24 replies to this topic

[phillymadison]

I got my first two figures at a birthday party as a grap bag thing

then my parents did that for my B-day and i got 1 more lol

Then i just started asking and buying the 28 packs at Toy R Us

I remember colored 28 packs being on clearence at a toy store call Kiddy City

and the last time i ever seen MUSCLEs in a real store was colored 4 packs at a drug store in the early 90's bought them all

[max powerz]

I bought a bootleg from a quarter machine. Afew years later I or my dad found a real one on the street. I had them just sit arround for a long long time and then about a year and a hlaf ago i went to abobo.com and thought that the bootleg sugaru looked alot like abobo just his face was not as ugly. 6 months ago my brother told me about this cool wrestling cartoon that he liked. I was real REAL sckeptical. I watched the first four episodes on tape. BAM! hooked. So durring my winter break I was at my grandparents in florida and i went to see if any toys were coming out and typed "ULTIMATE MUSCLE" after afew links and other cool muscle sites, I came here and then have been reading up on G1s online and my colection is growing fast. Thats my story. So weird right? Youd never guess I had two all along.

[arforbes]

I got my first M.U.S.C.L.E. from a 4-Pack of colored M.U.S.C.L.E. figures. I think my two cousins and me and my brother each got one. I got the Purple #185 and my brother got a Red #143. Later on we eventually got 10-Packs of colored figures and then 28-Packs of colored figures. We both only had about 60 each, and I was way more into them than my brother so I convinced him to sell me some of his until I got my numbers up to exactly 100 with one spare to play with.

I had only these 100 colored M.U.S.C.L.E.s until last year, when I began collecting again once I found out about them on ebay. I still have those 100, but they are mixed in with the thousands I now own.

[Adamantiumwulf]

I don't care about now.  

VICIOUS

The first ones I got were for chrsitmas. A colored 28 pack. A few months later I was playing with them and a older firend said that he had some that he would sell to me and my brother. All of his were flesh there were about a hundred or so. My brother and i split em. Later on my brother gave me his. A short while later my little sister bought a 10 pack at a school auction. she gave those to me after a coule of months.

[Knuxman]

hand me downs from my friend , one day my friend moved a lot of his old stuff out of his parents house(1993) they were 30 MUSCLEs, about 50 tmnt and countles random toys, i recently saw UM and remembered he told me about kinnikuman, i looked it up, and therest, is here!
btw, those MUSCLEs arent around anymore, all are broken and buried in my old back yard

[pasvagrsvj]

A kid at my daycare dumped out a 10 pack in front of all the guys, and we all went nuts. The smell was (and still is) intoxicating. If they made perfume in that scent, I'd be all over my wife like white on rice. It was the first time any of us had ever seen them. Within a couple of days, every kid there had some. The rest, as those fxckers say, is history.

[MIWP]

I started buying 4 packs and 10 packs at Revco when I was about 8 years old or so. I remember my Dads girlfriend had a gay cokehead friend who was a cashier there at the time and he liked them, he would help me shake up the cans to help me detect what figures I was getting. The first time I spotted the 28 packs was when my mom used to see me on weekends and she bought me two 28 packs for my birthday from a T and C farm supply store! At the time colored figures were not out yet. I had a couple of friends who I treded with and maybe stole from. I was jealous of my friend Jason because his parents had money and he would always have 10 times more toys than me. Once the colored figures started comeing out I think I pretty much quit buying them. I had about 125 figures from my original collection and the only color figures I had were from the game..

[smackman]

When I first started collecting muscles, I first got a four pack. My cousin had a bunch of them and I was so jealous of him. He had the hand figure, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. So, I begged my mom to buy me some. I remember getting a ten pack, cuz I remember keeping them in the garbage can. They were probably flesh/colored mixed, because when I started collecting them again, I had about 6 flesh and colored figs. I spent 2 weeks cleaning out my closet just looking for them. I saw the show on the foxbox a while back, and I noticed the characters looked very familiar. When I realized that they were muscles, I looked them up online, found the M.P.S. website, and from then on it was all over. I spend almost every paycheck I get buying them now.

[BaltanII]

I never owned MUSCLEs of my own until very recently. Many many moons ago (early 90s), my parents bought a large bag of "pink guys" from a second-hand store - maybe the Salvation Army. There were too many, though, so when we moved from New Jersey to St. Thomas, the figures got sold or donated...except for 14 (12 dfferent ones and two #1). Who knows what treasures might have been lost with those others.

My favorites back then were 131, Ukon, and...uh, forgot number, Black Rain. We both liked the 1's, and always called them the Muscle Brothers (and often, each of us would take one and fight the others), though we never really knew a thing about MUSCLE. Sometime after we got them (maybe before the others from the bag were gone), my grandmother gave Emilio a bootleg, in a strange bronze color that, we noticed, resembled the brothers. As a matter of fact, quite a few looked similar; the ones we now know as Kinnikuman Zebra and Chanel Man (back then, referred to as the Mummy and Cowboy).

By the time we came to MD, the pink men were still with us (miraculously surviving two hurricanes), but we just thought of them like those plastic dinosaurs seen everywhere - nothing to get excited over. In fifth grade, I saw a friend of mine bring a bag bulging with colored MUSCLEs, but thought little of it, though it definitely caught my interest. Fast forward to a couple of years ago, where I see an article in ToyFare mention these pink figures called MUSCLE. It was a tiny picture, and nothing but the name was mentioned (it was an article about how much crappy stuff went for on Ebay, and it was a miniature pic of 500 figs), so off to the net I went. It wasn't long before I found the MPS, MUSCLE UK, and Nathan's site. We even thought to make a site (Muscle Brothers, using a banner with two #1's), but didn't seem like a big deal. Interest waned, but at least we had some idea of their identity (at least the US ones).

Then came the FoxBox and UM, then a visit after years to the MPS, then finding the link to the AKIA pics for the UMs, then a visit to the boards... and the rest is history. Thanks, guys! Without you, those last 14 may have faded to obscurity.

-Boaconda

[Tortle]

My very first MUSCLE purchase was the Mighty Maulers 28-pack (which contained my very first Tortle) from Zayre. My parents gave me allowance, and since MUSCLEs were so cheap, I didn't have to wine much for them. I remember seeing commercials for "MUSCLE Things", and drooling over the ever-elusive Hand in the commercial. I also remember staring at the 10-packs trying to see which figures were in them.

I accumulated about 70 figures, and my brother managed to collect about the same amount. I inherited them when we "grew out" of toys and kept them all in a blue shoe box under my bed for a decade. Somehow they escaped the yard sale Hell that was the fate of so many of my great toys, and they all survived to be part of my adult MUSCLE collection.

-Nathan

[Ridureyu]

On my fourth birthday, somebody got me a 10-pack. It contained the Claw, among others. I still have several of them.

[jkaris]

Shoplifting 4 packs at KB Toys in the OakRidge Mall in San Jose, CA when I was a nerdy grade schooler.

[Ridureyu]

My very first MUSCLE purchase was the Mighty Maulers 28-pack (which contained my very first Tortle) from Zayre. My parents gave me allowance, and since MUSCLEs were so cheap, I didn't have to wine much for them. I remember seeing commercials for "MUSCLE Things", and drooling over the ever-elusive Hand in the commercial. I also remember staring at the 10-packs trying to see which figures were in them.

I accumulated about 70 figures, and my brother managed to collect about the same amount. I inherited them when we "grew out" of toys and kept them all in a blue shoe box under my bed for a decade. Somehow they escaped the yard sale Hell that was the fate of so many of my great toys, and they all survived to be part of my adult MUSCLE collection.

-Nathan

Zaire? Africa?

[pasvagrsvj]

I got most of my muscles from Zayre's also, Nathan. Where are you from again?

[Siccx Degree]

Some were hand me downs from my brothers, but most were bought for me by my parents, I can still remember those days, opening up a fresh pack, the smell, and the sheer fun of it all, those were the days...

[Tortle]

Zaire? Africa?

Ha! No... Zayre was a K-Mart type of store back in the day. Zayre apparently couldn't keep up with K-Mart, so it went out of business in the late 80s (I think). The significance of the name "Zayre" eludes me, however...

And pasvagrsvj, I grew up in Woodbridge, VA. so that's where I shopped at Zayre. I then moved to Warrenton where I bought the majority of my childhood MUSCLE collection from Toy Wizard in Manassas (again, out of business). And now I hail from Charlottesville, VA.... where I buy most of my Ultimate Muscles from TRU. People don't change too much, do they?

-Nathan

[Rokk]

Zayre's! I used to go there as a kid, also. They were all around the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area. Anyway, I got my first MUSCLEs at a school festival. There were various game booths and MUSCLEs happened to be one of the prizes you could win. I won a bunch of fleshies. I later picked a couple of packages of MUSCLEs at either People's Drugstore or Revco. I lost interest in them pretty quickly and didn't get into them until later when I discovered the Kinnikuman manga.

[AmoiMan]

My first MUSCLEs I got were in a mixed 28-pack. I had never heard of them...and the box was gone minutes after i got the things....so i didn't really know what they were called....after many years, I ended up with around 45 or so, and i found out what they were called (last yearor two years ago).....then I was making my own monopoly game and needed a picture of them, so i tried ebay (december 30, 2002).......now i have a bunch

[mimoman]

I got most of my Musclies from jkaris

[GRANDTHEFT]

Oh God
my story is one of heartache and pure desperation
i first saw muscles at school there were only fleshies then and kids were throwing them around trying to bite there heads off and trading them like mad , that is how i managed to pick up about a dozen or so some i even
bought for as little 5cents ( god i wish i could do that now).................lol
later my brother and i purchased a colored can from Kmart and very soon after that they disappeared for good.
Years later i found a few but that was it , i'd always regretted not trying to get more but they were only around for a few weeks , and when i got my can i wasn't a greedy kid to then ask my mum for another so that was it untill ebay then a few weeks later i met u guys on the forums.

"such is life"


mischa

[musclemenkids]

my mum bought me a flesh ten pack from a shop called John Menzies, back in the day. i had never heard of them or seen anything like them before but i guess i was hooked from the start. i used to vist my grans house every saturday and she would often buy me a toy so muscles were quite often the toy of choice (as well as the cool as anything modulok). my sister bought me 2 28 pcks for my birthday that year, thug busters and mighty maulers in the end i had exactly 200 muscles.....and then they were incinerated.

[pasvagrsvj]

Was it stormtroopers, Musclemankids? I hate those fxckers!!!

[doc_moore_j]

Sweet topic.

I remember being a little kid, and my mommy would take me to the laundry mat. There was a convenience store right next to it, and she would usually give me a couple bucks to go buy something to keep me occupied. One day, I got myself a four pack with fleshies, and I even remember the numbers because that was how much of an impact these little craps made to me. It contained 29, 58, 75, and 167. I was hooked instantly, so for the next few months, I would buy myself a new four pack every week until they stopped selling them sadly. I got a ten pack or two from birthdays or Christmas, and I got a huge lot of about a hundred one day during a school barter with your classmates day. We all brought toys in to class and traded for other toys, it was to teach us sharing and business or some crap like that. Anyhoo, I traded a couple he man dolls for a hundred muscles. Then they seemed to have dissapeared and I never heard of them again until a couple years ago. But Veers is not interested in that, so lets just say it is history.