Kinkeshi Premium Set Vol. 2
By Professor Terry
In a surprise, I received Kinkeshi Premium Vol. 2 a lot quicker than the Vol. 1 I covered last week so here is the Kinkeshi Vol. 2 review for MMMM this week.
I haven’t photographed the packaging for this volume as it’s identical to the Vol. 1 packaging only blue instead of red.
The figures included in Vol. 2 are: Kinnikuman (with a grimacing face) Akuma Shogun, Buffaloman, Geronimo, Pentagon, Brockenman, Brocken Jr, Cubeman, Ramenman, Springman, Puzzleman, and this time four new sculpts.
The 15 figures in this lot represent a wider range of the Kinnikuman storyline but there are some odd choices in Volume 2.
First omission I’ll point out is there is still no Sunshine figure. I thought with 30 figures now released that they’d at least include one Sunshine figure. I’m disappointed. Also surprising is there is no Meat figure who is such an important part of the Japanese line.
Now onto the good parts of Volume 2 – I absolutely love the Cubeman and Springman figures. They are very well done and look more solid than the M.U.S.C.L.E. version without actually changing a whole lot.
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The Ramenman and Akuma Shogun are also nicely done with good detail. The Pentagon figure is better than the M.U.S.C.L.E. one as well. These figure are the highlight of the set.
There were a couple of weird choices though. Choosing both Brockman and Brocken Jr was a bit lazy in my opinion as both figures are practically identical and would have made the set no less awesome to just choose one of them and include a different sculpt. I could have forgiven it if the two figures had different poses or something but even the poses are identical.
Also, I feel the Buffaloman sculpt has a head that is disproportionate to his body. The head seems too big and makes the figure look somewhat deformed. I’m not sure why it was done this way. Choosing a random figure like Puzzleman or Puzzle Ring was a mystery to me when so many more popular sculpts, especially in Japan were overlooked. Can anyone say Warsman?
There are I believe four new sculpts in this series though I’m debating whether one of them, the Kinnikuman looking figure, is a Japanese version of Kinnikuman I haven’t seen before.
The other three though are certainly new. I don’t like these ones better than the three from Vol. 1 though I was impressed by the guy in the hat. At first glance my thoughts were he looks like a character from the Indiana Jones movies with his long coat & rounded hat. Still, a cool sculpt.
The other two are okay. The guy in the middle looks like he could roll himself into a ball and also has a mask that looks a little like Spiderman. The 3rd guy looks like he could be a guy working with a gas mask on.
What does excite me about the three new sculpts per set that Kinkeshi Premium have released though is that it brings me back to my childhood when I didn’t know names of any M.U.S.C.L.E. figures and had to make something up according to their looks. To me that was half the fun of uncovering figures you hadn’t seen before.
I’m sure these new figures have names but to be honest I don’t want to look them up. I’d rather have the mystery in not knowing.
That’s it for this week – next week will be the 100th edition. I can’t believe there have been 100 of these!
