: Air Raiders (battlegrip.com)
• Review – Glyos System Glyans (battlegrip.com)
• Review – Glyos System Armodoc X (battlegrip.com)