Microman

The Japanese toy company Takara made a toy series in 1974 called Microman that was based on their Henshin-Cyborg1 figure. This figure was in turn based on the Hasbro toy company's G.I.Joe doll. The Microman toys were made in a smaller 3.75 inch figure that had a similar level of articulation to the 12 inch GIJoe. These smaller toys had the advantage of being cheaper to produce as well as allowing a play pattern that included vehicles and accessories that the larger size prevented for cost reasons.

The story of the Microman toys in the US is a very tangled web of toy lines and companies. When the toys were imported into the US they were divided into different lines by different US companies. In the US these toy lines became very popular in their own right. Two popular US toy lines to come from the Microman toy molds. The first is the 3.75 inch action figures and some accessories imported by the Mego Corporation that where known in the United States as Micronauts. The other US toy line adapted from Microman started when some smaller transforming vehicles were imported to the US by Hasbro and combined with another, similar Japanese toy line known as Diaclone to become know as Transformers.

Some toy collectors recognize these toys as popularizing the 3.75 inch size action figure that Fisher-Price Adventure People, Star Wars and eventually even G.I.Joe (the original inspiration for the line) changed size. The uniform size across many toy lines in the 1980's influenced the play patterns of the children who used them. Because the toys had similar size the children could play using toys from several toy lines together.

In 2004 the Takara company started importing Microman toys to the US again under the original name.