Warsman’s Kinnikuman Menko Card Every Fan Should Know

Kinnikuman Warsman Vintage Round Menko Card, 1980s Japan

A Card Game Born on Japan’s Street Corners

This card belongs to menko, a traditional Japanese paper card game with roots in the Edo period. The format here is maru menko — a round card — which was the standard shape for anime-character versions mass-produced throughout the 1980s. Children picked them up at dagashiya, the small neighborhood candy-and-toy shops that were fixtures of Japanese childhood, typically for a few yen apiece.

The gameplay is direct: players slam cards onto the ground in turn, and whoever flips an opponent’s card with the resulting air pressure wins it. That competitive mechanic is encoded right on the face. A green circle containing the kanji for “iron” marks a game attribute — roughly an attack or defense value — while a red circle with a hand symbol indicates a game action. This two-symbol layout appears consistently across anime menko of the period and makes these cards immediately recognizable as 1980s originals. Menko circulated as paper goods in the stationery and toy trade, distinct from food toys or capsule machines, and were made to be played with and carried around.

Warsman and the World of Kinnikuman

The character printed here is Warsman, one of the standout figures in Kinnikuman, a wrestling manga by the duo Yudetamago — pen name for writers Yoshinori Nakaii and Takuji Shimada. The series launched in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1979, beginning as a broad comedy before evolving into a serious battle manga centered on super-powered wrestlers called Chojin. It became one of the defining titles of the early-1980s Jump lineup.

The anime, produced by TV Toei Doga — the studio that later became Toei Animation — ran from April 1983 through October 1986 across 137 episodes. This card’s copyright line reads “TV-Toei Doga,” which places its manufacture within that broadcast window or shortly afterward. The studio name is also a useful dating marker: Toei Doga changed its name in 1998, so any card carrying the earlier credit predates that transition.

Warsman is portrayed as a Soviet-born mechanized Chojin — essentially a cyborg wrestler — whose signature weapon is the Bear Claw, a set of retractable hooked blades. The card’s artwork appears to show him with an ornate headdress and gold accessories that differ from his most typical appearance. Researchers note this may reflect a specific story arc or a piece of promotional artwork, but the exact source cannot be confirmed with certainty.

A Japan-Only Format With an International Following

Menko never traveled outside Japan the way plastic toys and trading cards did. The format remained almost entirely domestic, which means round anime menko from the 1980s represent a category of Japanese paper goods that international buyers rarely encountered at the time. Examples that survived decades of actual play and storage often carry visible edge wear — a natural characteristic of cards that circulated through real use rather than sitting sealed in a box.

Kinnikuman did reach Western audiences in a modified form. Mattel distributed the franchise’s rubber figure line in North America under the name M.U.S.C.L.E. starting in the mid-1980s, and Warsman was among the characters included. That connection gives English-speaking collectors a familiar entry point into the franchise, even though menko were never part of that export. For anyone who came to Kinnikuman through M.U.S.C.L.E. or later as an anime fan, a card like this sits at the center of the original Japanese merchandise world that surrounded the series during its peak years on television.