Red Falcon, a relatively rare Micronaut started out as the Death Cross toy in the Microman line by Takara. He is roughly the same size as Baron Karza, and has the same magnetic joints in the legs, arms, and head.
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Red Falcon, a relatively rare Micronaut started out as the Death Cross toy in the Microman line by Takara. He is roughly the same size as Baron Karza, and has the same magnetic joints in the legs, arms, and head.
In late 1995, Red Falcon clones began popping up in stores such as "Big Lots" under the DSI label. Four figures were produced, each with slightly different heads and color schemes. The figure on the right bears the most resemblence to the original Red Falcon (or at least the head does). The swords are very similar to those packaged with the Emperor character, but they look a bit too big for the Red Falcon. There are also a couple of hand laser guns that come with the clones, but it doesn't look as though they would fit in the hands well. It looks as though the fists used to fire, but the have been glued on with no springs. If you twist the fists, they will separate (weak glue) from the arm without much effort (though it's hard to get the sword to stay in one place then).
Using the magnetic joints, and some physical force, the Red Falcon toy can be transformed into a bird creature, whose head/beak fires with the touch of a button. Unfortunately, the shoulder-mounted lasers on the figure on the right (above) prevents it from transforming into a bird-creature, which is unfortunate, because this is the figure that looks the most like Red Falcon.
A representative of the DSI toy branch in Dallas, TX said that Red Falcon is currently what's called an "Open Market" toy - meaning that any company could purchase the license to produce the toy for a set period of time. The physical design of the toy has some differences, including a number of accessories that were not part of the Mego Red Falcon or the Japanese original toy - "Death Cross". The spokesman, after checking out the Micronauts Homepage, said that he couldn't recall any other Micronauts designs in the items available from the current owner of the toy (a company in Hong Kong), and regreted that he wasn't permitted to divulge the toy's current owner. He also commented that another company in the U.S. also produced the toy under agreement with it's Hong Kong owner, and that D.S.I. wasn't planning to produce any more stock or their version (the Magna Warrior). Existing stock was, however, offered at the current toy fair. DSI doesn't plan to do any more toy marketing in the "action Figure" genre, and will be focusing on dolls in the future.
There is another series of Red Falcon clones, that has a flat finish instead of the chrome painting scheme of the DSI clones. They are called Magnetic Power Robots, and have no company name or address listed anywhere on the box. There is a CE logo on the box (same as the DSI toys), but no other identifiers. There were four clones in this series as well.
There is a a smaller-scale version of the Microman magnetic Death Cross character toy by Takara. He comes from a series in which he is the hero, who battles a robot monster called Machine Saurus (or something similar). The sword is the original accessory, but the guns & chest-plate aparently are not. The color design is similar to the Mego version, except the head colors, trim & decals are different. The bird-robot's beak is supposed to be sharp (unlike the DSI version). The origninal head is the elf-like one. Mego's Red Falcon also possessed the interesting feature of having a torso molded in clear plastic. A trait apparently not shared by the Japanese version.
Last, but not least, in 1994, there was yet another set of clones (though calling them clones is a bit of a stretch) put out by Takara under the Zap Power Force name.