Late to the Party! Super 7 Comes Out Huge @ Toy Fair!

Hey, everyone, welcome back!  Sorry, this write-up is so late and ancient news by now.  The SpiderEarth family has been fighting off one of those late-winter early-spring colds, and I finally fell sick to it just recently.  I had considered just letting it go and move on, but I do have some thoughts I wanted to share about it all, so hopefully it's not too late for that.


As I am sure most of my readers know by now, as well as keshi collectors that are just dropping by for the first time, Super 7 has been quite the keshi flag-barer the last couple years.  Ever since their first wave of Masters of the Universe/ MUSCLE cross-over mini-figures were announced in the spring/summer of 2015, they have had their foot firmly pressed on the gas pedal for keshi, and this year's Toy Fair shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.  Who can't love that?

Actually, a lot of us should have expected it.  They did announce quite a lot of this in advance, but there certainly have been surprises along the way, as well.  When they revealed the set of Masters of the Universe MUSCLE, they had announced plans to include the movie Alien, Mega Man, Robotech, Ghouls N' Ghosts, Street Fighter, and others.  This year's Toy Fair was certainly one that has showed how much progress they have made since then.

On display, were the Mega Man, Robotech, and Street Fighter mini-figures previously announced, but they had some surprise company as well.  At least, surprising to me, were the displayed The Worst and Shogun mini-figure sets announced, as well as the blind bag Street Fighter figures that have me crying in my wallet already.  And if all that wasn't good enough, additional sets of Alien and Masters of the Universe was there to satisfy the fans looking to extend their current collections.

What I wanted to bring up, however, is this weird division I have in my head.  On one side, I am nothing but thrilled Super 7 is doing so much with the keshi format.  They are adopting nearly every trademark they have into little rubber mini-figures, and that's awesome.  That's exactly what I would command them, if I had some sort of wand of dark magic.  However, on the other side of my brain, I see some of these figures, particularly the Mega Man and some of the new Alien mini-figures, and I can't help but admit how unattractive they are.  I know they can't hit home-runs every time, and I know they do have to blend both MUSCLE and the other franchise together into something that will look natural in both worlds, but, even still, some of these look pretty awful.

And that's what's so weird, you look at other things coming out and there's a lot of great looking stuff.  The Street Fighter set, in particular, looks top notch, and The Worst stuff isn't too far behind.  Was there just too much work that needed to be done, because there is a significant drop-off when it comes to the Mega Man set.  And that sucks, because I really dig Mega Man, but for me, the proportions are all off.  Some parts are too thin and too long and others are too blown out, to create a figure that looks more like a MUSCLE character with a Mega Man costume on than an actual living character.  Like I said, I know there has to be some compromising to detail, so characters of movies and video games can blend into the MUSCLE world and all the mini-figures can all have a similar look, and if that's what happened to the Mega Man set, I have to question why other sets break that rule and look so much better because of it.

There are other Mega Man keshi sets out there, maybe it was a matter of separating their product from how those look.  I am not sure, but I did want to share my opinion, because things could change in future series.  I think creative feedback is always a good thing, and I am hopeful that Super 7 will change things if this first Mega Man set fails to reach expectations.  I'm not sending an online hex or anything, I am just setting up high standards for the company that's been representing the keshi format largely these last couple years.  Maybe some crumby vending machines get a pass for being ridiculous novelties, but Super 7 outgrew that a long time ago.  I would argue, if anyone finds keshi on toy shelves nowadays, it'll likely be made by Super 7, so it's only proper we make sure they are putting the best out there for new and old fans alike.