Custom Painted Deka
by Professor Terry
This week I’m highlighting six of my favorite custom painted Deka Kinkeshi figures for something a little different. These six stand out for me due to either the wonderful paint job or Kinnikuman cartoon accuracy.
Starting in the back row – we have Cubeman, painted like a Rubiks cube which I know is an obvious paint scheme for this figure but I love the nostalgia of the 1980’s that Rubiks Cube brings me even though I’ve never been able to solve it without a cheat code. I’m not 100% sure on his arms and legs being black but then again, what other color would you do? I don’t think flesh color would suit.
In the middle of the back row is Smileman – this is done completely ad lib and I couldn’t have imagined this figure would turn out so nice! The silver shading of his suit combined with the grape and gold colored faces produced an awesome looking figure, I really love this guy and have to admit I wasn’t much of a Smileman fan before having this done. It was just a random figure I had that was a last second inclusion in the custom painting commission.
I have to admit too that the Deka version looks more striking to me than his M.U.S.C.L.E. counterpart.
Back right hand side of the back row is Mokusejin or Tigerian, who was featured in MMMM #44. Looking at that weeks entry, I really had poor pictures that week that didn’t truly represent how great this figure (and the M.U.S.C.L.E. version too) look painted. Over two years later and this figure still is one of my favorite three painted Deka’s.
In the middle row there is Iwao, painted in a really cool molten lava scheme, it isn’t cartoon accurate but when I saw a M.U.S.C.L.E. figure painted this way, I just had to have a Deka done in the same way. I wish I had a picture of the other figure to compare or a M.U.S.C.L.E. figure to have painted in molten lava. I like the M.U.S.C.L.E. figure much better than the Deka too. Still, it’s a really cool figure in my opinion.
Next to Iwao is my absolute favorite painted Deka, Octopus Dragon. I’m pretty certain this one is cartoon accurate. His color scheme is unusual but quite striking, it stands out on my shelves and can look downright scary. Back when I featured Octopus Dragon way back in MMMM #3. I didn’t have this figure or the M.U.S.C.L.E. custom painted figure in my collection and I regret that I wasn’t patient enough to wait until I had more figures to showcase. That has happened quite a lot in writing these musings each week, I add new figures to the collection that could have been included in that particular figures MMMM. Maybe one day I’ll do a MMMM titled “Updates” and include them all in one fell swoop.
The last Deka is the Meat or Mito figure which is entirely cartoon accurate and because I’ve watch quite a bit of the cartoon series with English subs, seeing this guy in his light blue shirt makes me think of the show. For that he sits proudly among my favorite custom painted figures.
