German Edition 2014/15

Creative Toys Company (CTC) teamed up with German toy manufacturer Simba, to produce a secret sachet series of SoccerStarz. The product was released in Germany early September, just after the start of the new Bundesliga season.

 

The range is made up of 32 figures, consisting of 9 football teams and spanning 4 European leagues, with all figures being released in 2014/15 home kit. Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund each have 8 SoccerStarz released, with Barcelona and Real Madrid representing Spain's La Liga with 4 SoccerStarz each. French Ligue 1 is representated by Zlatan Ibrahimovic in Paris Saint-Germain kit. The English Premier Leauge makes up the remaining 7 figures, with Arsenal having 3, Chelsea 2, Liverpool and Manchester United 1 each.

 

Bayern Munich's 8 are Manuel Neuer, Phillip Lahm, Dante, Thomas Muller, Mario Gotze, Franck Ribery, Bastian Schweinsteiger and the first ever release of Dutchman Arjen Robben! The Robben is a long voerdue and much anticipated release.

 

The 8 for Borussia Dortmund are Roman Weidenfeller, Marcel Schmelzer, Mats Hummels, Sven Bender, Marco Reus, Kevin Großkreutz, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Sadly coach Jurgen Klopp does not feature in this edition. Interestingly the sculpt of Sven Bender has changed from the German national release, so as his body pose.

 

Real Madrid's chosen 4 are Gareth Bale, Cristiano Ronaldo, Sergio Ramos and German International Sami Khedira, an obvious inclusion. The figures of Ramos and Ronaldo are in their original pose and EXCLUSIVE to this series. For Barcelona we get Neymar Jr, Lionel Messi, Xavi and Iniesta, again 4 obvious choices as they are the ones with the most global appeal.

 

The 3 chosen for Arsenal are their 3 German international, Mesut Ozil, Per Mertesacker and Lukas Podolski, all wise choices for a Germany released product. For Chelsea we of course got German international Andre Schurrle and he was joined by Petr Cech. Liverpool's selection was Steven Gerrard and Manchester United's was Wayne Rooney. Interestingly enough the back of the sachet does not show images of Gerrard or Rooney, they are listed as 'extra special' mystery figures.

 

All SoccerStarz figures in this edition are on a GREEN base, something which came as a surprise to me, i was indeed expecting the figures to be released on a multitude of base colours. The SOC codes are exactly the same as those previously used for the figures. The product was made availalbe in boxes, or 'CDU' as they are known in the trade, of 48 pieces per box with the configuration per box looking the same, with 2 full sets of Bayern Munich & Borussia Dortmund figures, along with 1 of each other figure.

 

This was the first Secret Sachet release of SoccerStarz outisde the UK and as you would expect from Simba, given their previous work with Corinthian on the MicroStars range, it is a very efficient and well executed range, very precise and tailored to meet the needs of the customer base. As mentioned above, i was personally surprised not to see the SoccerStarz produced on more base colours, however an all green base release no doubt speed up production as well as simplifying it. All in all a great release and with all figures in new 2014/15 home kit it provided a right up to date release and gave new and existing collectors figures to acquire.