'Loaded with Action Features!' - Marchon
Major Repair has the most broad, straight forward play value of all the Mysterians. This largely comes from it having articulated arms with hands, vs. arms ending in blasters or fixed tools. It also means Major Repair can hold many other accessoies from any number of toy lines. It's a robot toy and the theme behind its secret abilities didn't limit play.
This Mysterian comes with four accessory advertised as tools and weapons that are stored on clips inside the robot's chest. A screwdriver, a gripper, gun and what looks like a more human hand; presumably for solving CAPTCH requests. They clip into the robot's hands and chest firmly, so much so they can be fiddly to get out of their storage area.
There's a button on Major Repair's back that, when pressed in cube mode sees the head and wheels pop out pushing their covers out into position. The arm panels are rotated into play manually.
See Mysterians main index for further details.
Region Codes Used: US United States / CA Canada / AU Australia - Location codes only shown where items were known to be released.
This list is accurate yet likely to be incomplete. If you are able to confirm release in other regions please get in contact.
Mysterians US/CA/AU Marchon 1984
Prototype One prototype can be seen in the lowest photo on the blister card front. It features blue face and roller paint, red accessories and a gold body. This prototype also has grippers with articulated wrists. The same prototype was likely used for the black and white Knickerbocker* figure lineup artwork that also features these wrists. This photo was also used as reference for the artwork on rear of the card. The right arm includes the articulated wrist, however for an unknown reason the left hand seems to show the tool slotting directly into the arm's end. The figure is also shown with five accessories.
There's elements of both the photo and black and white art of it in the front of card painting. Major Repair is sporting red accessories, blue rollers and interestingly, the right hand with articulation and left that ends in a socket. As the photo copied clearly has two hands, either the artist(s) made a significant mistake or this could have been a design consideration that was changed close to production. One that saw two fixed grippers added to the arms in what would have likely been a cost reducing move.
Mechanic Lightan Shown at the bottom of this page, there's no doubt that along with the general concept for the Mysterians, Major Repair borrows the most from a specific Bandai Lightan figure. The prototype discussed above even has a matching gold, corrugated body along with the other obvious similarities in overall design. Had Knickerbocker* released Mysterians, the figure would have been named, 'Tinkar, the Mechanic'.
As with many of what seem to be minor design changes post the artwork having been finalised, the change from pink to yellow likely happened very close to the toy moving to production.
Accessory Order For the purists, there's no set order to store the tools in Major Repair's chest. The card art is based on the prototype photo and the carded figures seem to be installed in no particular order.
* see main index for Knickerbocker connection.
Stamped (c) Marchon Inc. 1984 Made in China
CREDIT: Mysterians Major Repair on card example kindly shared by theoldrobots.com
Major Repair Gold Prototype with Red Tools, Blue Face and Rollers
Mechanic Lightan - Bandai