vladbad - Tumblr blog

vladbad · 1 month ago

Text

1999 Interview with Iwakichi Ogawa, Creator of Microman

The following interview was translated from the fantastic 1999 Tokuma Shoten publication, Roman Album Hyper Mook 6: Henshin Cyborg and Microman Victory Project

President and Representative Director of Russell, Ltd. Iwakichi Ogawa

From here on [in this section of the book], we’ll introduce the inventors behind the history of creating the Takara original SF toys. Iwakichi Ogawa, having been involved in the development of Henshin Cyborg and production of Microman himself, is a living witness to the history of the Takara SF toys. His eyes shone like a young boy’s as he shared with us the behind the scenes story of these two major heroes.

–Ogawa-san, you handled making prototypes, right?

That’s right. I was originally in my college’s economics department, with a focus on marketing, and nothing to do with development work, one might say. But you know, I loved doing it and learning everything after joining Takara, so that by the time of Cyborg and Microman, I had begun to sculpt my own prototypes by hand.

–You only started creating models after you had joined Takara?

Precisely. I had a subordinate, a nice guy who had been in his university’s art club who I told, “teach me, too.” (laughs)

–That must have been nice, getting to paid to learn on the job. (laughs)

You mean playing every day from morning to night, and getting paid for it, right? (laughs) Oh, I played, all right. When establishing the (Japanese localized) rules for “The Game of Life”–adapting this thing which came from America–it couldn’t be anything but fun coming up with the “directions for each space”. If someone complained at the time, “oh, all you’re doing is goofing off,” I would answer, “no, this is work, you see,” but that was a lie. (laughs)

–Well then, please tell us about the time Henshin Cyborg was created.

As you are aware, the forerunner to Henshin Cyborg was Hasbro’s GI Joe, which began around the time I was on “The Game of Life”, so I was not directly responsible for that. “GI Joe will do well” was Takara president Yasuta Satou’s insight. So soon we were all on GI Joe. It was at a point when sales had declined a bit that I remember one fellow suggested, “let’s make a transparent one”. So the molding section at the factory followed up and produced one. Once it was assembled, the reaction was “hey, this looks pretty cool.” It had thick areas where the screws were inside it, right? From the side, it had a really amazing look to it. Though parts of the joints were made out of nylon, I could work with that.

The young guy responsible (he was around 24-25?) had incredibly good sense. Being transparent was just how it started, with it being plain and hollow, of course we needed to make the insides. But at the time, Takara was focused mostly on producing games and Licca-chan dolls, so there was no separate department yet for boys’ toys. Therefore, I wound up taking some kits of motorbikes that the model companies Tamiya and Arii were making at the time which had chrome-plated parts, and put those bits inside. So the first Cyborg we previewed at an industry trade show had a motorcycle engine for his innards.

At that time we stated the head was still under development, and just used a metal spring inside it. When the actual design was made, it was created by Dan Kobayashi (known since for creating Gaiking and Danguard Ace among others).　He did all the prototyping for the head and the finer detailing. Though the prototype was made in wax, I noticed quickly that it was green. Normally the wax is brown but when I asked him about it, he said, “sorry, that’s my secret.” It was a custom mix of waxes that was extraordinarily fine and easy to texture and tailor. I managed to get some and started using it in my own prototypes. Kobayashi-san worked with me on the prototypes for Microman as well. The prototypes for the Microman breastplates were made from a kind of plaster. Kobayashi used this plaster because silicon was expensive in those days.

Well, it’s actually called “rebase”, and it’s what dentists use to repair crowns in their work. It hardens quickly, making it easy to work with. Come to think of it, when we were doing Microman Command’s capsule later on, I forgot how it happened, but the mold wound up with a small “Ogawa” (小川) inside it, and I believe you can find it in there. (laughs)

–Well that’s… (laughs) I’ll check later when I get a chance (later on I confirmed that it can be seen molded into Command 3’s capsule). So, speaking of Microman, can you talk about how that began?

In fact, it started with GI Joe. GI Joe sold incredibly well at first, but eventually not so well, which was when my superior Wakase-san said “we should make these smaller.” He had worked in steel manufacturing, a very talented man. “You can’t produce vehicles when they are this big, so make them smaller,” was the advice of my boss from back then. We were still producing the original flesh-colored GI Joe at that time. Yet at that point it was totally undoable, with joints already smaller than you’d find on your own pinky finger. So, after trying anyway using insect mounting pins, I said “this isn’t viable (for production)”, to which Wakase-san answered, “ah, well”. Later, Cyborg became extremely popular. But both GI Joe and Cyborg were still too big to make vehicles for them to drive. So once again I confronted making the “miniature poseable figure” with the desire to make it possible at whatever cost. In any case, we needed to solve the joint problem, so I tried many different methods; using a beaded key chain to try making small ball and sockets, and other such ideas. But these would come apart after repeated use by a child. This was the biggest issue Microman would face. Then, with a portable folding ruler I found something—a tiny rivet, only 2mm wide. I began to hunt for it. It came from the shop making Licca-chan backpacks. I learned they had a machine that could install 2mm rivets automatically, so I checked, but while the rivets were 2mm in diameter, they were much too long. There’s no choice but to make the rivets shorter. After confirming it was possible, I asked Kobayashi-san for about 3 test sample bodies. With that, we assembled them with the fresh rivets, and the heads of the rivets looked quite cool. “This is good,” I thought as I could now put a request in with the boss which would only require a single mold casting. Nikkou Toys (a tin toy maker at the time) or such ought to be able to take the order. When I thought about the potential to use it with translucent parts, I was dumbstruck. Well, once I put these connections together in private, I actually cried. It had been over a year since I had first embarked on this project.

–That’s quite a while, isn’t it? How was it received in the end?

In those days of labor guilds, in spite that there were some who would think heavier was best, others felt “No, lightweight is good”. And with the oil shock of the following year, with the rise of the era of energy conservation, this was a potential selling point (laughs). And see, you could put a Microman on a matchbox, and now it’s a vehicle, right? Or an ashtray can be a flying saucer. When I showed it to sales, they too were, “Yeah, that’s good”. Then, for a company evaluation meeting, we took an electroplated frying pan and put a clock inside it so just the second hand axle was exposed and affixed a Microman to it. That way each time the hand ticked, the Microman would move. This had an incredible effect. “That’s it!” they said (laughs). Not much later this would become the counter display.

(Earliest known discernable photo of Microman prototypes being displayed, via Minoru Sashida.)

–For Microman, the play mechanics were quite novel, weren’t they?

Indeed they were. I put a lot of thought into how to make the series stand out as unique. This was “Episode 2” of Microman’s creation for me (laughs). At that time, Lego blocks were becoming the next big thing, and I had bought a set for my daughter, too. However, living in an apartment housing complex back then, things turned when neighboring children from the third and fourth grade came to play. “So, this is what I got.” “I wouldn’t buy that, it’s like a baby toy.” “But aren’t you playing with it too?” “Sure, it’s fun, but we’re elementary schoolers now.” I felt that they were the target. So the block was shaved down into the form of a wing. These days, blocks come in all forms, but back then they were only in the square form of bricks. And when we manufactured Jaguar, we used 3mm joints of ABS plastic for attachments. Blocks are fun, but for babies. So you have to make it in a form that is clearly not for babies. And if you make them into a science-fiction form, it begins to become interesting. (laughs) So while the figures were ready, the release schedule was repeatedly pushed back to “It will be available when it’s ready”. (laughs) Honestly, I already had something kind of like Robotman worked out by then. But nothing like vehicles yet, on the other hand. So for that I came up with the term “Material Block”. Since the 3mm pegs seemed to break easily, I figured, okay, let’s go with 5mm. From that point onward, Takara has used the 5mm gauge for all their product’s molds ever since. When we went on to create “Steel Jeeg”, we were able to incorporate the 5mm parts with magnets, too. So you could say that 5mm interchangeability started out as the basis for playing with Microman.

–That was profound, wasn’t it? It even became a hit abroad.

At first, when the president and department manager went to try to sell it in America, their efforts failed. Around then, a certain agent in California asked for “a percentage of the royalties if successful”. A half-year later, it became an explosive hit in Japan. When that happened, the company “Mego” was approached. When we showed them, they were interested and agreed. Then it became a huge hit there and his share turned into hundreds of millions. (laughs) When I visited his home after that, even though it was still back in the day, he had a giant projection TV, a home theater. A pool, too. Yet I was still some kind of salaryman. (laughs)

–Even though you’re the real father! (laughs)

The suspension that holds the hips would have broken were it not made from metal. I tooled it on a drill press and welded a hook onto it. It was fully my idea. (The book’s editor suggests comparing with a replica Microman figure release for reference here.) But I didn’t patent it. Back around the turn of the century, a similar design was filed to make wooden artist’s mannequins, so it wouldn’t have passed.

If the owner of that patent challenged us, even if they were wrong, it would have ended everything. But even today, GI Joe is using the same structure as Microman. Yet I was the one who designed it…

–By the way, how did it become called Microman?

It was originally codenamed internally as Microman –it was micro-sized, thus Microman—but it became the brand name in the end. The same for Acroyear which was “’akudoi yarou’ (‘vicious brute’), so we went with “Akuroiya”, or such (laughs).

–Was the story yours, too?

Yes. To sell them individually, we wanted to present them in a clear box. And, I started to think about how we could make the clear box itself a desirable feature. So I had read and researched a lot of science fiction by that point. I didn’t really agree with the theory of evolution. My own fancy was that living things could spontaneously change overnight. I hadn’t seen any fossils of transitional forms. So, I came up with the idea that the alpha H7 gas drifting in the galaxy would cause evolutionary change whenever it came into contact with life, and when MicroEarth exploded, it had a different effect by chance. Back then, there was the notion that Atlantis used crystal energy which I found interesting. Crystals that return the same frequency when exposed to electromagnetic waves. So the setting was created by combining these ideas. That’s what I recorded to a mini-cassette when it hit me in the middle of the night. (laughs) I contacted Design Mate, and gave it as the pitch. Suguwara from Design Mate (see page 80 [of this book]) then edited it and it turned out quite good. I spent a couple extra hours that night on the telephone. “Am I ever going home?” I thought (laughs). I’m sure I was annoying them too (laughs).

–I would imagine you always carried a Microman with you?

I always did. I made a ring for myself, you see. I placed the head of a Microman inside clear acrylic. I really wore it. However, as I gained weight, I had to shave out the center over time. (laughs) It was a lot of trouble to keep shaving down that acrylic.

–Still, it seems like you could put that on the market, now.

You think so? I guess I’ll take it to Takara and find out (laughs). But lately Microman has been getting a good reception from a lot of respectable folks these days, hasn’t it? However, I had gotten rid of most of mine. Such a waste, isn’t it? When it came about, I was “Ah, so that’s how it goes, huh?” (laughs) But, seeing the resurgence in popularity has been fun, you know? Seeing everyone joining in and putting them up on their home pages and such. Sometimes I wonder if I should drop in and introduce myself. (laughs) Ah, well…

–What kind of work are you doing next?

As a person who lived in the toy industry, you could say I wish to make a new “toy launch”. Without an anime launch, a toy that is a hit, becomes a game, then becomes an anime. Right now, I’m planning toward that goal. I’m about 60% there. This is a toy’s true essence! –is what I want to be able to express. That would be something like a new Microman for me. So now, I’m really fired up! (laughs) What’s it about? ….that’s a secret (laughs).

Iwakichi Ogawa, born August 24, 1942 in Fukushima Prefecture Former head of boy’s product development division at Takara. Current President and Representative Director of toy development company Russell, Ltd.

36 notes · View notes