Late 70's toy question...

[judexavier]

Not sure if this is the right place.

There was a line of small (2" ?) poseable "robot/men", with transparent bodies, removable plated chest-plates, and human-looking plated heads.
This series also expanded into a series of 3 brightly colored "aliens" with various interchangable weapons. One was red, one was green with wings and a tail, and a purple one had 4 arms. I believe there was also atleast one diecast version, with some sort of flip-out winged jetpack.

I am drawing a blank as to what they were called or who made them.
Seems they were sold around '77-'80 or so.

 

[Misfit Toy]

Micronauts?

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

Yes, Micronauts, released by MEGO in the USA, but developed originally by Takara, a Japanese company. Also some reissued in the USA under another name by another company in the mid 1980's.

 

[judexavier]

Yes! that was it, thanks!

 

[Adm. Bonz]

I had a crapload of them when I was a kid. Ships and stuff too, if I remember correctly.

 

[Chaos Descending]

If I am not mistaken, the original Japanese toy line that the Micronauts came from (Microman) wound up being the same toy line that the Transformers eventually spawned from as well.

 

[captcalhoun]

partly. Transformers came from 2 Japanese toylines, Diaclone and Microman. Soundwave and his spy cassettes, Megatron, Shockwave, Blaster and Perceptor were from Microman. Prime, Magnus, Ratchet/Ironhide, Sideswipe/Red Alert, Sunstreaker, Tracks, Jazz, Prowl/Bluestreak/Smokescreen, Hoist, Hound, Inferno/Grapple and Trailbreaker and the Seekers were all Diaclone. IIRC, so were the Dinobots and Constructicons. Jetfire was a Valkyrie VF1S from a manga toyline and Roadbuster and Whirl were from something else. The mini-vehicle Autobots were from a diaclone-related line.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Well, Diaclone was a spin-off of Microman, and then you had Car Robots which was a sub-line of Diaclone, and from Car Robots came the Transformers you mentioned. Jetfire was from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which was re-worked as Robotech in the USA.