- Corinthian ProStars
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Corinthian ProStars are football figuirines which are bigger than Corinthian MicroStars. The Original Headliners were released in 1995 and to date there have been 40 Corinthian Series. The early series have included doubles of players but some do not. Other series have been devoted to Serie A, FIFA World Cup and the England national football team. There have been team packs and Fan Favourites too. There were 12 ProStars released by Tetley.
Contents
1996 Collection
Following on from the success of the England national Headliners, Corinthian released a new range of figures consisting of players from both the English Premiership and also the Scottish Premiership. This range hit the shops in January 1996.
Corinthian released figures from every club in the English Premiership during the 1995/96 season and just the 5 teams from the Scottish Premiership.
The original idea was to release the full squad for every team, at least 12 players per club, however it soon became apparent that this was not a viable commercial option for a few reasons.
One of these reasons is that most people bought their favourite players or the players from the club they supported and in the majority of cases this was teams such as Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Newcastle United, which meant figures from less supported clubs like QPR, Bolton Wanderers or Manchester City went unsold in many shops, meaning most stockists only wanted to stock figures from the top clubs as these were guaranteed sellers.
Corinthian sought to address this problem by distributing figures from these less supported clubs around the area of the club, for example very few Wimbledon figures went to shops in the North of England and in contrast very few Middlesbrough figures were sent to shops in London.
As for the Scottish figures, most of those were sold primarily in Scotland with only the larger stockists in England stocking the figures. Celtic and Rangers figures could be found in some English shops, the 'Gascoigne' in Rangers kit could be found anywhere for example, whereas figures from Aberdeen were very hard to find outside of Scotland.
Corinthian continued to release figures in this range up until the end of the 97/98 season when they changed the brand name to Prostars. The figures were released on a variety of packaging formats, with the most popular amongst collectors being the 'single blister pack' some of the figures released in this range became very hard to get over time, especially those from the lesser supported clubs.[1]
Series 1
Dwight Yorke had the honour of having code PRO001, meaning he was the first ProStar to be released, as well as the first Manchester United ProStar since Teddy Sheringham. Corinthian were busy developing an entire new range of figures and these figures would be released with a whole new look and name, the name they chose was Prostars. On the 12th of January 1999 the very first range of Prostars figures were released. The figures themselves were still the same size, 7 cm, but were made from a much finer plastic and the paint work was also improved. The bases were also slightly thicker, thus making them much more stable.
Series 38
Series 38 was released in 2007.
Here is the list: (Players listed in club name order and all players in 2007/08 kits.)[2]
- Fernando Torres (Liverpool) (home kit)
- Maicon (Inter Milan) (home kit)
- Bacary Sagna (Arsenal) (home kit)
- Owen Hargreaves (Manchester United) (home kit)
- Marek Jankulovski (AC Milan) (home kit)
- Craig Bellamy (West Ham United) (home kit)
- Thierry Henry (Barcelona) (home kit)
- Vincenzo Iaquinta (Juventus) (home kit)
- Ludovic Giuly (AS Roma) (home kit)
- Florent Malouda (Chelsea) (home kit)
- Fredrik Ljungberg (West Ham United) (home kit)
- Carlos Tévez (Manchester United) (home kit)
Series 40
Series 40 was released in 2008.
Here is the list: (Players listed in club name order and all players in 2007/08 kits.)[3]
- Alessandro Nesta (AC Milan) (home kit)
- Adrian Mutu (Fiorentina) (home kit)
- Daniele De Rossi (AS Roma) (home kit)
- Lilian Thuram (Barcelona) (home kit)
- Steve Finnan (Liverpool) (home kit)
- Mikel Arteta (Everton) (home kit)
- Eiður Guðjohnsen (Barcelona) (home kit)
- Tomasz Kuszczak (Manchester United) (home kit)
- Elano (Manchester City) (home kit)
- Julio Cruz (Inter Milan) (home kit)
- Cristian Chivu (Inter Milan) (home kit)
- Clarence Seedorf (AC Milan) (home kit)
Corinthian Teampacks
Corinthian Teampacks, released in 1999, were Corinthian ProStars football figurines, just as 11 players and a manager or in some cases, 12 players. Below are the teampacks, with images.
England 1966 Team Pack
This is the pack released to commemorate England's 1966 World Cup victory. The starting 11 is included as well as Jimmy Greaves, who was an unused substitute.
The players from left to right are:
Gordon Banks, Ray Wilson, George Cohen, Nobby Stiles, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, Alan Ball, Jack Charlton, Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters, Roger Hunt, Jimmy Greaves.
Other teampacks from the past have included an England 1999 series - featuring Kevin Keegan as manager and the Manchester United treble winning teampack.
External links
- football-corinthian.co.uk
- https://sites.google.com/site/marcocorinthiancollection/home
- http://www.corinthianarchive.co.uk/#/prostars/4540664769
References
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