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Premium and Mailaway Figures

Takara released a number of exclusive figures from the years 1975-1978, including store premiums, product premiums and mailaway figures awarded for redeeming purchase coupons, etc. Frustratingly scarce, produced in low numbers and coveted by any serious collector, the chance of owning even one of them is a feat in of itself, never mind getting the whole set. Some were mythical and thought to have never actually been produced, or were being hoarded in a vault somewhere. But some, such as the Preton and Hercules figures actually tend to show up with more regularity. Currently, I don't have any production numbers on these figures, but I will continue to get infomation on them and update this page as it goes.

Some promo inserts including the one that came with Hercules.
Here is a recent auction photo for a fantastic and insanely rare vintage lot. Final asking price reached $8,000 USD!

Promotional ad for the Hoodman Sausage premium. This was a protoype, as the final had black arms instead of green
Promo shot from the four opaque mail aways. These correlate directly to Megos opaque Time Traveler series. Insanely rare.
Promo image for the Gold 20x figure.
Image from the Preton Insert. Preton came in a plastic baggie with the insert.
White Magma Rod 1977 (seen here in a promo ad for three premium figures alongside Egypton and Antonio. Pic courtesy of Minoru.)


Gold M20X Microman (1975)
M11x Preton (1976)
In 1976, Takara offered two mail-away premiums promotion in conjunction with Microman gum. The first premium was an all black Microman M11X Preton (Takara, in 2001 during Microman Replica series line, designated him as M110 Preton).
M11x Preton (1976, Rare all black version )
Titan T40X (1976)
The second premium figure was a black version of Titan T40X named Black Hercules. He is actually a black version of T401 Cerberus. Black Hercules comes with white Titan-wing pack and supposedly a white Atom Cannon but to date no known sample have ever surfaced
Gold M21X Type 1976 (M10X head)
Gold M21X Type 1976 (M15X head)
Gold M21X Type (M15X head) with mailer paperwork
Gold M21X Type 1976 (M16X head)
Silver M21X Type 1976
Courtesy of Minoru Sashida/Oriental Technologies
A couple of recent auctions have popped up appearing to show variations of the Silver Type, but I currently don't know how many variations were produced.
White M15X "Antonio" 1977
Black M16X "Egypton" 1977
(Here I'm using a shot of the repro Egypton from the 2000 Mail order exclusive as a placeholder)
White Magma Rod 1977
Gold Plated H71X Type 1978
Black H71X Type 1978
Courtesy of Minoru Sashida/Oriental Technologies

Spy Magicians:

The Pinnacle of Premium?

1978 was the final year for vintage premium figures, and saw perhaps the nicest variations in the four Spy Magician figures released that year. I learned through Tom Vigneau that each of the four Spy Magician figures actually came in their own custom figure case. Not withstanding the rarity of these showing up for auction, finding them with the cases is even harder, as plenty of the cases ended up somewhere other than with the figures themselves. These pics of the correct cases were provided by Tom.

M132 Dan (1978)
Courtesy of Tom Vigneau
M132 Dan with capsule (1978)
Courtesy of Tom Vigneau
M133 Danny (1978)
Courtesy of Tom Vigneau
Courtesy of Tom Vigneau
M134 David (1978)
Courtesy of Tom Vigneau
M134 David w/ capsule(1978)
Auction photo
M141 Henry (1978)
Courtesy of Tom Vigneau
Auction photo
Here is a pic from Minoru Sashida/Oriental Technologies of two of the opaque premium figures, so we know these figures were produced, but not much aboout what promo they belonged to.
M105 James 1976/77
Unknown M10x - This figure has recently come up in an auction. Though the paint patina looks convincing, the figure lacks provenance, so it may be either a test figure, a one-off gift, or a complete fake.


The Intriguing Story of Johnny

While looking through some of my random pic grabs from the web and auctions, I came upon a pic of a figure I had forgotten about. The thing was, it wasn’t part of any regular Micro release from 1974-1984, and it wasn’t listed on Paul’s Premium figure entries on any of the years either, but I knew it was definitely rare.

Well, I knew I had to turn to our resident Micro historian, Tom Vigneau. And no surprise, he had info on this guy. His designation is M105 Johnny, and he was given away to participants of a product survey.

M105 James

The Intriguing Story of Johnny (cont'd)

Tom doesn’t have more specifics on the nature of the survey, such as whether it was point-of-sale or not, but I’m going to speculate that since everyone hates surveys, there probably wasn’t too many of these figures, though Tom did grab some pics from an auction, and with the others I had found, we have a decent photographic record of good ole’ Johnny.

Additionally, eagle-eye Tom noted that the production year for this figure was either 1976 or 1977 as the figure had long shoes, but was lacking the thigh holes used from 1978 onward to fit the pulsar gun from Police Keeper and Rescue Team.

M105 Johnny
Paperwork that came with Johnny and below a translation from Google Translate.


Microman Premium & Exclusive Figures

  • 1975 Premium Figures

  • Microman Quiz Prize
  • Gold M20X Microman

  • 1976 Premium Figures

  • Microman Gum Premium
  • Microman 11X Preton
  • Titan T40X Black Hercules
  • Microman TV Magazine Prize
  • Gold M21X Type (M15X head)
  • Gold M21X Type (M16X head)
  • Gold M21X Type (M10X head)
  • Microman Prize
  • Silver M21X Type

  • 1977 Premium Figures

  • Microman Gum Premium
  • White M15X "Antonio"
  • Black M16X "Egypton"
  • White Magma Rod
  • Hoodman Sausage Premium
  • Gold Plated H71X Type
  • Hoodman TV Magazine Premium
  • Black H71X Type

  • 1978 Premium Figures

  • Store Premium Microman
  • Gold Plated M134 Type
  • Silver Plated M144 Type
  • M131 Type with black pelvic
  • M133 Type with gold-plated legs

  • Additional Rarities

  • M105 Johnny
  • Opaque M10xs
  • Gold Plated M10x (unverified)