Grandstand Clones

CORRECTIONS: Thank you microbry and geotroid. Microman is not an area I’m super familiar with so I’ve corrected my, ahem, mistakes.

Grandstand Toys made quite a few Micronaut like toys that were licensed to them by Takara, much like the Micronauts themselves were licensed to Mego. I never encountered them as a kid, but thanks to the magic of eBay, I’ve managed to run across a few.

A reader sent in these pictures of the Deltarian Figher. I initially thought it might share some parts with a Giant Acroyear, but it turns out this is actually a Microman toy repackaged for North American consumers. The figure it comes with is a 1982 New Microman M-11 Salam, which I also initially thought was a Pharoid. According to microbry, the only real difference is no GITD chestpiece with a pharoah face on it. So I wasn’t too far off. There were a couple of different releases of this set in English, including some by Takara themselves before the Transformer license came along.

Geotroid added there were in fact knock offs, which I have seen, so that is why I probably assumed this was one as well.

I love that the Convertors tag line is “Nothing is what it seems!” You can see it getting closer and closer to “More than meets the eye!”

2 thoughts on “Grandstand Clones”

  1. This was an actual Takara Microman toy they licensed to Grandstand: http://microforever.com/cosmicfighters.htm It doesn’t share any Giant Acroyear parts. The “Pharoid” is actually a 1982 New Microman M-11 Salam (only real difference–no GITD chestpiece with a pharoah face on it). There were a couple of different releases of this set in English, including some by Takara themselves before the Transformer license came along. I own 1 1/2 of these from two different releases. 🙂

  2. Also, the US Pharoid was sky blue with white accents, not dark blue with black accents 😉

    Like Bry indicated, this is an official Takara licensed product. However, there are some bona fide bootlegs that went into “back door’ production in Hong Kong, including one simply labeled “Convertible Cosmic Fighter” and one that went into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “Mini-Mutants” line.

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Classic toys and ephemera from the 70s