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As a child, there was nothing to me more fantastic than than the M.U.S.C.L.E. toys. I don't know if it's just my love for the weird, or the fact that I like pro-wrestling that makes it so special to me, but there's something about a guy from outer space with a fin on his head who would fight against a walking, talking urinal.
That's right, a urinal." In the US, they were known as Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere, or
M.U.S.C.L.E., but they were
basically bendable plastic duplicates of
Kinkeshi, a line of
collectable erasers from Japan. More than peachy-salmon colored minifigs, they were based on the world of
Kinnikuman, which started as
manga in 1979, then
an anime series, and
more, and
more, and
more...
The creation of M.U.S.C.L.E. toys stems from two lines of Japanese products. On one side were
keshigomu, Japanese erasers, as seen at the
IWAKO USA Japanese Eraser Museum and the
World of Japanese Erasers blog. The other side was that of the
Kinnikuman manga, original created as something of a spoof on Ultraman and mainstream US comics (
the first issue found unnamed "American super heroes" busy spending quality time with their families). With the move from print to
video in 1983, along with merchandising including Kinnikuman Keshigumi, often abbreviated as
Kinkeshi.
Two years later, Kinkeshi came to the United States as M.U.S.C.L.E., focusing on the costumed wrestling aspect that became the setting of the Kinnikuman world as the series progressed. The word is that
Mattel wanted a low-cost Japanese import toy, and Kinnikuman fit the bill, with
a lengthy list of characters to port to kids who wanted
ugly, weird, terrible, tiny collectible toys (along with
a wrestling belt and stage, seen
here and
here). Mattel was able to specify materials and Bandai would produce the toys, and Bandai had the facilities in Japan or China to create M.U.S.C.L.E. men in a similar fashion to the Kinkeshi. Enough of these
scholarly articles, onto the plastic dudes!
Nathan's Muscle Blog provide quality images of the 236 standard run figures, as well as specifications of how they were originally packaged, and has the characters tagged by characteristics, plus other M.U.S.C.L.E. merch like the
mail-away poster of 233 characters. 233? Yes, the poster didn't include 3 characters,
two who
were packaged with the wrestling ring, and
Satan's Cross, who might have been too pointy, too "evil," or just fell off the map. And then there are the
really rare characters, whose history his hazy at best.
The M.U.S.C.L.E. Men (MUSCLE) Collectors Archive has more product photos, and
Soupie's MUSCLE Colors Image Archive is just that - images of all known color variants of M.U.S.C.L.E. characters by MUSCLE numbers and Kinnikuman parts. And if this is all too serious,
I-Mockery made their own character names and bios (covered
previously).
But you want more? How about the
NES game from 1985 (
GameFAQs review,
Something Aweful takedown, or
try it yourself at Nintendo8.com),
Famicom game from 1987, or the
overly difficult (warning: lots of complaining)
Kinnikuman: Dirty Challenger (
Super Famicom). And there are
even more! But wait, have you seen
the live fight between
(Kid Muscle) Kinnikuman and Bob Sapp?
Now you can! If that's not enough Kinnikuman/M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling for you,
some fans have made their own wrestling storylines.
And for the girls? There were the
C.U.T.I.E.S. (acronym for "coolest ultra tiny individuals on earth," though they were generally the same scale as M.U.S.C.L.E. men, not as small as
Polly Pockets).
Some M.U.S.C.L.E. scholars don't include C.U.T.I.E.S. in the MUSCLE Men universe, but other fans have
included cross-overs in homemade M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling videos.
If this has left you with more questions than answers, check out
the M.U.S.C.L.E., Exogini, Cosmix, etc. board on
the LittleRubberGuys forum. (FYI:
Cosmix and
Exogini were lines of Kinkeshi/M.U.S.C.L.E. knock-offs from France and Italy, respectively.)
Thanks for the post.
posted by cj_ at 7:24 AM on June 8, 2010