Back in 2009, a veteran MUSCLE collector posted to his website an image of what appears to be a legit MUSCLE mold/tree made in Light Purple/Grape, the color used for the board game figures.
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The sculpts from this mold/tree are from Part 8. Interestingly, the sculpts belong to what are sorted as two trees on the MCIA: Trees 1 and 3 from Part 8. These two trees were made in the same colors, except Tree One also has Light Purple. You can see them here: http://soupie.little.../PartEight.html
So what this means is that Trees 1 and 3 are actually from one mold. However, Mattel/Bandai simply blocked or sliced off the sculpts from Tree 3 when they cast the mold in Light Purple as they only wanted 5 figures for the board game. The above piece, then, is either a color test shot or a real production piece acquired before Tree 3 could be snipped off.
The owner of this piece noted that in the top, middle of the piece, there is a spot where it appears a sculpt was "sliced" off. There are 6 sculpts in in Part 8 that were not made into MUSCLEs. It appears that one of these sculpts belonged to this tree/mold and was thus the sculpt that was removed. As to which of the 6 sculpts it was, we can't say.
Another interesting fact is that one of the sculpts on this tree has been removed by the factory. The empty space at the top between figure #138 and figure #3 used to be home to another figure, but the tree shows a perfect factory slice where the sculpt used to be.
I haven't seen better pics nor had a chance to question the owner, but I wonder if the sculpt was really sliced off post-production. I agree that a 10th sculpt should be there, but I wonder if instead of being sliced off post-production, it was actually blocked pre-production. It's tough to tell, but there does appear to less flash where the sprue should be. The absence of flashing could indicate a post-production slice, or it could suggest that the mold had been blocked, stopping the sculpt from being caste and the flash from seeping out. Also, that the slice was so perfect may indicate a pre-production blocking, rather than a post-production slice with a knife. Furthermore:
If this piece is a color test shot, why bother to slice off the non-MUSCLE sculpt? They wouldn't bother.
If it was a production piece, what are the chances that this piece was acquired after the non-MUSCLE sculpt was snipped off but before the sculpts from Tree Three were snipped off? Zero, because they all would have been snipped off at the same time.
This means that the non-MUSCLE sculpt was blocked off prior to production. It may mean all NMS were blocked off prior to production.
IMO, this strengthens the idea that the MUSCLE Super Rares such as SHA, BHS, Dr. Bombe, etc., are indeed as Joe Morrison told Veers: the MUSCLE SRs were exclusive figures given to retailers who made large purchases. Why?
One of the strongest theories for the SRs was that they were mistakes; they were figures that should have been slice off the trees post-production, but were missed and made it into retail. But since the Light Purple tree appears to indicate that the NMS were blocked pre-production, the possibility of the SRs being mistakes is zero. This also makes sense with what we know (via Veers) about Mattel's quality control being superb.
Edited by Soupie, 09 March 2014 - 08:25 AM.
