The news broke in The Wall Street Journal, of all places, in a story about toy lines being co-opted by movie studios:

J.J. Abrams, who created the TV show "Lost" and directed this summer's "Star Trek" film, is in discussions to produce a movie about Japanese toy line Micronauts, which Hasbro just acquired.

With Abrams producing, that opens the door for some Kurtzman/Orci involvement, if they could be convinced to jump from the Transformers franchise into another toy universe. We're really keeping our fingers crossed for comic artist and Micronaut lover Paul Pope getting involved on the design side, though.

The Cry Goes Out in Hollywood: 'Get Me Mr. Potato Head's Agent!' [Wall Street Journal]

Sectaurs
The Set-Up: A toyline that only lasted one year - perhaps because the world was as grossed-out by the idea of half-insect half-humans as I was when I was ten years old (Nonetheless, props to whoever decided that the character's giant-insect pets/horse-like-equivalents would be gloves, so you could make their legs move) - Sectaurs followed a He-Man-esque model of quasi-mystical good guys ("The Shining Realm of Prosperon," led by the heroic Prince Dargon) versus equally-quasi-mystical bad guys ("The Dark Domain of Synax," led by General Spidrax) on a planet called Symbion.
Was There A Franchise? Comics books, cartoons and kids storybooks.
The Movie: Embrace the alien, and CGI everything to make it look weird and wonderful. Play up the mythical aspects and turn it into a kids franchise with teeth.

Centurions
The Set-Up: In the "near future," three (later five, but no-one remembers the last two) men fight terrorists (led by the aptly-named Doc Terror) by wearing weirdly weaponized robotic suits that give them something approaching superpowers. Despite being the product of the mid-80s, their tagline of "PowerXtreme!" was curiously a decade ahead of its time.
Was There A Franchise? Cartoons and comic books.
The Movie: It's GI Joe with added technology. Seriously, how can this fail? Just remember to rename the bad guy.

Adventures of The Galaxy Rangers
The Set-Up: The Old West becomes the New West as mankind moves off-planet and colonizes the universe, reverting to cowboy style in the process. The concept behind Galaxy Rangers offered a chance to mix-and-match moments of American history as the Rangers themselves - essentially cyborg versions of Western lawmen, riding robotic horses - fight against a "vast and crumbling Empire" ruled by The Queen of the Crown. Oh, and they're against slavery, as well.
Was There A Franchise? Just a cartoon.
The Movie: Pull back on the sleekness of the technology, and give us a steampunk revisionary version that's more Firefly than Wild Wild West.

MASK
The Set-Up: Pretty much "What if Transformers weren't robots but could still transform," MASK - which stood for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, proving that even the US Government aren't above bad spelling when a good acronym's at stake - was a GI Joe-esque anti-terrorist squad who used vehicles that had alternate combat modes against VENOM (Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem). Both sides also had helmets that gave them special powers, which may have been a concept too far, really.
Was There A Franchise? Cartoons, comic books, and video games.
The Movie: Oddly enough, MASK was brought into the GI Joe franchise last year in the toys, so maybe this perfect mix of Joe and Transformers is already taken care of, in terms of Hollywood.

Power Lords
The Set-Up: Another failed toyline that ripped off Masters of The Universe, Power Lords saw Adam Power use the Cosmic Power Jewel to become Lord Power, fighting evil dictator Arkus. Much more amusing were the henchmen, who had names like Bakatak, Disguyzor and Drrench, demonstrating how desperate toymakers could get when deadlines loomed.
Was There A Franchise? Comic books and video games.
The Movie: Actually, maybe they should just make the Masters of The Universe movie instead, as this is so clearly stolen from those toys.

Spiral Zone
The Set-Up: Ignore characters with names like Dirk Courage and Benjamin Davis Franklin, and concentrate on the admittedly-awesome concept: A mad scientist hijacks a space shuttle to turn half the planet into an altered state called the Spiral Zone, where everyone within becomes a mind-controlled zombie. Five soldiers with specially-constructed suits to combat the Zone's effects are sent inside to destroy the Zone Generators and save the world.
Was There A Franchise? Cartoons and comic books.
The Movie: Drop everything other than the basic idea, and make it into a dark action movie with Christian Bale working off his Terminator karma. This is one child dystopia that deserves to be brought back meaner and more hardcore than before.

Zoids
The Set-Up: Robotic dinosaurs and ancient creatures trapped in permanently-ongoing wars on alien planets, although if you read the British tie-in comic, you'd know there was much more - and much, much ripped off of popular movies of a few years previously - going on.
Was There A Franchise? Internationally, comic books and cartoons, but not in the US.
The Movie: Is it too much to ask for Jurassic Park: The Robots? Other than simply adapting the UK comic story (Spaceship full of humans crashlands on Zoid planet, characters act out Alien and Terminator cliches), I can't think of any other way to do it.

Crystar
The Set-Up: Another fantasy toyline, but one that wasn't, surprisingly, ripped off from He-Man, Crystar started life as a pitch from Marvel Comics to various toy companies before Remco bit the crystal bullet and manufactured Crystar and his crystaline brothers and Moltar and his fire-themed minions. Despite offering dragons, castles and personifications of a metaphysical battle between order and chaos, the line only lasted one year.
Was There A Franchise? Only comics.
The Movie: Tone down the Chaos/Order subtext, ramp up the "warring brothers" aspect and go all-out on the fantasy - Give us a full-on Lord Of The Rings set on another planet, with the kind of scope and scale that only Peter Jackson or James Cameron could think of.

Rom The Space-Knight

The Set-Up: Sure, the toy - manufactured by Parker Brothers, and originally called COBOL - may have flopped spectacularly in the US, but the cyborg space warrior lived on for years afterwards in his Marvel Comics series, and even longer in our hearts.
Was There A Franchise? Only comics.
The Movie: Redesign Rom to be slightly less... boxy, and pull in The Invaders paranoia from the comic book, and you've got something with an obvious enough hero to play well in multiplexes but with the potential for something much more subtle and sneaky for those who want to look at it that way.

Micronauts
The Set-Up: If ever there was a toyline that deserved a movie, it's this space opera line adapted from various Japanese figures, especially considering that it's the line that indirectly gave birth to Transformers and the 1980s revival of GI Joe that made that franchise what it is today.
Was There A Franchise? Only comics.
The Movie: With "Time Travelers", Mega Cities, Space Gliders and villains who look like Darth Vader, there's surely only one option: Try to create the next Star Wars, complete with new cultures, new danger and derring-do, and an empire that could support Baron Karzas and Acroyears... whatever an Acroyear turns out to be.

Launched in 1980 by Japanese toy company Takara Toys, the Diaclone line was made up of robots that transformed into futuristic vehicles piloted by figures spun-off from their successful Microman line. The Microman line, imported into America by Mego as Micronauts, was in turn spun-off from a Takara line called Henshin Cyborg, which was itself spun-of from their Combat Joe line... which was made up from toys created from Hasbro's G.I. Joe line (See how it all comes together? Don't worry; Joe will pop up again later). In 1982, Takara expanded both the Microman and Diaclone lines by adding more transforming robots - except these new robots, branded Micro Change (for Microman) and Car Robots (for Diaclone), changed into more contemporary forms, like regular cars, planes and cassette players.

A year later, representatives from Hasbro attended the 1983 Tokyo Toy Fair. They were feeling good - their G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero line, launched a year earlier, was a big success, and they were looking for the next big thing. And, as soon as they saw Takara's Car Robots and Micro Change toys, they thought they'd found it. It wasn't as simple as all of that, however; for one thing, Hasbro didn't want to launch two separate lines onto the market at the same time, and so decided to consolidate the two together under the name Transformers. Having learned from their experience with G.I. Joe, they also knew that kids wanted a story to play along with, instead of just faceless toys, and so they decided to do exactly what they'd done before, and tell someone else to come up with one.

A little-known fact about the Transformers that we know and love: Their entire backstory was created by one of the most reviled men in the comic industry alongside the man who oversaw a phone vote to kill Robin the Boy Wonder. By 1983, Hasbro had built a close working relationship with Marvel Comics through their joint work on G.I. Joe, where Marvel editor Larry Hama was responsible for naming the characters and writing the backstory for each one (as well as the monthly Joe comic), so the toy company asked Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and editor Dennis O'Neil to come up with an entire Transformers universe prior to launching the toys, and they tried... only to see a lot of their ideas shot down by Hasbro as inappropriate. Frustrated, they gave the job to Bob Budiansky, whose revisions not only created Transformers canon, but also landed him the job of Transformers comic writer for years afterwards.

A huge success when launched in 1984, Transformers was almost too successful for Hasbro; to keep up with demand for new toys, they exhausted the Takara toys and started licensing figures from other companies, before finally coming up with original toys in 1986. While fading popularity led to the line being axed in the US in 1990, new Transformers were released internationally until 1993, when the entire line was relaunched internationally... and ever since then, they've remained in constant production under a variety of guises.

Mego's line of miniature, interchangeable science fiction heroes came about more as a cheap way to grab market share as any plan to revolutionize the misfit island of toys - Looking for a way to break out of the "licensed" toy business, Mego (makers of figures based on Sonny and Cher, Farrah Fawcett, Diana Ross and far too many others) decided to go into the original toy business... by licensing the Japanese line of "Microman" toys, changing the names and paint jobs, and releasing them to an American audience hungry for toys based around a loosely-sketched science fiction theme that apparently involved some kind of time travel, some robots, and something called a "space glider".

Apparently, kids really were waiting for something like that, because the line was successful enough for "The Interchangeable World of The Micronauts" to continue for five years, finally running out of steam when Mego themselves went under in the early '80s. Not that that was the end of the concept - Marvel Comics' tie-in series continued until 1986 (going out in a conceptual blaze of glory that definitely confused this then-twelve-year-old; they had to kill themselves why, exactly?), and the toys and comic have both been the subject of a number of revivals throughout the years.

You have to wonder what the draw of the toys was: That they're small, and easy to stick in your pocket? That you could pull them apart and then put them together in a variety of different ways? Or is it simply that children in the 1970s were so hopped up on the SF goofballs of Star Wars that they'd go gaga for anything with a hint of space?

Micro-Heritage