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M.U.S.C.L.E. - The M.P.S.


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#1 jkaris

jkaris

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Posted 15 July 2002 - 08:43 PM

The MPS has officially been retired, but Darrin does a bunch of the old site archived at his new site:
Darrin's Dojo!

The History of The M.P.S.
by Darrin M. Vindiola Sr.



The M.U.S.C.L.E. Preservation Society was established in 1996. It was founded, and is still ran by myself, Darrin M. Vindiola Sr. It started out as a simple fan site, and has slowly evolved into what you see today. We're accredited with being The Internet's very first M.U.S.C.L.E. Web page.

It all started out in a toy collecting newsgroup. I saw a post with a subject heading that read... "M.U.S.C.L.E. Anyone?" I quickly read it, and soon started corresponding with a nice guy from the U.K. named Tim Drage. We were both amazed at how many people remembered M.U.S.C.L.E. but yet, after both scouring the Internet, we couldn't even find one web-site dealing with them. I threatened to put a change to that, and Tim encouraged me, by supplying me with scans and images of M.U.S.C.L.E. figures. My web design and graphic skills were pitiful back then, but I quickly learned more and more (and am still learning) all thanks to this web-site. One of the most interesting things about all of this, is that 98% of what I know about the toyline M.U.S.C.L.E. was learned after I created this web-site!

"Darrin's M.U.S.C.L.E. Page" as it was called in the beginning, rapidly started to gain a large following that quite honestly shocked me. After a few months in early 1997, we adopted the name "The M.U.S.C.L.E. Preservation Society" My site was a hub for collectors to meet, trade, buy, chat and sell M.U.S.C.L.E, not to mention the sharing of information on the hobby. Soon I had M.U.S.C.L.E. fans from all over the world e-mailing me from such countries as...Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Japan, China, and many others! It was quite the phenomenon all right, and I was happy to be right in the middle of it.

One of our main goals we started pursuing in 1998, was to try and get the toyline re-released. We started an online petition to Mattel that fell on deaf ears even after several well thought out attempts at presenting it to them. But now in 2002, it looks as if we might get our wish in some form anyway. The M.U.S.C.L.E.'s cousins from Japan "Kinnikuman" are coming to the states in the form of a cartoon series, and the merchandising wave is sure to follow!

For almost two years, The M.U.S.C.L.E. Preservation Society fell by the wayside due to personal circumstances, and it was always something I had truly felt bad about. But now as of late, I've been able to put the time and effort into it that it needs/deserves. I'm happy to say that the hobby is still going strong, some six years later, and with "Kinnikuman the Ultimate M.U.S.C.L.E." coming to the States soon, we just might see a new surge of collectors hop on the M.U.S.C.L.E. Bandwagon!

A lot of people say that I'm responsible for the way the hobby has taken off in recent years, but I don't believe that. There were a lot of hard core collectors with me in the beginning that put in endless hours of research into the hobby as well as their web-sites, and we were all more than happy to share the wealth of knowledge that we had gained over the years. M.U.S.C.L.E. is such a great toyline, it only would have been a matter of time before someone else started up a site based on them. In closing, I guess it does feel good knowing that I had a small hand in all of this. I can only hope that the hobby keeps thriving as it has been lately.
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