Micronauts
IDW Revolution
GI Joe's move, as a brand, from 12" figures to 3¾" figures was inspired by Takara's Microman figures - Takara licensed the original 12" molds to create Henshin Cyborg, then decided
to create their own 1:3 scale version of that called Microman. Mego licensed those toys from Takara and imported them to the US as Micronauts, and then Hasbro copied the engineering to create their smaller Joes. Ha ha ha! Recursive!
While the other properties in this set only got a single representative (or two, in the case of Rom), we actually get nine Micronauts! They're all unarticulated figures on plastic bases, but still - there are a lot of them! I don't know much about the Micronauts, but that's okay: just as with Rom, everything Marvel made up for their Micronauts comic, they got to keep, so IDW is having to start from scratch in a lot of ways.
We begin with one of the most recognizable Micronauts, Acroyear. That's pronouned "uh-KROY-er," not "AKRO-yeer." The original
toyline called Acroyears villains (the name appears to be a portmanteau of the Japanese word for evil, aku, and "destroyer," so really "Akroyer" would have been a better and more comprehendible spelling), but the Marvel comic made him a hero - IDW splits the difference, calling the Acroyears a fearsome mercenary force, but having a single member defect to the good guys' side. Acroyear wears white and black armor, carries a green sword, and has two red turbines on wings emerging from his back.
Biotron is the largest Micronaut in this set, since his original toy, "Robotman," was designed to be a piloted mecha the other figures could ride inside - it could also turn into a tank-like mode, making it the first toy in history to transform from a robot to a vehicle. The Biotrons in the comics are unliving machines that only achieve full activation when paired with an organic interface - in other words, when somebody is piloting them; the one on the Micronauts team seems to be getting more autonomous, though. His silver head is a reference to the way all the Microman toys had vac-metallized heads, and is also why he would have been conflated with Destro if Unit:E hadn't been scuttled.
The next figure gets his name from a vintage Micronauts figure, but not even a bit of his appearance. This bald, stubbly fellow looks like a real brute in the art on the front of the box, and inside, we learn that he has no legs, just a single large wheel. His name is Oberon, and back in the day, that name belonged to... a horse. A horse that sometimes had wheels instead of legs, yes, but a horse nonetheless. This version looks pretty cool, with his blue and purple clothes accented by silver mechanics, but how do you get from a horse to here? And if they didn't want to draw comparisons between the two, why use that name?
The little green guy is Quin-Tillus, who is based on the old
"Time Traveler" toy - aka, the most basic and generic of Micronauts. The originals were clear, but a series of opaque ones were released at the tail end of the line, including one in green - not as bright as this figurine, but it's still a clear connection. He has black gloves and boots, rather than white, but his armor is the appropriate silver. His chest armor ends up looking similar to the frame on the Visionaries' chests, so maybe IDW can forge a connection there. His pose makes him look like he's ready for a fight - or trying to surruptitiously pick a wedgie.
Phenolo-Phi is based on the Space Glider figure, which is why she has small grey-green wings on her back. Her parents were an artist and a military engineer, and their daughter takes after both of them. While on a tour of her father's research station, her parents were killed, and Phen grabbed a prototype glider suit to escape - since it was a prototype, she doesn't actually know everything it's capable of. Her uniform is white with green accents, and she's armed with a large black gun. Her brown hair is pulled into a long braid that trails all the way down her back.
In 1979, Mego released its first US-original Micronauts
characters, a group of evil aliens. One of those was Antron, a four-armed invader from the Thoraxid galaxy. It was never made clear whether Antron was an individual or just a member of a species, but now it seems the latter, thanks to the introduction of Xant. Xant is orange where Antron was purple, and he does not have a glow-in-the-dark brain, but his thick lower legs look like they'd definitely be able to support the weight of the weapons he has on the end of every arm.
Baron Karza is the big bad of Micronauts, which you could probably have guessed just by the fact that he looks like a more evil Darth Vader. He wears black armor with red lights in it, but he trades Vader's cape for two missile launchers. The missiles and the highlights on his armor are red. The figure stands a full head taller than the others (other than Biotron), because the original Baron Karza was about twice the size of the other Micronauts.
The final two figures are a little odd. They're identified as Betatron and Gammatron, who, in the comics,
are two of four robots built from the salvaged wreckage of the Micronauts' ship to help the team. There, they're based on toys from the vintage line that were basically stupid cars. Here, not so much: they're original designs, and the packaging implies they serve Baron Karza. How very odd!
Gammatron is the taller, insectoid figurine. He has purple digitigrade... boots? His legs
appear to be green, so unless he changes color part way down, those must be clothes. The central body is black, with a large bulb at the end. The chest is big and the arms are skinny, but there's thick purple and red armor before the three-fingered hands. Two round purple flaps stick off his shoulders, and his only facuial feature is a red V-shaped slit for eyes. Betatron, meanwhile, is the little pod-shaped bot, done all in green with silver and black accents and a single red eye. This is the only figure without a base, since its four stumpy legs will keep it plenty sturdy.
So that's the Revolution box set. The packaging isn't great, but the contents are mostly excellent. Mostly. (There are plenty of better choices for the Transformers slot than Jetfire, but the other figures make up for it.) Everything has its little flaws, but nothing major, and none of these figures are likely to be seen again.
Now; who wants to buy a Jetfire?
-- 10/10/17
Explosions rip across the Earth - and all sides blame Optimus Prime and the Cybertronians! GI Joe refuses to go quietly - and they assemble heroes big enough to stop the invaders. Action Man and MASK Mobile Armored Strike Kommand fight for humanity - but where do Rom and the Micronauts stand?
Rather than 
is not part of IDW's Hasbroverse... at least, not yet. This December, they'll show up in a Transformers vs. Visionaries miniseries that will spin out of the current First Strike event.
the population of Prysmos to embrace feudalism. [You think that's impressive? It only took the Republican party a few months to openly embrace white nationalism! --ed.] Beneath his removable helmet, Leoric looks a lot like GI Joe's 
The head is new, but the arms come from 
by firing lasers at a 3D object (though the invention of holograms predates the invention of lasers by 13 years), and using a special process to capture the resulting information - it's like photography, except it's "holography." The holograms on the Visionaries, like the ones on your credit card or driver's license, are reflection holograms, meaning you don't have to shine light through them to see them. Reflection holograms can be mass-produced by stamping the interference pattern (a hologram's "negative," in over-simplified terms) onto metallic foil, but in the '80s, they could only be so small and still look good - so the Visionaries toys' size was dictated by the space needed for their stickers.
holograms not only limited their size, they limited their shelflife, too: the line wasn't a huge success, but neither was it a failure; Hasbro was making money on it, but they didn't have the in-house ability to create and produce the holograms, meaning all that work had to be outsourced; when it came time to decide if they should renew the line for a second year, Hasbro just decided it wasn't worth the hassle. Leoric's totem is a lion, which is also why his main weapon is that favorite of lion tamers everywhere, a 
Corporal Marvin Hinton is the team's chef and mechanic - and the heavy weapons guy. (You can tell by that cool big Plasma Pulse Machine Gun he's got.) Roadblock's a cheerful loudmouth who loves singing along to the heavy metal in his headphones - but he's totally serious when it comes to getting the Joes out of danger.
source - 
Roadblock has always been bald, but Renegades' designer, 
from 
Since all the video said was "evil magicians" and "they can assume any form they wish," that left a lot of wiggle room. Since the Rom comics were set in the normal 616 universe, Marvel decided to make the Dire Wraiths an evolutionary offshoot of Skrulls, and designed 
Marvel definitely owns the distinctive appearance of their Dire Wraiths, which is why IDW had to design something entirely new. They're vaguely humanoid, though they can still shapeshift into nearly any form, but their skin is blue and their bulbous heads have huge, fangy smiles and six beady red eyes. No one would ever mistake IDW's Dire Wraiths for Marvel's.
been infected. Rather than creating a totally new Dire Wraith body for this toy, Hasbro chose to make one that's only partially slipped off its disguise - the body is still seemingly human, but the head and arms are revealed. The body mold originally belonged to 
go read it. Anyway, just as Marvel owns the distinctive look of their Dire Wraiths, they also own everything they invented for Rom: things like "what he looks like sans armor" and "his name." That's why the Marvel character Prime Director Artour can take off his plandanium armor and go back to living on his homeworld of Galador, while the IDW character Rom K'atsema can continue to be a member of the Solstar Order and defend the planet Elonia with his symbiotic crystalline armor. Also, Marvel published a comic a couple years back called "Spaceknights," so if Hasbro wanted to contest that usage, they'd have had to do it back then.
Rom's defining feature is that he wears a full suit of silver armor, and that his head looks like a toaster. Not a Battlestar Galactica slur for Cylons, an actual toaster. It's square, with grooves on the flat top, and the only facial features being two red eyes in a black slit. Naturally, this figure duplicates that description perfectly.
The original Rom figure was super blocky, because every action figure in the '70s was just terrible. He's always been drawn as slightly more organic in the comics, so this figure uses armored 
and lower halves. That's better than the way the 4" Marvel toys have started having 
a British company licensed the molds for GI Joe, and gave him a less-American name; and just as Joe Colton gave rise to the GI Joe team, Action Man gave rise to the Action Force. But that's the old story, and IDW is doing something new.
Action Man the look of a man wearing some sort of fancy protective body armor. Since he's a fairly acrobatic young guy, his 
saying it's homely and weird-lookin'. It's super narrow, but the eyes are set too wide, and the ears are too far back on the sides. His hair poofs up in the front in a way that just makes you want to punch him. (Not at all to be confused with the "shaved on the sides" haircut that 
two hands, no holsters - unless he knows how to juggle, something's always going to be laying on the ground.
You remember how the Fast & the Furious franchise started out with Vin Diesel hijacking VCRs (not even DVD players, but VCRs) from trucks on the highway, and is now about fighting international cyber terrorists through the power of 
rest of him is new. Well, noew to him: they're all reused GI Joe pieces, just put together in new and exciting ways! The 
The helmet is removable of course, allowing us to see Matt's bare head beneath. This is also not the same sculpt as on the old toy, because instead of a super-grumpy blonde dude, IDW's Matt Traker is black. Considering how little personality any of the MASK characters had in the '80s, no one will give even the slightest crap if they get reimagined.
the little helicopter backpack. Clearly Hasbro couldn't create an entirely new version of his Thunderhawk vehicle, but maybe instead of a Jetfire whose inclusion seems pointless beyond 
