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Good morning Pop Culture (Wrestling) fans. Due to the success of our recent videos, we decided to take a more in depth look at Kinnikuman toys, known in the USA as MUSCLE.
The Kinnikuman toys were produced by toy company Bandai in the keshi (eraser) style. Keshi figures are usually about 2 inches tall, often feature highly-detailed sculpts, and are made out of solid, durable plastic. They were introduced in the 1970s, and saw their first worldwide success with the well-known Monchhichi characters. As is common with keshi, the tiny Kinnikuman toys were molded out of a single color of plastic (flesh-colored, in this case) to keep production costs down. This meant that school-aged children could easily buy a figure from a vending machine using loose change, making them an instant hit with kids. With a low price and high collectability quotient, as well as the crazy character designs, the Kinnikuman keshi were extremely popular; so popular that it created its own subgenre of toy, known as Kinkeshi.
By the time Kinkeshi fell out of popularity in 1988, Bandai had cranked out 418 unique figures. More traditional Kinnikuman action figures have since followed, but few have matched the popularity of the kinkeshi toys. To celebrate the toy line’s 29th anniversary in 2008, Bandai released a massive collector’s box set that included every figure, plus DVDs of the complete anime series.
M.U.S.C.L.E.-ing In On America
Although the anime was never adapted for America because it was too violent to get past the censors, toy company Mattel took a gamble and launched their own line of kinkeshi toys in either late 1985 or early 1986 (accounts vary). Re-branded as “M.U.S.C.L.E.” (Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere), the line used the same molds and flesh-colored plastic as their Japanese cousins. However, instead of vending machines, the figures were available in a variety of retail-friendly packaging options.
The most common way to get M.U.S.C.L.E. figures was a cardboard and plastic 4-pack, which typically sold for around $1. You could also pick up a semi-translucent garbage can full of 10 M.U.S.C.L.E. figures for about $3. But if you’d saved up your allowance, the 28-pack could be had for $7. The first two 28-packs were available in different factions to establish some kind of story behind the figures: the “good guy” Thug Busters, led by Muscleman/Kinnikuman, and the “bad guy” Cosmic Crunchers, led by Terri-Bull, based on Kinnikuman’s long-time rival, Buffaloman.
Special thanks to Mental Floss for a lot of this information. Please click like and subscribe for more entertaining videos, and click the notification bell for updates.
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