Astro Boy and Atlas

I first encountered Astro Boy sometime back in the 1960s in my home state of Michigan.

I was flipping through the TV stations (all four of them) and come across a cartoon that I did not recognize.

It looked different than the normal Saturday morning cartoon fare.  It featured a boy robot with incredible powers.  

For some reason the robot’s mouth movements did not always match what he was saying.  I found out later that his voice had been dubbed in English from the original Japanese.

Astro Boy, known in Japan as Mighty Atom, is a Manga series written and drawn by Osamu Tezuka.

The Manga was produced for TV as Astro Boy, the first popular animated Japanese television Anime.  The 1963 series was a big hit on TV in Japan and the United States.

Astro Boy is an android with human emotions who was created by Umataro Tenma after the death of his son.  Astro Boy is adopted and has a robotic family of his own.

In 2004 Bandai released an Astro Boy set of six-inch action figures.

The Astro Boy Arm Cannon Astro is a clever, fully articulated figure that matches both the look, color palette and unique look of the original Astro Boy.

Astro Boy’s features include his spiked hair, large expressive black eyes, small, button nose and low set ears match the original.

The figure is dressed in a green and black pair of trunks and has Astro Boy’s characteristic oversize red knee boots.

The articulation and coloring on the toy is topnotch with no rough edges, clean crisp lines and the figures is easy to pose and position with no binding or stiffness.

Included with the figure are two left hands-one clenched and one open.  They slide over the figure’s left arm hiding the light up arm cannon.

It can be activated by the push of a button on the back of the figure’s head.

The packaging is as colorful as the figure with a large Astro Boy blue and gray logo, a oblong and a plastic bubble that protects the figure nestled in its form-fitting cocoon.

A special Astro Boy trading card is also included.

A similar package holds the Atlas figure.

Atlas is also fully articulated with clever and hidden points of articulation in the waist, arms, legs and torso.

The Atlas figure comes dressed in heavy red and blue armor with oversize shoulder pads, large blue gauntlets with gloves and oversize blue knee boots with knew protrusions and red over the boot straps.

A series of blue circuit lines cover the figure’s chest and torso and large electrodes decorate the blue and red helmet.

Atlas's eyes are oversize and his nose, lips and face look angular.

Additional translucent blue lightning bolts attach to the figure's helmet and its eyes light up when a button on the back of its head is pushed.  A trading card is also included.

It’s a cleverly designed figure with excellent details, slick articulation and cool lightning bolt attachments.