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Three friends share their memories about the online M.U.S.C.L.E.
community back when it was first formed in the late 90's.
 
 

Recently myself, and good friends Jason Radniecki, and Kevin Mayle had several in depth discussions about how much different the online  M.U.S.C.L.E. community is today, some eleven years after it's inception.  Below are some of our most memorable experiences from years gone by..

 

Kevin Mayle - M.P.S. Member #8
 
I started collecting MUSCLEs in 1986. I loved the commercials, the endless variety of cool characters and the cheap price. Through buying and trading, my collection grew to about 70 different figures.

The next year the colored MUSCLEs came out and I didn't like them, so I stopped collecting. Then a lot of changes happened in my life that summer. My parents divorced. My best friend and mentor died. We sold our family home, all my toys, and moved out of the town I grew up in, and away from all the friends I had been going to school with from Kindergarten through 8th grade. Starting High school after that summer from Hell, I felt kind of shell-shocked and tried to leave my past behind me.

Ten years later I realized just how much I missed all the fun I had in life before becoming a teenager. It was also at this time that I bought a WebTV to surf around this relatively new thing called The World Wide Web. I found online a veritable time machine. I could conjure up any memory from my youth and find a website devoted to it. It was during this time that I discovered the MPS, The MUSCLE Preservation Society. It stirred an obsession in me to relive the MUSCLE collecting days of my youth, and with a huge purchase I made from Patrick Gresham, and a few more from Billy Galaxy, I had a complete set of Pink MUSCLEs.

The collecting bug had been fed, but I had made new friends through the MPS. Namely it's creator, Darrin Vindiola. Another hard time in life hit when both of my cars blew up, I got laid off from work and my daughter's mother, my fiancé of four years left me, all in the span of a couple weeks. As I was trying to rebuild my life I found daily laughter in a new MUSCLE site, The MCW, MUSCLE Championship Wrestling. I was awestruck by the creativity and humor of the site, and was so inspired by the beautifully painted figures and they're hilarious antics, that after not having drawn anything for a few years, I picked up a pencil again and began to draw.

Darrin was starting up a MUSCLE Membership fan club and newsletter, The MUSCLE Times, and I used it as an opportunity to work with the creator of the MCW, Jason Radniecki, to make comic strips and art for the newsletter. It was a really fun time to work on The MUSCLE Times and I miss it. By the end of the Nineties, we all kind of drifted away. Years went by and now I'm finding myself in a similar situation again. I've just recently seen the end of another 4 year engagement to a woman at the same time as The MPS, The MCW and my MUSCLE art make their triumphant return. It seems that whenever life throws me for a loop, I can still find happiness in the interests of my youth, like MUSCLEs, and the companionship of friends, like Darrin and Jason.
 
 

Jason Radniecki - M.P.S. Member #5

 My M.U.S.C.L.E. Memories  by Jason K. Radniecki
 
I was in high school at the time and it was the mid-80's, so it was mostly girlfriends, 80's new wave music and the latest fashion trends that occupied my mind at the time. But the child in me who kept a few old Star Wars toys packed away in his closet, who still did some occasional window shopping through the Lego and Hot Wheels isles at Toy R Us, who actually still secretly collected G.I. Joe figures which I used to wrestle with in my custom made wrestling ring… well, needless to say, I was fully aware when the M.U.S.C.L.E. toy line hit the shelves. How could you miss that rack at the end of the isle? In fact, they had more than just a rack at the Toy R Us' in my parts at least. From what I remember, they had a M.U.S.C.L.E. section within the isle of the action figures, another shelf full of M.U.S.C.L.E. at the very end of the next isle over, and then a M.U.S.C.L.E. display of some sort in the front of the store near the registers to hit up all the impulse buyers. If they really wanted to give the illusion that there where literally millions of these things, it was working. I was curious… extremely curious, but I didn't catch the M.U.S.C.L.E. bug till later on.
 
My first encounter with M.U.S.C.L.E. "outside" of a package came in 1986 when my friends and I piled in the back of my friend Steve's car. Now among us, Steve was probably the furthest from one you'd expect to have anything to do with M.U.S.C.L.E.. He was kind of our group leader and spent many of his nights hanging out in his garage with a couple of his auto-shop buddies trying to fix up an old Datsun. I guess you could say he was the Fonzie of our gang… that would make me Richie I guess. Well, strung within the steering wheel cover of his car were about 5 or 6 pink M.U.S.C.L.E.. As we piled in the back, comments like "Hey, I've seen those before!" and "Whoa, those things are cool!" poured from out mouths…and yes they were cool, especially if the Fonz had them. I remember one particular M.U.S.C.L.E. that stood out from the rest to me. It was #136, the big toad-skinned guy with 3 eyes. I'm not sure why, maybe it was because within this world of tiny little men there was still a big huge brute among them. He's been a favorite of mine ever since.
 
My next encounter with the little rubber guys wasn't till a year later in 1987. My new girlfriend Trish Kelly that I had met in art class at the time, came from a family of arts and crafts. Her dad was an art teacher so her and her three brothers, Dave, Sean and little Greg, all seem to have a knack for art. Well she did at least, her brothers… not so much, though they always had fun trying. Well, when I finally came over to her place for the first time, there was a shoe box full of M.U.S.C.L.E. on the kitchen table. I took quite a glance at them, picked a few up and gave them a good look over. I think the reason I never got into M.U.S.C.L.E. till that time was because I really didn't know what to do with them. I was in a phase of my life where collections of any sort had no significance to me. But what was different about this particular box of M.U.S.C.L.E. I had come across was that some of them were painted! Suddenly my eyes really opened up to the possibilities with these little figures. Though I had pretty much just been introduced to her family that day, it wasn't long at all till I made myself comfortable at the kitchen table along side her brothers painting M.U.S.C.L.E. for hours on end. At first we all just wanted to show off our creativity, but Dave had other things going on in the background. With a background in D&D, he had been putting together a dice-rolling  wrestling game. For the next few months the Kelly brothers, myself and eventually my best friend Tim would be consumed in the M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling game we had created. Constantly trying to out-do each other with our paint jobs and win records. Bragging right to the titles was a serious thing, but even more serious were the wrestlers who would accumulate several consecutive wins in a row. These were the M.U.S.C.L.E. that truly struck fear into there opponents. We had a blast challenging each other day after day after day for the next few months. On top of that, I brought out my dad's old video camera on day (you know, the kind so big you need to rest it on your shoulder?) and we even threw a few M.U.S.C.L.E. movies together based on films like Predator, Big and the Exorcist. So much creativity spawned from a such a simple little toy line with absolutely no media but a couple TV ads and some snazzy packaging to support it.
 
When Trish and I broke up, Tim and I eventually drifted away from the Kelly's altogether, but the M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling didn't stop there. Tim and I continued our Muscle Man Wrestling for a couple more months on our own. It got even more serious and more... ridiculous. We were like two master chess players sitting across the table from one another strategically choosing our moves. Except, we were playing with little rubber men while doing our best impressions of Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior among others. Eventually Tim gave all his M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestlers to me and drifted away as well.
 
Now, I'm not exactly sure why I did this, maybe it's like a girl breaking up with you and then throwing all her pictures away. If you can't have something you love, why torture yourself by keeping the memories around (do I need therapy?). But one afternoon while cleaning out my room, I took that box full of all our little creations that over the course of a Summer and a half, had filled our lives with imagination, competitive fun and fond memories and threw them in the trash. Little did I know that I would be sharing those fond memories with the MPS and all the M.U.S.C.L.E.-Heads around the world two decades later.  
 
M.U.S.C.L.E. made a huge impact in my life. Aside from the great memories I'll always cherish over that Summer, truly one of the best times of my life, it now gives me an avenue to showcase my creativity, my sense of humor and entertain fellow M.U.S.C.L.E. enthusiasts around the world. From that first day I laid paint on a M.U.S.C.L.E., the end result 20 years later?... M.U.S.C.L.E. Championship Wrestling.

 

 

Darrin Vindiola - president of The M.P.S.

 Hmmm… what was the hobby like back in 1996? At first, everything about the toy line seemed to be shrouded in mystery. For many the Internet was new and exciting, which threw some extra fascination and wonderment into the mix as well. We were obviously fans of M.U.S.C.L.E. as kids, but we had never really delved into the specifics of the toy line. They were incredibly cool toys that were fun to play with, and that was all we needed.  A decade later I was well into adulthood, and a sudden desire to relive a bit of my childhood arose. While I wanted to obtain M.U.S.C.L.E. toys for old times sake, I also started asking questions that had never crossed my mind as a youngster. Who made M.U.S.C.L.E.? Exactly how many were made and what colors were produced? Were there any rare M.U.S.C.L.E. figures? Does anyone else in this world actually remember M.U.S.C.L.E.? These were just a few of the burning questions that really helped to get the online collecting movement rolling. Since then, there has been endless tallying, cataloguing, and dissection of the toy line, which has greatly benefited the hobby. For sure, it was the new discoveries that used to give me an insane rush in the very beginning. But to tell you the truth, my fondest memories derive from the camaraderie and fun we had amongst our circle of friends.

Shortly after the M.P.S. was formed, we created a chat room for M.P.S. members and enthusiasts.  Collectors would meet up to chat, trade, and discuss findings about the toy line. We originally met two nights a week, but eventually scaled it back to one chat session on Sunday nights. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in the chat room talking with other M.U.S.C.L.E. Heads until late into the night. We would mostly discuss the outcome of our weekly M.U.S.C.L.E. hunts, and any new tidbits of information that would be turned up during our collecting pursuits. With our batteries recharged from all of the M.U.S.C.L.E. discussion, most of us would usually scatter at around midnight to feverishly update our websites. The M.P.S. chat room was a particularly useful tool for myself, as I could gauge what collectors wanted to see, and could better learn what made our hobby tick. Many chat session’s spawned content that would later appear on the web site and M.P.S. Newsletters. It wasn’t always about M.U.S.C.L.E. however. On any given night we would discuss an infinite number of subjects ranging from politics, to entertainment. We learned an awful lot about each other, and many of us remain good friends to this day.

In contrast to what some toy collectors thought about us, we weren’t a bunch of geeks that had no lives. We had girlfriends, social lives, jobs, families, and kids. We did however have a passion for what we believed to be one of the most unique toy lines ever made. For me, the hobby went way past collecting. The more I learned about my collecting buddies especially The M.P.S. Members, the more I learned just how much many of us had in common. A lot of us had similar values, interests and even the same sense of humor!

I particularly clicked with M.P.S. Members Jason Radniecki and Kevin Mayle.  In the past ten years, months and even years have passed between some of our conversations.  However.. we always put out feelers from time to time just to make sure the others are doing okay.  In the past when we did decide to drop an e-mail after these long periods of time, it was just like 1997 again.  We could converse without missing a beat, and catch up on old times.  Even though I have never met Kevin or Jason face to face, I have no doubt that if I were visiting their hometowns, all I would have to do is make a phone call so we could meet up and have a heck of a good time.  I hope Kev and Jason feel that they could do the same with me.  We've gotten pretty close over the years, and we owe it all to a this great toy line!

The actual existence of a “Society” for our hobby, had a lot to do with how tight knit our group was back then. You had that feeling of camaraderie amongst your M.U.S.C.L.E. brethren.  It was a feeling that one usually gets from being in clubs and other distinguished organizations. I even knew members that proudly displayed their M.P.S. Membership Certificates in their offices and cubicles at work! We were truly proud of what we were doing to bring more attention to the hobby, and gladly welcomed anyone who wanted to join us.

With the Internet becoming so ingrained in our culture and daily lives, it seems that people have gotten used to finding what they seek almost instantaneously. Back in the day, we put in an endless amount of hours just into discovering what collectors now call “The basics” of M.U.S.C.L.E. collecting, and we loved every minute of it.

Sometimes I feel sorry for the new collectors that weren’t there with us in the beginning. We were on the verge of something big and had no clue just how popular the hobby would become. But then again.. that’s why The M.P.S. exists. It serves as place where new collectors can learn about the good old days when little was known about this toy line. For older collectors, The M.P.S. provides a way to reconnect with old friends and great memories from the good ol’ days.
 

 
 


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