The company. Funrise was founded in 1987 in Van Nuys, California, by Arnie Rubin, who had co-founded Imperial Toy Corporation back in 1969 and left to start his own venture. Funrise was later sold to Matrix Holdings — the Hong Kong-based owner of Shelcore — in 2007, and today the company is better known for Gazillion Bubbles, the Tonka license, Cat construction toys and TMNT vehicles than for anything it did in the eighties.
The micro-car line. The line most collectors mean is Micro Action, launched 1988 — essentially the same year Micro Machines went from soft launch to mass-market phenomenon. Among the dozens of manufacturers that jumped into micro-vehicles, Funrise was the most serious competitor to Galoob: it had the largest number of vehicle castings and even secured licensed series, notably a "Back to the Future" range. Funrise's products undercut Galoob's on price, which was the core of its competitive strategy. Sub-brand names you'll see on packaging include Micro Action Magnifiers (blister cards with a magnifying lens element, 1988–1990), Color Changers / Two-Tone, Big Rig Trucks, 4x4 Series, Speedway Sprinters, and playsets such as an Air Base. The line ran roughly 1988–1991, appeared mainly through discount and drugstore channels rather than dedicated toy retail.
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Model selection. Broader and more Euro/Japanese-leaning than people expect. Documented castings include Ferrari, Lamborghini Countach, Porsche 959, Mercedes 450SLC, MG, Datsun 240Z, Toyota MR2, De Tomaso, Aston Martin — alongside the American staples (Corvette, Mustang, Firebird Trans Am, Dodge, Jeep, Willys) and heavy stuff (Kenworth, Peterbilt, Caterpillar, John Deere, Allis-Chalmers). Plus a large military range: jets, ground vehicles and tanks, in which the colour largely came from the injected plastic itself with only sparse painted detailing. The 1989 Back to the Future Part II "Micro Action Super Cars" set, No. 10810, contained the modified DeLorean, the hover police car, and the Luxor Cab Co. taxi.
Where it fell short. Funrise could not match Galoob's gimmick series — light-up vehicles, colour-change paint, battery-operated models — which functioned as de facto anti-copying features, nor could it match Galoob's advertising spend (the John Moschitta fast-talking TV campaign was a genuine moat).
Re-branding. It seems like other toy companies used Funrise / Micro Action models and distributed them under their own brand name. Below is an example of Funrise cars in a blister branded "Micro World by Gegu" for the German market. Re-brandings of this kind are not well catalogued and largely undocumented. Funrise cars have circulated under half a dozen brand names in Europe.
How to recognize Funrise:
Funrise are roughly the same size as Micro Machines and share a similar design approach that deforms the design of the cars away from a true scale representation to a more comic like look. The details of Funrise cars are often less fine than those of equivalent Micro Machines, but the difference can be marginal. Micro Machines and Funrise are therefore not easy to tell apart. The base plates can be an indicator as sometimes - but not always - you find the name "Funrise" in very small letters. A house like symbol without any further text is also a distinctive feature of many Funrise models. The symbol often appears under a version that uses mostly colored plastic rather than painted resin for the chassis.
Various base plates of Funrise models:
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Funrise (left) and Micro Machine (right) for comparison:
