October 21, 2001 CURRENT RUMBLE Vintage American Gokin Keith Feinstein 10.21.01 For as long as I can remember I've had this little die-cast robot with a jewel-like cyclopean eye and a neat scissor-jack kinda mechanism built into him. He was battered, much loved and a complete mystery. I know I had a bunch of them as a really small child, and I remembered that they all had a different gimmick, but I had no idea of their names, the name of the toy-line, or the manufacturer. That was until last week, when I was able to feverishly grab at a (slightly water damaged) display box full of 8 carded, die-cast MICROBOTS! Microbots by Kenner (of the FUN GROUP at General Mills), circa 1971. American Gokin? A few duplicates, so not the entire set of microbots, but a huge, huge find for me. This is literally like reaching back to the times when I was inscribing into my brain some of my earliest thoughts. The feel of them, tiny but solid, in my hand. Looking at the way they "train" together, linking them like Circus Elephants walking wherever Circus Elephants are made to walk, the memories bubbled up. Each of the little robots has a beautiful translucent plastic eye and comes on similar metal bases (although some are a nice sliver and some a lustrous gold). Basically the only components of the robots that aren't metal are some of the workings of their individual gimmicks, the eyes, and the plastic wheels. Nice and heavy, built like the little tank-ish construction machines they seem to have been designed to be. Their designs are elegant really, very American, a very geometric, 60's futuristic hopefulness about them. Looking at the packaging it seems that playsets with adjustable ramps were available that combined, in a building-toy/hot-wheels raceway sorta way, into a Microbot city apparently known as 'Micropolis' (Why Kenner never went after Mego, we'll never know). There were 8 different Microbots (insert 60's beauty-pagent music) Fliptor - apparently his gimmick was that he could flip things. I don't remember having a Fliptor and don't have one now. If anyone knows where Fliptor is, please send him home right away. Everyone's worried about him. Krushor - see Fliptor Hooktor is equipped with the more elegant wheeled-base design in a golden hue, a beautiful metallic green torso and a moveable plastic hook capping off an all-metal, extensible, arm that raises at the touch of the lever on his back. Microbot heads seemed to come in two styles with various shades of translucent plastic making up the eyes. Hooktor's head, seen from t he side is a pie-wedge. His jeweled eye echoes the head shape. Griptor is another one of the pie-wedge headed Microbots. He's especially interesting, having the plain rectangular silver base with a rectangular metal dish at his waist. His gripping claw is held closed by a plastic clip mounted in his torso. Liftor is the one I had as a kid, and is one of the coolest that I've had the pleasure to play with. He raises up to twice his height with a push on the lever on his back. He also has the second (and cooler) type Microbot head, a slant-cut cylinder with a rounded eye and translucent crest up top. As with the pie-wedge types he has little cylindrical metal ears. Klawbor was another of my childhood favorites. My first Klawbor survived until I was in my teens but vanished about that time into the mysterious depths of my parent's basement. I always made Klawbor grip pencils and I'd press down hard on the lever and make him leave "tooth-marks". He's got the more elegant base in gold and his chest is a neat iridescent magenta that they also used on Kranktor. Bullzor - See Krushor Kranktor has an actual working winch in his gut. His crank-arms give him a 'walk-like-an Egyptian' look. Very cool. I also feel that there are a great deal of under appreciated American robot toys (like these Microbots) that many that frequent TBDX would really enjoy. I thought I'd try and share a little of that. If no one objects to much, I'll do it again .  RUMBLE INDEX  |  CURRENT RUMBLE