Constructing a chronolgy of release for Mattel's Shogun Warriors action figure line PART 1: Zargon but not forgotten

One thing I have learned during my time studying old toy robots and the people whose lives they've ruined is that there are fans of anything but not fandoms for everything. The difference is when it comes to long dead toylines, to be remembered at all is to have fans but to be remembered accurately is to have a fandom. Mattel's Shogun Warriors exist in a popularity limbo where they are not as famous as the Transformers yet not as reviled as the GoBots so people remember them but don't remember much about them. The Shoguns lack the army of roboplastic historians and archaeologists necessary to relate their gospel accurately and refute falsehoods perpetuated by younger, less informed generations of robotards. The websites and blogs I've read where people share their memories of Shogun Warriors illustrate how these toys exist in a cloudy fog of pop culture memory. It is a fog where with the passage of time important details fade like a renegade rocket fist flying away into the distance, leaving behind an incomplete robot without an arm, just as history is incomplete without facts.

I THINK I CAN PROVE THEY CAME IN 1977

Anyone trying to do some online research into the most basic facts about Shogun Warriors will come across as much conflicting contradictory information about them as there are webpages devoted to them. They were over two feet tall! They came out in 1979! Or was it in 1978? Or maybe 1977? They cost $40! As this dimension's Nostrodomatron it is my duty to try to help clear up some of the confusion around Shogun Warriors. (I say "try" because with the way I write I will probably end up confusing everybody more and setting back Shogun Warrior awareness by 25 years.) So join me now my fellow Macrocranians as I explore the myths and mysteries of the Shogun Warriors toyline by constructing a timeline of the toyline's existence built from solid sources like Mattel toy catalogs, product assortment numbers, old newspaper ads and even NSFW porn. Although if you think about it, it's not really a bad thing if your fans remember you having more inches than you really did.

IS THAT YOUR ROCKET FIST IN MY FACE OR ARE YOU NOT HAPPY TO SEE ME?

Pointing out that someone wrote something wrong on the internet about Shogun Warriors is a delicate matter so I want to make it clear I am not picking on the specific webpages I cite that have the questionable or incorrect information. Instead I'm using them as examples of commonly held beliefs all over the internet. I'm not saying the webmasters of these sites are the ones who are the source of the misinformation-I use them because they are merely representative of it. The reason I didn't contact specific webmasters to correct them individually and spare them the shame of apparent ridicule from my audience of five readers is because so many of these same mistakes are made all over the internet that I'd have to correct multiple sites and just addressing them all here in one series of posts is easier. And since there is no definitive compiled source of this information, why in the world would those guys believe me anyways? Short of building a time machine there's no way I can prove what I've come up with is 100% accurate either. But it is my hope that even if I perpetuate misinformation, it's well sourced misinformation. So getter your Draguns and jump in your Solar Saucers because it's time to take on the Shogun Warriors!

I Mizu more than I thought I would

My plan for last weekend was to hit the library again repeatedly, looking not only for old newspaper microfilms but also for fellow vagrants and vagabonds willing to learn the ways of the force if they are to come with me to Alderaan. It was also the weekend of the Mizucon, one of those Japanimation conventions that I was hoping would be like most anime conventions I've attended and not actually be about anime. Although I don't watch Japanimation anymore I still like going to Japanimation conventions because they usually cater to a wide enough group of people that I can find something unJapanese I enjoy, like panels about 80s cartoons or Transformers or hot sluts dressed like slave Leia. Unfortunately at Mizucon my luck ran out and it ended up being an anime convention that was about anime. All was not lost, though, because I at least ran into one guy in a cardboard robot costume for my "pictures of me with guys in cardboard robot costumes" collection. Also, one beggar I ran into outside of the Wendy's did express some interest in going to Alderaan.

I HAVE IRON MAIDEN RECORDS OLDER THAN MOST ANIME FANS (AND IN SOME CASES, THEIR MOMS)

The Mizucon crowd skewed waaay younger than me and I found other people my age were there not as attendees but in the capacity of convention organizer, convention guest, guy selling stuff in the dealer room and somebody's mom. However I can get away with hanging out amongst the 12 year olds in Iron Maiden shirts and the slutty teenage girls dressed as Pokemon hookers because my hair is mulletic enough that people might think I'm cosplaying as a rockstar from 1983 or as a beardless Billy Mitchell. If I knew Iron Maiden shirts were cool again I would've worn mine, but I stopped doing that because lately Iron Maiden shirt wearing doesn't mean you're a fan of Iron Maiden so much as it means you shop at Hot Topic.

I spent the weekend hopping between Mizucon and the library where I was looking through the old newspaper ads. I found one for a store appearance by Darth Vader in 1983 and it got me thinking about fandom and how fortunate kids are nowadays to have conventions like Mizucon. When I was a kid someone dressing up like a cartoon character for a guest appearance at the mall was as close as you'd ever get to meeting your cartoon hero in real life. Nowadays kids are really lucky because they can go to these conventions where the actual people who do the voices for their cartoon heroes attend as guests. The opportunity to interact with these people in a meaningful way is usually lost on the average attendee who is not mature enough to ask anything beyond retarded "Order something from Burger King in your cartoon voice" dialogue requests or the same "How do I get into anime voice acting" question that got old in 1999. I'm a dork for criticizing the kids today though, because when I was a kid my most meaningful interaction with my hero Darth Vader amounted to me peeing my pants.

GOING OFF WIKIPEDIA, "MIZUCON" MEANS EITHER "WATERCON" OR "CONVENTION OF SEXUAL RELEASE"

I went in the dealer room with the false hope that dealers at an anime convention would have cool new imported stuff like Shin Mazinger on DVD or the recent plastic Voltron but the dealer room ended up being what I imagine a really bad Japanese pawn shop looks like. They were selling shogun era melee weapons, realistic toy guns, Pocky that tasted stale enough to be from the shogun era and hats that look like Pokemon is eating your head. There was also cartoon porn which I thought was pretty wild but apparently was disappointing to some attendees because it was all old stuff. I knew I wasn't at Botcon anymore when one Pocky eating kid with a hat that looked like a Pokemon-shaped brain tumor looked through the porn DVDs and said, "I wanna get something but I've seen all of this already". (I usually reserve the term "kid" for children under ten but I will make exceptions for 20 year olds wearing Pokemon hats.) I wondered how it was possible he'd seen it all given that there were hundreds of DVDs and he didn't look like he'd lived long enough to have that many hours not just of free time but of years above the legal age to watch that stuff. I looked over at him and thought he should be a guest of honor based on his Japanese porn expertise, or at least put on display as "20 year old guy who masturbated more last year than most people do in a lifetime".



HERE COMES SINTERNIKLAAS HERE COMES SINTERNIKLAAS

Since I'm not much of an anime fan I didn't think I'd find any of the guests interesting so I skipped their panels except for "American Cartoons and Japanese Anime" which I thought was going to be a fan panel because the schedule didn't say who was running it. It turned out to be a full hour with guest Mike Sinterniklaas, an industry professional who not only voice acts but also directs. It was great because Mike was animated and enthusiastic and his experiences on both sides of the microphone were fascinating to listen to. There were only around a dozen other people in the audience so I was able to ask a lot of questions, which I did once I realized this guy was really interesting. I've only seen a few episodes of anything he's voice acted in so I didn't know his work from a character standpoint but I was still totally captivated by the guy because of his perspective of the industry. He's like five guests in one because he's worked in many different aspects of animation. After spending the whole weekend avoiding the guest panels I felt huge amounts of regret once I realized how great Mike was. There's some consolation in knowing his time at the con was mostly in panels alongside the other guests so I probably got the highest concentration of Sinterniklass possible without having to visit the North Pole.

HOW I HAD FUN WAS A MIZTERY TO ME (BUT I DID)

For a fringe fan of anime who didn't really go to Mizucon I sure had a good time at Mizucon. I'm sure that real anime fans and people who dress like cartoons would love it so I say it's worth the $35 pre-reg I paid. Being several heads taller and a couple decades older than the other attendees didn't matter because who pays attention to me when there's so many Pokemon hookers anyways. My one regret is not doing my homework beforehand. I should have researched the guests and gotten more of a background of their accomplishments to properly appreciate them. I also want to say the staff was terrific and not at all like the people running Otakon who I got a real adversarial vibe from. There was one Mizucon door guard guy who worked with us when my wife (who did not register) wanted to go buy Pocky in the dealer room (which was only for registered attendees). I won't say how he resolved our situation because I don't want him getting into trouble but the guy was proactive and resourceful and we were very thankful for his help. On the down side I wish they would have stuck to the video schedule as posted on their website and not pulled all the cartoons I wanted to see from the video rooms. Thanks to that I mizzed out on seeing GI Joe Resolute. But I'll see that stuff eventually and I'm happy with what little time I did spend at the show over the course of the weekend. Next up is Animation Supercon in October and this time I'm a little more familiar with who those guests are.

The wages of Shin is about 35 dollars

A new Tranzor-Z cartoon in Japan came out called "Shin Mazinger Z-Hen" and I know you're thinking, Hey that sounds like it translates into 'Tranzor-Z Chicken Show'. I was thinking the same thing and that's why I haven't seen it yet but it comes highly recommended by a blogger I like who's smart about Japanimation. The big news is it's getting shown at the convention I'm going to this weekend. Yeah, I decided to pre-reg for the Mizucon because although I am 35 and have nothing in common with the anime crowd and I have no idea who the guests are and me attending this convention sounds like a big train wreck, the programming in the video room looks robotastic. With two days to go the organizers still haven't uploaded any panel info so I don't know if I'm going to have a reason for going beyond cartoons and the dealer room. Hell, I don't even know when the convention is starting. It sounds like chaos but don't worry, my fellow Macrocranians. Even if I have to bribe a Pokemon hooker I will figure out where I need to be to watch Tranzor-Z Chicken Show and two other Japanimations I've been interested in seeing at the con-Detroit Metal City and Gundam 00. It may seem kind of dumb to pay what comes out to 12 bucks a day to sit in a room watching cartoons that might suck (and that I could torrent for free) but I will keep an open mind. I don't want to rocket punch my chickens before they hatch.

The Rocketfistoral College! (asking not what Godzilla can do for me, but what I can do for Godzilla)

There is a looming crisis on the American political horizon and it affects anyone like me who has ever written crappy Shogun Warriors blog entries on the internet. I first became aware of it as I was comparing my age with how old other people were when they accomplished great things like setting the record for winning money on Cash Cab or creating Star Wars or becoming President of the United States. Someone's already beat me to the first two but I just noticed our current president is 48 years old and the youngest (Roosevelt) was 42 when he took over. So it is very possible that within the next decade we will elect someone of my generation who grew up playing with Micronauts, Shogun Warriors, GoBots and/or Transformers. Hell, knowing my generation we might actually elect a Micronaut, Shogun Warrior, GoBot and/or Transformer. Even scarier is I fall into the age window and meet the minimum toy robots collection requirements necessary to become the future roboplastic president. I realize there are people with lots better roboplastic collections than me (and better grasp of English) but I think what it's going to come down to is how good a presidential candidate's toy robots blog is. I tell you this now-if I get beat out by some robotard who writes shitty blogs about Shogun Warriors then America gets what it deserves, but if I win I'm sending that dude and all his blog followers to Guantanamo.

YOU CAN BE MY SECRETARY OF ROCKET FISTING

A realize a president of the United States has a lot more serious stuff to worry about like health care reform, overthrowing the alien bases on the moon and building a fleet of spaceships so we can conquer the universe but I swear the first thing I'm taking on as president is really trying to sort out the history of the Shogun Warriors. Have you noticed what a mess online Shogun Warriors information is? Trying to find out even simple stuff like what year they first came out can yield different answers depending on the site visited. If you google for behind the scenes, investigative reporting style Shogun Warriors info it's actually very difficult. I think it's because in the decades after the Shogun Warriors toyline died its fans became fickle widowers, either forgetting it existed at all or elevating its faults and weaknesses to legendary extremes with their fuzzy memories. (Those who forgot it went on to become Star Wars fans, but instead of "fickle widowers" I'd call those guys cheap slutty fan whores.) So what I am currently doing is amassing a list of people on the internet who know what they're talking about when it comes to Shogun Warriors. It is a short list but when I am president those people will comprise my full cabinet of toy robots coaches. This is not unlike my collection, which is comprised of cabinets and couches full of toy robots.

YOURZINGA IS PROBABLY BIGGER THAN MAZINGA

I am entering a new era in my blogging where I want to be taken more seriously and not just because I might be appointed some future president's Secretary of Rocket Punching or whatever the joke was last paragraph. I have a post coming up where I'm going to be taking a hard look at some of these mysteries surrounding the Shogun Warriors line and I don't want dumb jokes and snark to ruin it. Shogun Warriors deserves better because so few people write about it that anything written carries lots of weight. My post needs to read like it was written by the Tom Brokaw of toy robots journalism. I am feeling a bit self conscious because I lack the credibility that comes from having a big collection-the entirety of my shrine to Shogun Warriors is one Godzilla and a three inch Dragun with a broken head spike. If some guy who owns a 23 1/2" inch Dragun swears Shogun Warriors came out just last year I'd run away and hide and never respond to his comment like someone with a really small Dragun. Yet these mysteries must be confronted! Mysteries like what year did they really come out? How much did they cost? How tall were they? Why were they canceled? Is Dragun a cross-dresser? I will very soon examine and attempt to answer these questions with well referenced, irrefutable proofs like old newspaper ads, links to Plaid Stallions and even shocking eyewitness accounts. To give you a tantalizing taste of the incredible informations I've uncovered I'll answer the Dragun one right now! YES HE IS.

My favorite Transformers podcast is not actually a Transformers podcast

I want to quickly mention that Greg and Rob over at the Paunch Stevenson show have been hitting it out of the park lately with the segments they've been doing on Transformers. They're not a dedicated Transformers-only podcast which means they have a different and I think fresher perspective than the other hardcore Transformer shows. I like to joke that what makes them different from Transformer podcasters is Greg and Rob actually like Transformers. Of recent shows I'd say episode 134 where they discuss Rhino's and Shout Factory's DVD releases and episode 137 where they slow down Unicron's lines from the 1986 movie are my favorites.

Vintage Space Toast Tour Miami part 3: The Decline of Micronautern Civilization

I COME NOT TO PRAISE MICROTRON BUT TO BURY HIM

Last time on Vintage Space Toast Tour Miami I touched briefly on the popularity of the Micronauts toyline during its debut year of 1977. During my last trip to the library my focus was on collecting Micronauts ads from 1978 through 1980, which is a period encompassing both the height of the line's popularity and its demise. These 3 years are also well known as the debut of the Kenner Star Wars action figure line. With both lines being primarily science fiction themed assortments of spaceships, robots, action figures and aliens it is obvious that there was competition between the two.

Lionel Playworld 12/10/78

It is easy to jump to the conclusion that the decline of Micronauts was somehow linked to (if not directly caused by) the rise of Star Wars. This is a popular belief as evidenced by sites that make statements like "the Micronauts were quickly eclipsed by a line of toys that Mego turned down, Star Wars figures" and "Micronauts simply could not compete with the Star Wars juggernaut" But is this really true? Did Star Wars really kill the Micronauts off and was the end of the Microverse as swift as some Star Wars historians think? As we look now at some of the highlights I found from 1978-'80, the newspaper ads will tell a different story entirely. I know Ben Kenobi says many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view, but that's because he's never been face to face with the irrefutable truth of a 1979 Lionel Playworld newspaper ad for the Micronauts Mega City.

NAUT SO FAST!

If anything the explosion of Star Wars onto the pop culture scene helped the Micronauts and every other toy in the sci-fi/space toy genre on retailer shelves in 1977, especially since there were no Star Wars action figures on retailer shelves in 1977. The public loved Micronauts as evidenced by how much money they made for Mego that year and how much advertising the line saw from major retail chains (like this K-Mart ad from 24 November '77). Nothing better illustrates to me the popularity of the Micronauts and their elevation as a favorite seventies pop culture franchise as the following October 1978 Woolco ad for Ben Cooper costumes. In it there are all the big children's stars of the 70s. In the company of the Micronauts' Baron Karza are Spider-Man, Pink Panther, Holly Hobbie, Mickey Mouse, the Shogun Warrior Great Mazinga and of course Darth Vader. Somewhere along the way history has forgotten that Micronauts was just as big as all these other licensed properties. Why are the Micronauts today perceived as being so unpopular back in the seventies? I think Star Wars is being given too much credit here.

Woolco 25 October 1978


IT'S NAUT OVER YET

Then 1978 came, the first year Star Wars figures were available at stores. If it was true that Star Wars brought a swift and total end to the Micronauts franchise then 1978 would be the year it happened with the public's appetite for Star Wars at its absolute peak after the drought of '77, right? NAUT! Instead what I saw in newspapers from '78 was retailers running not just more Micronaut ads, but the biggest, most extravagant Micronauts ads I've ever seen. I was absolutely elated to find the following Lionel Playworld ad from November '78 because of the huge assortment of Micronauts it shows. Most of the line art here exists in other ads but this is the only place I've found line art for all three die cast vehicles and the two Micronaut horses.

Lionel Playworld 30 November 1978


Micronauts was still very much alive during the holiday shopping season of 1978 as evidenced by all the great ads being run for it well into December. One ad run by the Gimbels chain of department stores on December 15 of '78 comes to mind as evidence that retailers were still very comfortable spending lots of their ad space on Micronauts. If Star Wars was the sure thing and Micronauts was such a loser, I guarantee retailer support of the line would have dropped by October. But here they were still running big Micronaut ads. One could argue that strong wholesale orders of the line in '78 were due to its success in '77 when there was no competition. I'm still willing to examine the supposed catastrophic impact Star Wars had on the line even if it means discounting the first two years of Micronauts' success. So would 1979 be the year Star Wars finally killed the Micronauts? To paraphrase Ben Kenobi (badly) I'd say even in 1979 Micronauts were not dead – at least, not yet.

NAUT, ANYMORE?

In my experience there is a somewhat diminished ad volume in '79 but that's not to say 1979 was devoid of new exciting Micronauts ads during holiday season advertising. There's a Gold Circle ad from November 25, 1979 that features new for '79 toys like the Hornetroid and the Mego designed Alien Invaders. There's also this Lionel Playworld ad from October featuring the Terraphant and the Micropolis Mega City, which at 579 pieces was truly the Omega Supreme of Micronaut city playsets. This ad is somewhat interesting because the Mega City is supposed to have been a Sears exclusive playset according to all the online Micronaut resources I've read. For it to be sold at Playworld would place it in the "ads that should not exist" category like the Micro Transformers ad from 1988, the Diakron ads not from Toys R Us and the Combattler V Zargon ad. Speaking of things that should not exist, this ad also features Karrio the infamously awful carrying case. My favorite online criticism of Karrio was from one guy who wrote "Krappio would probably have been a better name."

Lionel Playworld 25 October 1979


NAUT, THE END

Zayre 11/09/80

1979 stands in stark contrast to 1980, which is the year Micronauts just about disappear from newspaper ads. This may not be retailer apathy towards the line so much as it was a symptom of Mego's financial difficulties. Micronaut fansite Innerspace Online reports that although Mego had toys ready for release they couldn't get them to the retailers. This is supported at least circumstantially from the lack of newspaper advertising in 1980, indicating to me that retailers either didn't get the toys or didn't advertise that they had them. This is really sad, especially coming off of '79 which saw the release of some of the biggest Micronaut sets ever. Until I find more, the only 1980 ads I have are two from Zayre that ran on 09 November. One was for the Battle Cruiser and the other featured the Rocket Tubes as shown here. Both ads state the toys are "special purchase" items which is a term that usually indicates a one time, no raincheck situation where the store will not be getting anymore from the manufacturer. Once I get these ads up at the Micronauts section of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace these two will represent the end of the road for Micronaut empire. (Or would that be the end of the tube?)

VIDEO KILLED THE TOY ROBO STAR (OR DID IT?)

Seeing how Micronauts lasted for three very strong years mostly in the shadow of the Star Wars empire it is very hard for me to conclude that it was killed off by competition from any competing action figure line. To say that Star Wars was directly responsible or even played any significant part at all in the demise of the Micronauts is to look for connections that aren't there. I think a more accurate assessment of the situation would be that Mego's own financial problems did the line in. Micronauts "died" at the height of its popularity just when it was shifting into high gear with new original designs and a lot of retailer support. Mego had yet to exhaust Takara's designs and was coming up with their own. It seems to me the line had staying power and a bright future especially since Takara would eventually develop the toys that would come to be known as Transformers from the same product line that birthed the Micronauts. Micronauts was aborted by Mego's bankruptcy, not murdered by Darth Vader movies. To say otherwise is simply naut thinking!

Robotardation without representation! OR: Talking not about my generation, but about what my generation's not talking about (and then getting them to)

This weekend I went to the library to look through newspapers from the butt end of the 1970s for old toy robots ads. Part of my pre-library preparation is finding podcasts to listen to that are related to the stuff I'm going to be researching but I knew in the back of my mind I wouldn't find much when I googled stuff like "Shogun Warriors podcast" and "Micronauts podcast" and "Microsexuals" hoping to find discussion about late 70s toys. The retro toy podcast conundrum is that the kids podcasting about toys today aren't old enough to be interested in talking about toys from before 1984, but the podcasters my age are mostly interested in talking about cooking or their babies or how movies today aren't as good as Star Wars was in 1977. To my surprise I did find one episode of a thirtysomethings-hosted podcast called TV Ate My Dinner where the topic included ROM and Shogun Warriors. It started out awesomely enough with the audio to ROM's commercial, but it didn't get very deep into the toys beyond talking about how "Spaceknight" would be a really cool thing to name a baby. Their toy episode may just be an aberration, though, because I've listened to some of their earlier podcasts and those have in-depth, well researched conversations on topics like surviving zombie attacks, the Smurf/communist conspiracy and how Harry Potter movies aren't as good as Star Wars was in 1977. It's kind of what I expected (and honestly kind of what I was hoping for).

COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO ROCK

I think if podcasts were around in the late 80s/early 90s then podcasters would have discussed Shogun Warriors, Micronauts and ROM the Spaceknight all the time (or at least as much as Transformers and Star Wars are podcasted about now). It's frustrating to me that nobody's done comprehensive, in depth podcasts about late seventies toy robots newspaper ads. This is the part where most people would transform their dissatisfaction into motivation to do their own super retro Shogun Warriors/Micronauts/ROM themed toy robots newspaper ads podcast. Not me, though. This is the part where I transform my dissatisfaction with podcasting into motivation to finish my time machine so I can send Adam Curry back to 1985 hoping he can invent podcasting twenty years earlier than he did. Displacing Adam Curry in time like a Terminator seems like a dangerous idea but I figure the worst case scenario is we end up living in an alternate reality where there's only one podcast ever-THE HEADBANGERS BALLCAST.

HI I'M STEVE AND THIS IS MY SON, GODZILLA MACROCRANIOS

There is another option if I want to make the podcast dimension I'm currently living in more Micronaughty with little to no effort on my part. I think I will search out podcasts run by people my age that are accepting topics suggestions and then I'm going to demand Shogun Warriors and Micronauts. I don't care if their podcasts are about cooking or naming babies. Worst case scenario is I end up getting a cooking podcast about making cakes shaped like Dire Wraiths or a show about which Shogun Warrior name is right for my baby. Pretty much the same situation I've got now, just more of it. It's kind of what I expected (and honestly kind of what I was hoping for).