M.U.S.C.L.E. apparently stood for Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere. I don't remember this fact, but wikipedia is never wrong. These little figurines exemplified a typical marketing trend of 80's toys: "Collect them all!" With M.U.S.C.L.E, however, the problem was there were 236 of them. It was nearly impossible to get your hands on every last one, let alone convince your mom to buy them for you. I distinctly remember the weird alien hand on the top right (above) being one of my favorites.
The toys came at random in packs of 4 (traditional blister packs) or 10 (the garbage cans). They also came in a jumbo 28 pack (to let you get a big jump on your collection). Since the packs were filled randomly, it made even harder to complete your collection.
Originally, they came only in the bizarrely pasty pink flesh color, but eventually were sold in multiple hues. For some reason, I only had original, red, and purple. One of the purple guys looked like he was made out of chiseled rock and I aptly nicknamed him "Rocky." He was my favorite because his waist size was bigger than average, requiring me to physically jam him into the "Hard Knockin' Rockin' Ring"
The ring was much like a rock-em sock-em robots game, but the goal was to knock the other figurine out of his holster. This was nearly impossible with Rocky, as he reigned supreme as lifetime champion. One final note that I distinctly remember was how the commercials would always show a particularly cool figurine that everyone wanted. Naturally, this lone toy would be the hardest to find, prompting many additional purchases and false boasts of having one at home, but not ever bringing it to school to prove it.
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