Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere!

I've been facing a bit of a lull in my traditional sports card collecting lately, as a variety of other interests have grabbed my attention away from baseball, basketball, football, and NASCAR trading cards. I've still been adding to those collections and posting about them, but a lot of my attention has been on things like comic book sketch cards, Star Wars stuff, Japanese wrestling autographs, and some stuff I don't often blog about here like board games, LEGO kits, and books. Recently I got caught up in a wave of nostalgia that has manifested itself in a variety of ways. Some readers who are about my age might recall these little rubber M.U.S.C.L.E. figures from the mid-80's:

#127 Junkman (Salmon) Class B, #122 Kinnikuman (Dk. Blue) Class C

I had several handfuls of them when I was a kid, and they were always some of my favorite toys to play with. There isn't a whole lot to them, really, but I am of the opinion that simple toys are better for imaginative play anyhow, and I would spend a lot of time in my youth setting up elaborate tournaments and battles between my action figures. Later in life I would find out that these figures were actually based on characters in the Japanese manga Kinnikuman, about a superhuman wrestler named Suguru Kinniku who must enter tournaments against various super-powered individuals to prove himself as the Prince of planet Kinniku. I believe the series is still going, with volume 51 being released a few months ago. I can't currently read the original series as it is in Japanese and I haven't yet learned that, but there was a series called Ultimate Muscle released in North America by VIZ Media, and I have been gathering those volumes for my personal library :

It turns out there is a bit of a collecting element to getting the books, as the series is out of print, with the last volume, # 29, being published in 2011. A great many of the volumes are readily available, but there are several that are either not available or that are only available at highly-inflated prices. I am still not sure how I am going to deal with that. If you happen to see a copy of volumes 7 or 9 at a used book store or flea market, let me know and hopefully we can work out a trade or payment + shipping cost. My upper price limit would be about $10 + shipping per volume.

Ultimate Muscle deals with the son of Kinnikuman's protagonist, also a superhuman wrestler who has to fight in tournaments as his father's old enemies have regrouped in an effort to gain revenge for the defeats of the past. I haven't read all of the volumes in my collection yet, but I am working my way through them. There's plenty of action, potty humor, and a little bit more blood than you'd see in something similar from an American publisher. It's a fun read, and especially exciting when I recognize a character who matches one of the M.U.S.C.L.E. toys.

#99 The Mari (Green) Class B, #197 Robin Mask (Flesh) Class C

The figures were first released in Japan, with some 418 variations released. The Japanese figures were made of a softer rubber. The American toy maker Mattel gained a license to reprint the figures, but released them under the name Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere (M.U.S.C.L.E.), presumably because the source material was deemed too violent for American kids. There were 236 figures released in North America with 9 different available color variations. Not all characters were printed in all colors. I have obtained a checklist that purports to list all of the known variations. I haven't gone through the whole things and counted them up, but my rough estimate says that the average is about 6 colors per sculpt, so you're looking at a Topps Tek-like ~1400 possible figure variants to collect (This site claims that there are 1528 total). Each figure is assigned a number, which I believe is based on the order in which they appear on a wall poster that was produced and showed 233 of the figures. The last few figures in the checklist are the known sculpts that weren't shown on the poster.

#66 Mr. Barracuda (A) (Purple) Class B, #163 Mammothman (Flesh) Class C

Much like the 1975 Topps Baseball Mini set, there are some colors and figures that were only distributed in certain geographical areas, creating a perceived scarcity for those figures. Other groups of figures are believed to be more rare than others, and the M.U.S.C.L.E. collecting community has kind of agreed on a rating scale that attempts to categorize figures by how difficult they are to find. Class C are the common figures that always appear in lots, Class B are figures that seem harder to find but haven't really proven out as extremely common or extremely rare, and Class A figures are the 1975 Mini equivalents that were seemingly only distributed in Western Canada. It seems like most figures can be found for $0.50 or so, but some of the figures will pull several dollars or even up into the tens or hundreds. I have read about figures that sold for thousands of dollars because they were rumored to be rare prototypes, previously-unknown variations, desirable production errors, rare figures in excellent condition, or things of that nature. I don't know much about all that, though, as I am just sort of getting my feet wet and reliving a part of my childhood at the moment.

There was other related merchandise released as well, with this wrestling ring being one of those items. I don't know that I ever saw one when I was a kid, but it's a pretty cool toy. The two figures included with the ring are special sculpts that are part of the non-poster portion of the checklist. This wrestling ring and all the figures I've shown were part of a lot I purchased on eBay. There were about 40 figures in the lot. In my hasty noobness I made a bit of an error. I did check to see that the two ring-exclusive figures were included and that the hooks they hang on were intact, but I failed to account for all three of the elastic bands that make up the ropes around the ring. So this ring is incomplete. I haven't decided what to do about it yet. It's still a pretty cool item and I'll be displaying it somewhere. in my room. I let my kids play with it a little, but I had to put an end to it as one of the hooks is showing a white line in the plastic that with a little more play will become a crack. I can't have that. Overall it is in surprisingly good condition for being 30 years old. It shows a date of 1985 printed on the bottom.

Other merchandise included the wall poster, a championship belt that doubles as a carrying case, various boxed sets and packaging materials, a board game, video games, and probably a host of other stuff that I haven't discovered yet. As for my collection I don't think I 'need' to chase one of everything. I would like to get one variant of each different sculpt as well as a few specific figures I remember having as a kid. I'd like to get all 29 volumes of Ultimate Muscle. It would be nice to obtain one of the wall posters. I am really drawn to the Championship Belt / Carrying Case, but that seems to be a higher-priced item that I may pass on for a while. We'll see.