How I got started in this craziness
I had collected Micronauts as a kid back home in Massachusettes. My friend Carl Duponte was the one who introduced me to them. He had Space Glider, Baron Karza with working missiles, Andromeda and few others. I was never able to get the BK with the missiles as it wasn't until a couple of years later when I had a paper route that I could buy my own stuff.
Of course, after a while, I grew out of it and discovered new stuff to get into. Such is life.
Fast forward a few years, and I am in Japan! I had forgotten about Micronauts, had a job, girlfriend, all that good stuff. One day, though, I was looking around the toy department of the local department store (I guess I hadn't forgotten) when I saw some of the 1999 Arden Acroyears. I still remember thinking to myself that these were amazingly similar to my beloved Micronauts. I actually believed that some Japanese toy company had 'copied' the design from Mego! Those of you in the know of course realize how silly that is, but for the sake of my friends who are reading this and don't know why that seems silly, let me just say that Micronauts are actually America's version of Microman, by Takara, the original creators.
At the time of my first encounter with them in Japan, however, I did not know this and couldn't read Japanese. To top that off, I didn't even have (nor had I ever had) a computer, so I was completely lost.
I started customizing right away. The first one was the green guy on the scooter pictured in this blog. It's kind of funny how that started. Living in Japan can be fun, but sometimes, Japanese people have strange tastes (sorry, guys). For example, who would want to eat mayonaise on their pizza? Or put sugar in ketchup and call it 'chili sauce'? It was for this that I had to start painting the little guys. The green dude was originally Green/Yellow (so far ok) and a...brownish gold, which I thought wasn't so cool, so I took the black paint I had left over from my military modeling phase and touched him up.
It wasn't an easy decision, actually. I had been a comic book collector and I liked keeping things in 'mint' condition, naively believing that 'one day these things will be worth a lot of money'. I say 'naively' and maybe that will be something I'll address later, but for now I'm going to leave that one alone. Anyway, it was my girlfriend at the time who convincecd me that I should do it, as there wasn't much point in buying something and leaving it in a state that I thought was inferior if there was something I could do about it. Hence, the birth of my own particular mania, now going on four years.
Of course, after a while, I grew out of it and discovered new stuff to get into. Such is life.
Fast forward a few years, and I am in Japan! I had forgotten about Micronauts, had a job, girlfriend, all that good stuff. One day, though, I was looking around the toy department of the local department store (I guess I hadn't forgotten) when I saw some of the 1999 Arden Acroyears. I still remember thinking to myself that these were amazingly similar to my beloved Micronauts. I actually believed that some Japanese toy company had 'copied' the design from Mego! Those of you in the know of course realize how silly that is, but for the sake of my friends who are reading this and don't know why that seems silly, let me just say that Micronauts are actually America's version of Microman, by Takara, the original creators.
At the time of my first encounter with them in Japan, however, I did not know this and couldn't read Japanese. To top that off, I didn't even have (nor had I ever had) a computer, so I was completely lost.
I started customizing right away. The first one was the green guy on the scooter pictured in this blog. It's kind of funny how that started. Living in Japan can be fun, but sometimes, Japanese people have strange tastes (sorry, guys). For example, who would want to eat mayonaise on their pizza? Or put sugar in ketchup and call it 'chili sauce'? It was for this that I had to start painting the little guys. The green dude was originally Green/Yellow (so far ok) and a...brownish gold, which I thought wasn't so cool, so I took the black paint I had left over from my military modeling phase and touched him up.
It wasn't an easy decision, actually. I had been a comic book collector and I liked keeping things in 'mint' condition, naively believing that 'one day these things will be worth a lot of money'. I say 'naively' and maybe that will be something I'll address later, but for now I'm going to leave that one alone. Anyway, it was my girlfriend at the time who convincecd me that I should do it, as there wasn't much point in buying something and leaving it in a state that I thought was inferior if there was something I could do about it. Hence, the birth of my own particular mania, now going on four years.
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