POWERPODZ POPSTARS

​Corinthian were experiencing overwhelming success with their Powerpodz MicroStars, footballs fans could not get enough of the little football figures, released inside a chocolate shell.

 

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This was the early 00's and the MicroStars were bought in large by males, so what about the girls, well Corinthian took the decision to release a range of PopStars figures.

 

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There are 24 figures in total, with 4 bands represented, those are Hear'Say, Steps, A1 and Five, with Hear'Say getting 2 different sets of figures, one of which has them in stage clothes holding microphones.

 

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Like their football counterparts, the PopStars were released inside a Powerpodz chocolate shell, with each figure being sealed in a clear plastic sachet and placed inside a plastic capsule, which also included a collector's information leaflet. The Powerpodz PopStars were distributed in a CDU which contained 16 units.

 

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The figures were assigned collector codes, which start with PPS (Powerpodz PopStars) and were released on 6 different base colours, Green, Red, Blue, White, Gold and Platinum. Corinthian swapped the base rarity of Gold and Silver over from the football figures to tie into the music industry, with silver base being replaced by Platinum, with a Platinum disc being a higher accolade than a Gold disc, hence the base colour rarity swap

 

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Here is the base colour rarity and ratio:

Green Base - 1 in 2 Capsules

Red Base - 1 in 5 Capsules

Blue Base - 1 in 8 Capsules

White Base - 1 in 10 Capsules

Gold Base - 1 in 20 Capsules

Platinum Base - 1 in 4 Capsules

 

A game could also be played, with the player ratings being changed to a music theme of course with the figures having 'Pop Ratings' and each PopStar received a Pop Rating from 4 to 13, the 5 Pop Ratings categories are

Awards

Singles

Albums

Tickets

Pop Points

 

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The collector's information leaflet also featured 'Pop Tokens' with 10 Pop Tokens coming with each leaflet, collecting 100 pop tokens (10 figures) meant you had enough pop tokens to send off for a Free PopStars figure.

 

 

I have no official sales data to validate how commercially successful this range was, however given the fact there was only ever this one series i feel it did not perform as well as Corinthian had hoped or anticipated.

 

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Acquiring a full set can actually be relatively difficult, especially if you want them all on a Green base, a quirky little set and it is certainly worth taking the time to find them all, they do sit in rather well with the Mexican PopStars Corinthian released.