We've worked our way through the first three Myachis that changed the world in previous posts. Already we've seen the importance that a single Myachi can have on the direction that all future Myachis take. We have learned that one innovative idea, fabric or realization can forever alter the course of the game. That might seem like an overstatement considering the examples that I've offered so far, but in this installment you'll see how literally true that statement is.
To provide this example, we're going to have to go deep into Myachi's history and examine one of the first production sacks ever made. So imagine yourself in a land before You-Tube, a time before Facebook, a world in which everyone had a surplus of bottled water they were still working through from the new year and you couldn't go eight minutes without hearing "Who Let the Dogs Out?"... I speak, of course, of the year 2000.
#7) The Green Sponge
The Green Sponge was released in what we now call series 0.3, but was at the time simply called "the new batch of Myachis". This would represent the third "production run" of Myachis (before that, Myachi Man was hand sewing them) so the process of selecting large run fabrics and formulating the combination of such fabrics to create a series was pretty new. Myachi Man had largely constructed the earlier Myachis out of scrap fabric like old clothes and swatches too small to be valuable to fabric stores.
This was a time of high experimentation when it came to fabric selection. We'd not yet hit upon modern staples like microsuede, phelvit, corduroy or that unique softsuede you get in Pakisacks. Heck, to this point Myachi Man had yet to try denim on a large scale. The first two series had a bit of a "throw everything against the wall and see what sticks" feel to them with each sack a departure from the last. Thing about sacks like the Iridescent Rainbow, the Brick in the Wall, the Flower Power, the Glow in the Dark and the Yellow Wetsuit, each of which has a vastly different feel and each of which was released in one of the first two production runs.
But by the third series, you could already see the ideas start to galvanize. The fabrics from that series were odd by the standards of today, but compared to the cacophony of fabrics and patterns offered in the first two series, this one was downright tame. Each sack was a solid color and though the Purple Crush and Red Swirl were slight departures, everything else in the series was a new coloration on a fabric that had already proved itself before.
The Blue Sponge was released in series 0.1 and was not particularly popular when set against the flamboyant Guatemalans, Flower Powers and BITWs, but Myachi Man had seen that the fabric itself was great for toss and catch. The Blue Sponge was the slowest seller in the series, but it might have been the best jammer. In his newest series, Myachi Man was moving away from crazy patterns and toward solid colors so he decided to revisit the sponge fabric in a green.
As it turns out, the sponge material isn't particularly good. It's got great grip so it's good for toss and catch and centrifugal tricks, but not so much for the fast aerials and hand swaps of today's freestyle jammer. In fact, but for the fact that it is so antiquated, the Green Sponge is hardly worth mentioning at all.
Except for one unintended consequence that would forever change the world of Myachi and the way that Myachi fabrics are selected.
You see, whether or not it was intended as such, the Green Sponge was the first "Sister Sack" in Myachi history. The idea that Myachis would be pair-bonded was an immediate hit with the burgeoning ranks of collectors and as soon as Myachi Man saw the reaction, there was no question that this would become a staple of Myachi series in the future. People who'd already picked up the Blue Sponge gravitated to the Green one and people who got the Green one started looking for the Blue.
Today, the Sister Sack concept is an integral part of Myachi and when we choose new fabrics we're always thinking about it. We're always thinking about the popular sacks that don't yet have sisters and when we see new fabrics or patterns, we always consider how the sister sacks will look before we settle on them.
For the Black Butter there is the Slater; for the Green Spot the Red Spot; for the Calvin the Diesel; for the Phat Kat Green there is the Phat Kat Black. It has become such a big part of collecting that when rumors of a new series begin to circulate, the first questions we get our usually framed around "sister sacks". People will ask "Will there be a (pick a color) Crush?" or "Will there be a Red Dragon?"
It's hard to imagine a time before this was the standard and it stands to reason that Myachi Man always had this vague concept in his head, but before the Green Sponge it was no more than an idea. Then, with the release of one unimposing Myachi, the world was changed forever.
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We still have 6 more parts to go in the series, so keep checking back with us for #6 on our list of Myachis that changed the world...
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