These days, it seems like any pop culture related item from the 80s and 90s is getting revived. As nostalgia becomes weapons grade material, Micro Machines probably won’t be the last toy line to get a second shot at life. That being said, the brand did make some pretty distinctive products in its heyday, as anyone who played with these vehicles can attest. Anyway, it’s happening. And they should be on the shelves before the 2020 holiday season.
Galoob, the parent company of Micro Machines, did pretty well for itself in the 90s. In addition to Micro Machines, they produced the “Star Wars Action Fleet,” which was a sub-brand under the Micro Machines banner. The above picture has Luke’s Red Five T-65B X-Wing residing inside their Hoth playset, which came with its own exclusive Snowspeeder. Hopefully Hasbro, which bought Galoob in 1998, will read this post and get inspired to revive this lineup too, because 3.75 inch sized ships weren’t really a thing back then and still aren’t now. Although thee company still makes at least one similarly sized ship, it’s under the Kenner name. That’s odd, right? Because as far as I know, the Kenner ships were much larger.
Micro Machines also featured Star Trek ships too, although they were more in line with 1:64 scale toy cars. Today, Mattel is the company responsible for smaller toy ships, and like Galoob, they just lumped them in with their car lineup. Just go to any decent toy aisle at Target or Wal-Mart and you’ll see Star Trek and Star Wars ships under the Hot Wheels banner. The white Kelvin Universe Enterprise is a modern Hot Wheels product, while the gray original series Enterprise is a genuine Micro Machines product from back in the day.
Anyway, I definitely had one of the Super Van City playsets when I was little. Not sure what happened to it though. Young millennial parents will no doubt be interested in buying something like that for their kids. And the grandparents can likely relive their memories of purchasing Micro Machines for their kids too. Wicked Cool Toys will actually be jump starting the brand. Hopefully they’re successful, but as the above picture demonstrates, Mattel will apparently make a toy vehicle based on pretty much anything.
It’s always good to see some toys make a reappearance.
While it’s a commonly overlooked, don’t forget you’ve got the Generation X people (born between approximately 1965 and 1980) that would have been prime targets for some of these items, as either to whom the advertising was aimed or as parents of the target audience.
Yeah, most Boomers would have been late 20s/early 30s when these were big, no?
I’m glad GenX gets forgotten, as we don’t get dragged into pointless generational bickering.
I don’t think Gen X is so much forgotten in the bickering, they just get lumped into boomer or millennial depending on their appearance or opinions.
That’s actually a pretty good point. I know I’ve been called both by people younger/older than I am.
When I verified the year span earlier, one website had populations of each “generation”. Gen X outnumbers Millenials in the US by only 11 million people.
AndRememberIfItDoesn’tSayMicroMachinesIt’sNotTheRealThing!
Super van city brings back bittersweet and awesome memories. On one hand I was overjoyed to get it for my birthday, as I had it on my wishlist as far back as Christmas 6 months earlier, but “Santa” must not have gotten my last minute request. On the other hand, I soon learned that Micro machines =/= hot wheels/matchbox/ect. And I had exactly ZERO micro machines or anything else in the scale super van city was made for. My collection of what we’re primarily 1/64 cars would bottom out on the hills, wouldn’t fit in the car wash, wouldn’t fit on the crane, wouldn’t work on the drag strip, and I didn’t have a helicopter. “Vehicle collection sold separately” was a disclaimer I seemed to ignore.
But I made the best of it, I used my imagination and simply played with it as a giant van, and took advantage of its folding design as a destruction feature ala crash test dummy toys(which my nostalgia meter pegs significantly higher for), I would roll it down the stairs, crash it into walls, and crash other toys into it. Good times.
MicroMachines put out some fairly eclectic models – a Merkur XR4Ti, a Subaru Baja, among others – These are the only StaWags they made as far as I know.
Meh. Overpriced and overrated. I was more of a Hot Wheels/Matchbox/Ertl kid.
Great post. I think I would have appreciated these immensely more if they pursued more detailing and authenticity in their execution. The oversized tires and wheels relative to the car bodies, and the exaggerated body styling (compared to the actual cars), lent a sense to me that the loose level of styling accuracy allowed the manufacturer greater leeway using inferior reproduction standards.
As it was more challenging to affordably make a smaller scale look like the real cars. The solution? Give them cartoonish details and proportions!