PHONE CHARM
MEXICO SERIES

Corinthian set up 'Corinthian Latino America' to distribute their products in South America and release exclusive ranges, one such range is the Colgantes MicroStars club series, with Colgantes being Spanish for 'Pendants.'

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This series was exclusively released in Mexico in 2006, however it took almost 15 years to find out who was actually in the series, as little or no information was known about this Mexico exclusive release.

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The set has 16 figures as part of it, 5 of which were released in other series, the 4 England figures of Beckham, Gerrard, Owen & Lampard are exactly the same as the Phone Strap England 2006 ones, while the Alessandro Del Piero in Juventus home kit was also part of the Phone Strap Japan Series, however the remaining 11 are entirely exclusive to this series!

 

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Barcelona trio of Messi, Ronaldinho and Eto'o are included, this is actually the only version of Messi and Eto'o that Corinthian made in this format and it was long debated that the Messi even existed!

 

 

Gianluigi Buffon for Juventus is in an all new kit, as is Thierry Henry for Arsenal, with both sculpts being used before. AC Milan duo of Kaka and Dida are first and only time sculpts, as is Adriano for Inter Milan.

 

 

The final 3 are all in Manchester United home kit, the 3 being Wayne Rooney, Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Cristiano Ronaldo. The Ronaldo was something I personally; and I think every collector, knew nothing about until the Summer of 2020 when it was discovered that it existed. It was listed on the back of the backing card however at that point I was still largely convinced it was never produced, however it does exist!!!

 

 

This set has to be considered amongst the very rarest of Corinthian products, given the region of release, scarcity of knowledge and that it took around 15 years to find out who was in the series and that all 16 actually existed!

 

 

To date I have only seen a small amount of Ronaldo & Messi, one of each resides in my personal collection. All the images of the figures and blisters are taken from my personal collection, so apologies for the images of some of the figures but it is the best I can do without taking them out the blister. The Rooney, Kaka and Adriano I also acquired loose ones, hence why the images of those figures is far better.

 

 

All 16 were also released as Key Rings, the figures are identical but the phone strap is replaced by a key ring.

 

 

The figures are the same size as MicroStars however do not have a base, instead they have a phone strap attached to their head, with each one being released in blister pack. There was no collector code on the figure, however for production purposes Corinthian did assign each one a code, which started with PH, sadly though Corinthian did not disclose what the codes for this series were.​

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