69 replies to this topic

[Universal Ruler Supreme]

Sorry guy's. I felt that all the banter on this thread may be turning off any assistance I might get so leave the combination debate to this thread. Hey Veers. can you rename this to an appropriate title for everyone?

EDIT by General Veers - This thread was originally URS asking for help, it quickly turned into a thread about how Mattel released/produced the Color figures.

If you’d like to help URS’ project, then click here.

Edited by General Veers, 26 July 2007 - 04:20 AM.

[Soupie]

8. Who knows what else I may find! any suggestions or ideas are extremely welcomed!

It might also reveal if the colored MUSCLEs were released in two waves, right?

[Universal Ruler Supreme]

8. Who knows what else I may find! any suggestions or ideas are extremely welcomed!

It might also reveal if the colored MUSCLEs were released in two waves, right?

I suppose it should. I guess Soupie knows what else we may find.

[Soupie]

8. Who knows what else I may find! any suggestions or ideas are extremely welcomed!

It might also reveal if the colored MUSCLEs were released in two waves, right?

Unless I completely misunderstand your point, don’t we already know this?
Flesh
Flesh, Blue, Red, Purple
Color

Did we know that for certain, or was it just speculation?

[jkaris]

The half and halves I have seen have always been flesh/red/blue/purple.

[arforbes]

The half and halves I have seen have always been flesh/red/blue/purple.

Same for me as well, only Flesh Red Blue and Purple in the half and halfs have I ever seen. Yoda moment.

[doc_moore_j]

Same thing Johnny and Alex said, but I say it more like a man. hahaha j/k.

shizznit man, all of my four packs are in storage right now. I do have a bazillion of them, so I will try very hard to help you here though. I know for a fact, that the case I purshased was sealed, and the 144 four packs included were all half half meaning (two flesh, and a combo of two blue, purple, or red). In addition to that, this particular case had very many of the same exact four pack (meaning same figure, same color). I thought for sure I may find a purple claw for example, but no, I found 12 flesh claws and no colors. Just think if I had bought the case that had 12 purple claws. I'd still have a woodie. Also, I had expected to complete a set or two of muscles which was also not the case at all, since there was so many duplicate packs, many figures were missing altogether. Like I said I got 12 claws, I prolly got 12 of each other figure or 24 say perhaps the fleshy was in two different combinations. Unfortunately, I have sold off, opened, or given away several of the four packs, so I wish I had catologued the figured and number crunched it then, but never thought that information would be needed, or just simply never thought of it period until you masterminds started snooping into codes and conspiracy. I have a small handfull of four packs that were not included in this lot and they are either the same, all flesh, or all color. Hope that helps you get started and I will see about getting my shizznit out of storage and getting some pics to you. I also know each four pack has like a serial or lot number on them. Would this information have any particular value to your search?

So what did I say that frightened you?

[Universal Ruler Supreme]

I appreciate the great response and help I'm getting on this already! Doc makes a good point that I wanted to bring up. The main problem I had with the packs Jkaris provided me with was that most of the colored packs had the same exact figures in them! After a while I just kept getting repeat information. So I've determined that I should avoid this kind of info. If someone has a case of 4packs that were shipped together, I might only need info from a fraction of these packs, or else I end up with 50 or more repeat packs in my stat's, and that really won't get me no where. However I hadn't thought of the serial #'s and although I don't know if they would be significant, they may help somehow. Are the serial #'s all different or are they the same on every pack from a single case? Either way, I started small with the number of each pack, but I'm prepared to knock it up the 3 or 400 per pack combination if it comes to that.

Didn't say anything you said scared me doc. It's more like the nervous shaky feeling you get when.......well never mind...


Also I believe what Soupie was really saying was about all colored 4 packs and not half/halfs.

And don't worry Veers.....I'll be nice and not post any obnoxious topics for a while?

Edited by Universal Ruler Supreme, 23 July 2007 - 04:49 PM.

[Soupie]

Flesh
Flesh, Blue, Red, Purple
Color

Here are the current MUSCLE DB stats on these colors:



You can clearly see that MUSCLEs were produced most in Flesh, followed by Blue, Purple, and Red, and then the other colors.

Like URS said, I'm not sure what all we could learn about MUSCLE production, but I feel like there is still stuff to uncover. Like something is sitting right in front of us, if we could just tell what it was.

I think there might be some connection between why certain sculpts are missing, certain trees don't come in certain colors, and why some trees are rare in some colors. I just don't think those things are random!

[arforbes]

Here's my explanation for the abundance of Flesh over all others, followed by Purple, Blue, and Red. Of course Flesh were made first, and then after a while Mattel decided to make 3 additional colored figures, Purple, Blue, and Red colors with the intent to revive a dying toyline. So Flesh were already in circulation, but were still being produced in the mixed 4-Packs, 10-packs and 28-packs with the new Purple, Blue and Red colored figures.

So now we have an already abundant Flesh, and the other 3 colors being produced together. Then later on Mattel decides to release an additional 5 colors...Light Blue, Salmon, Orange, Green and Magenta. Now we have the all colors packs of the toyline, still have mixed packs also and still flesh alone too. So we have Fleshies still being made, along side the 3 previously released colors already in existence...Purple, Blue, and Red. So the Flesh ones are huge in number by now followed by Purple, Blue and Red. Later production is stopped on Muscle altogether. Flesh huge in number...Purple Blue and Red next, followed by the other newest colors of courtse being the least produced because they were the newest. This explains why the latest released colors are fewer in number and why the older colors are more abundant.

[Universal Ruler Supreme]

What's interesting is Colors as a whole outnumber fleshies. It would be nice if we found some kind of tree rotation within the colored figures. It will be a long time coming before we find out anything really though. So far I've only had two definite contributors. Soupie I may need some help on this, mainly with information layout. If you have any ideas about how many different types of info charts that might be relevant then p.m. me. With your college level education, and my immense patience to crunch numbers, along with our oddball sense of humor maybe we can pull out more info than I was planning. A second pair of eyes roving over any stats I pull up might reveal something otherwise overlooked.


I guess what I'm saying is I may be mildly pinheaded and I may need some help.

[jkaris]

What's interesting is Colors as a whole outnumber fleshies.

This is probably due to the fact that most people use MDB to track colored figures more than they do fleshies.

[Universal Ruler Supreme]

Well here's something to chew on.

Let's round off on the MDB #'s

40,000 thousand figures

20,000 Flesh

10,000 red/blue/purple (approximately 3,000 each)

10,000 of the remaining 5 colors (approximately 2,000 each)


15,000 Fleshies produced alone

5,000 Fleshies produced with 5,000 red/blue/purple

5,000 red/blue/purple produced with 5,000 of the remaining colors

5,000 of the remaining colors produced


The last two could really be intertwined. Which brings me to another thing I'd like to know. Did we see an eventual drop off of red/blue/purple figures toward the end of the line, and an increase in 3 or more of the other colors? So much could really be told from this project. Do the serial #'s doc mentioned hold any relevance to the color combinations that they were packed in? Would keeping track of the exact contents of each individual pack reveal any other information? I wish Mr. Owl was here.......He knows everything.

[Soupie]

That’s wrong. All the colors were produced/released at once, as seen in the catalog.

However, the Purple/Blue/Red might have been the first waves to hit the stores. Plus 4-packs were considerably cheaper, allowing for great “accessibility.”

Then by the time the line is completely color, sales are dropping too fast to “even things out.”

So what you're saying, based on the info you gathered from the catalog, is that Mattel had ALL the colors available in 1986, but chose only to release Red, Purple, and Dark Blue with Flesh in the 4-packs and not the other colors. And you think the reason we may see more Flesh, Red, Purple, and Dark Blue is because the were available first in the cheaper (more abundant?) 4-packs.

As far as the MDB stats, I wouldn't expect them to perfectly represent MUSCLE production numbers, but they clearly show that there is a lot more Flesh than any other color, followed by Red, Purple, and Dark Blue, and then the other colors. I think that alone is good information. I don't think we need exact numbers per se.

Along with the things URS mentioned above, by taking a closer look at the 4-packs I hope we can learn which parts/trees were used to make the 4-packs. Maybe just like the 28 packs, we'll learn that only certain parts/trees were used (maybe we already know this...).

On a side note, there is still lots to learn about the MUSCLE color code as well. There is a LOT of information to be gathered from the "MUSCLE" parts like (1) how many trees are missing colors, how many colors per tree, what colors are they missing, compared to (2) how many trees are missing sculpts, how many sculpts per tree, etc. and even (3) how many trees have "rare" colors, how many colors are rare per tree, and which colors are the rare ones.

One interesting thing I found by looking over the archive quickly last night was that in the first 10 parts or so, the most rare color was Dark Blue. That seemed odd to me considering it is one of the most abundant colors... Maybe it has some connection to the 4-packs, I don't know. Lots of questions, either way.

Edited by Soupie, 24 July 2007 - 06:12 AM.

[jkaris]

Don't forget that they had 1/2er 10 packs too. Not just 4 packs.

[Soupie]

Don't forget that they had 1/2er 10 packs too. Not just 4 packs.

Were those 10 pack halfers also Flesh/Red/Blue/Purple?

[Soupie]

Okay, so what does the color/package release look like for each wave? Here is a model, please correct me where I'm wrong:

Release Wave One

Colors: Only Flesh

Packages: Flesh 4-pack -- Flesh 28-pack -- Flesh 10-pack


Release Wave Two

Colors: All Colors

Packages: Flesh 4-pack -- Flesh/Red/Blue/Purple 4-pack -- Flesh 28-pack -- Certain-colors 28-packs (?) -- Flesh 10-pack -- Flesh/Red/Blue/Purple 10-pack


Release Wave Three

Colors: All Colors

Packages: Flesh 4-pack -- Flesh/Red/Blue/Purple 4-pack -- All-colors 4-pack (?) -- Flesh 28-pack -- Certain-colors 28-pack (?) -- Flesh 10-pack -- Flesh/Red/Blue/Purple 10-pack -- All-colors 10-pack

How does that look? I'm pretty certain I'm wrong about the 28-packs. Only certain colors came in the 28 packs, right? Was all colors sans Red, Blue, and Purple? The 28-packs are tricky because only certain sculpts (parts/trees) came in the 28-packs, and therefore only certain colors, right?

Edited by Soupie, 24 July 2007 - 07:49 AM.

[Soupie]

Wave 2:
28-Pack – All color
--- But I think the mix varied by package. I think some had something like Light Blue, Dark Blue, Green and others had Orange, Salmon, Green. But I don’t know how the breakdown actually worked.

Hm, yes, as URS showed in this thread -- 28-packs solved -- the 28-packs consisted of a select number of apparently non-random parts/trees -- quite a few in fact. But, as we know which color each tree was made in, it is possible therefore to determine which colors the 28-packs came. There is a possibility that the trees which make up the 28-packs cover ALL the colors, and therefore, the 28-packs would contain all colors.

(I'm in the process now of pulling all the data from the MUSCLE Parts into one, easy-to-reference chart -- or so I hope. That way, one won't have to wade through page after page of MUSCLE images to find out which color a tree comes in, how many figures in said tree, etc. Hopefully a larger pattern will emerge which can be compared to any patterns URS finds in the 4-packs or has already found in the 28-packs.)