M.U.S.C.L.E. Appreciation Thread

Kenta Kusomoto.

He was this kid that was in my second grade class. He was from Japan, and he barely spoke any English. But by jingo, he could speak toy.

He would come to school with these cool ass little rubber figures that at first we thought were like those spaceship erasers, but they weren't. They were WRESTLERS. He had hundreds of them...and Japanese-language manga with the characters in them. It was the first time I ever smelled what Japanese paper smells like.

Kenta was more than willing to trade away his figures and his books for American toys, so myself and some others gladly parted with Hot Wheels and GI Joes for these exotic figures. He told us some of their names...Kinnikuman, Robin, Terror-bull...I carried a pack of figures and a couple of the comics he gave me in backpack to school every day.

But then the bottom fell out. His parents asked everybody to give all of Kenta's stuff back because it was Japanese, and at the time it was almost impossible to get in the US. I was heartbroken.

A couple of years later, M.U.S.C.L.E. showed up in US toy stores...but they were all PINK! And really, really hard plastic! It was so weird. Nonetheless, I bought the buckets and the big sets, the wrestling ring, the colored figures when they wised up, and of course the horrible NES game that I loved to death anyway.

I love M.U.S.C.L.E. Such a cool 80s toy, totally emblematic of the time because it's one of those useless little things that kids REALLY get into, like Sillybandz or that new rubber band loom thing.

So anyway, just thinking about them since they came up in the Secret Satan thread. SHARE THE M.U.S.C.L.E. love!

There was actually a cool little MUSCLE wrestling game for the GC. The create a wrestler was fun and the finishing move cinematic never seemed to get stale. It was a light game, but a lot of fun to open or start an evening of Mario Kart with.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Muscle:_L...s_vs._New_Generation

EDIT: Anyway we came across it as it was developed by AKI, designers of fantastic wrestling. Known stateside for WCW/NWO Revenge and WWE No Mercey, but more importantly the import Virtual Pro Wrestling 2!! GREATEST. WRESTLING GAME. EVER.

I got caught shoplifting those things when I was a kid. Good resale value at the apartment complex. LOL

Just looked at some photos and man, did memories rush back.

I was never the proud owner of any though...When they were booming my parents hated stepping on little things left laying around and I liked to leave little things laying around. Also it was when I had a newborn sister with exploring hands that liked to put things in her mouth. So tiny things were not brought into our house at the time.

I'm not too proud to admit that I tried to steal some from my neighbors...The Blue Monster Hand was the one that I wanted and I had it until I dropped my backback and it fell out while we were at the bus stop.

I wasn't into pro-wrestling at all but I loved those figures. My brother and I each had a bunch from the little garbage can plastic buckets.

We used to play with them in our sandbox making channels and tunnels and caves and cities for them. We would trun the hose on in the sand box and make rivers and lakes.

My interest started with some little Kaiju style 3/4" colored eraser type monsters I found in a pack at Toys R Us. I loved little monsters. I cherished those little things. I got a large set through the mail for mailing in Hi-C juice can labels. They were large scale than the Toys R Us ones. I slowly over time lost both kinds.

Damn I loved those little monsters. MUSCLE came along after I had lost most of the otehrs but it filled the same niche for me.

My brother and I had two of the 28-packs . Cosmic Crunchers and one of the others, plus a bunch of others from the blister packs. I always wanted that wrestling ring but never got it.

We'd invariably sort them by "type": anyone made of cubes (no matter the size) on one team, mohawk crest guys on another team, etc. I loved the bizarre concepts behind some of them, and I was always vaguely creeped out by the guy with the laughing faces on his body that matched his own. I'm pretty sure we pretended he was a villain.

M.U.S.C.L.E. were awesome. I had a ton of them. I never knew there was a manga though. Any get translated to English? Part of their awesomeness though was not knowing any of the guys' names, background stories, etc. Everything about them I just made up. Even if they were good guys or bad guys, who knew? I sold all mine to a friend to use as target practice for his .22 when I was in high school or something. Such a waste.

You remember Battle Beasts? Those were the little dudes I fell in love with next. Anthropomorphic animal warriors with tech warrior and rub-to-reveal stickers. Awesome. Wood beats water beats fire beats wood! There's some crappy new versions out, but they've lost the stickers. Disappointing.

YES. Loved these guys and totally agree that the charm I felt was in their mystery. Create your own epic back stories and histories as they fought time and time again.

YES to Battle Beasts! I had the Shark transport (water) and my brother had the phoenix (fire). Not sure what the hell wood had...

So I'll float Monsters in my Pocket down the nostalgia river. They had point values and some vague way to play some kind of fighting game with them. No clue, but I loved them too.

In my pocket. Monsters in my pocket!

I remember the commercial, but never had any. Don't think I ever saw any in the store either.

When I was around 15, my mom got me some, just out of the blue. I had no idea what they were. I was a big role player at the time and just starting to get into 40K, so I painted them up and used them as miniatures for my Champions game.
Mom was pleased as all get out that she actually bought me something I liked that fit right into my strange hobbies she didn't understand so the figures kept coming. I don't remember any packaging and didn't even know what they were called until a few years ago. Wish I still had them now as they looked great hand painted! My favorite was the wrecking ball head dude.

I love MUSCLE and have a shit ton of them packed away somewhere at my parents house still. My favorites were this dude that was just a pyramid with a head and there was a guy that was just a creepy bumpy hand as well. I also never knew there was anything to them beyond cool little plastic dudes. Also there was a NES game which was terrible but I loved.

I also got super down with Battle Beasts and had the Tiger Chariot which was amazing.

Monsters in my pocket also is stashed somewhere in my old house. The little power values printed on the back are funny ways to make some of them seem more awesome than others. Not as cool as Muscle was but pretty dang close.

I will throw in one more toy series that dominated my childhood. Spinjas. They came with little dueling arenas and wind up tops and were more fun than they should be. The red and white one was best... I named him Blood.

Yeah, there were definitely stories that went along with them from the Manga...you could kind of see this in some of the figures. And the whole Kinnikuman family and so forth. But fuck if I knew what was going on in the books, so we still pretty much made everything up.

OH HELL YES, the _blue_ hand guy was like the crown jewel of the entire line. See, the Japanese ones were softer (but not like erasers) and were a bunch of different colors. There were also some larger figures, but Kenta would never trade those away. I still have no idea what it was called in Japan, and I'm too lazy to go to Wikipedia at this late hour.

Pyramid man was a great one too. And the spring dude, I loved that one. The Rubik's Cube guy was a favorite...and the big ogre thing. Loved the black armor guy with the round helmet and the spike claws on his hands too, he was like one of the main villains in the comic if I remember correctly. The Terror-bull guy (horns and a puffy afro) was the big bad of the whole series though.

I had some Battle Beasts, those guys were cool as hell.

What's a guy gotta do to get some MAD BALLS love in here?*





_{*Don't answer this.}

Really, fellas, none of these toys were cool. MUSCLE figs weren't much different than the SMURFS. Just a chunk of molded plastic. Unpainted plastic at that! And Battle Beasts? Damn! Is that what y'all were playing with? They're worse than the Visionaries. At lease the Visionaries moved more than just their arms. Talk about slumming it...Battle Beasts...sheesh...

If you weren't playing with The Real American Heroes in the 80's (Action Force is a suitable substitute) than you did the decade wrong.

I wish they would bring back MadBalls. The eyeball one was a favorite.