So Pharoid, So Good..

'They came from Innerspace' read the strapline on the adverts for the Micronauts toys and the initial line of vehicles and figures were good, but not necessarily inspirational. A tractor, a space rocket, a motorbike and a tank-like vehicle, plus a robot or two, all piloted by the ubiquitous transparent Time Traveller figures. At first, I found it easy to resist the draw of the toys, having limited funds and being at that funny age when I was compelled to 'put away childish things', but when Star Wars arrived and made it cool to own toys again, I succumbed.

What really tipped my balance was the curious appearance of something so completely unusual in the line and apparently unrelated to the 'space' theme, that I was fascinated. On a routine visit to my fave toys shop 'Hobbies' in Liverpool on the way back from college, I spotted a new figure on the racks of Micronaut toys and was amazed to find that this new toy included what appeared to be an Egyptian Mummy Case. The blurb on the cards was always minimal, but the case was described as a 'time chamber' and the figure sat inside. The figure was a more stylised version of the standard micronaut with a boots and small egyptianate 'wings' to clip on his legs. His head was also sporting a fashionable 'mullet' and a big Hawaii Five-O style quiff!

I couldnt divine what the significance of the egyptian case was and the concept didn't appear in the comic strip for a long time later, but as I had always loved ancient art, I was hooked.

Part of my college course involved a Foundation Art element which included a pottery class. We were encouraged to get creative with clay in whatever way we felt happy with and one of the methods we employed was 'slip casting'. This involved making a mold from an item and then using that to create copies of the item using a thin coating of clay. Shortly after buying the toy, I took the 'mummy case' as I referred to it, into class and used it as the basis of my mold. The tutor was seriously impressed with the toy too and soon after I was churning out clay copies of the original!

The casting was slightly smaller than the original toy, but an almost exact replica - even down to the mock hieroglyphics on the front.

Unfortunately, my artistic enthusiasm meant that these toys were given the treatment too and I decided to decorate the time chamber a bit as I thought it was sadly lacking..  The red one was the very first one I bought and the grey one was bought by my mate and given over to the Wotan Archive much later. The blue is a much more recent and unadulterated edition!