Behind the Emote: "Muscles Gator" (GBmuscles)

In the previous "Behind the Emote" we took a look at "2cents", which was one of the inaugural emotes associated with the Gatorbox channel. 2cents was part of the first 25, however by donating to FrankerFaceZ they gave us another 25 slots in return and to this day we still maintain all 50 of them. (These days we reserve the last five or so slots for potential Patreon supporters though -- a $10 pledge gets you your very own emote!)

Back when we were restricted to just 25 slots we added a whole bunch of random things to see what stuck. We removed ones that nobody used and replaced them with new ones constantly. Eventually we found 25 emotes that "worked", but now we had 25 more slots so we found ourselves at the same place we were at when we first started using FrankerFaceZ. We scrounged around to find 25 MORE emotes, and that's when we had a neat idea.

Mascots. 

"Coolgator" has been the face of the channel since almost the first day, but a number of other "minor" characters became mascots of the channel either by way of being a figurine or plushie in the background, a character spurred from something we've unboxed, or a silly "head canon" of an existing character from a game or show we've streamed. "Muscles Gator", as he eventually came to be known, was one of the first minor characters to be turned into an emote.

Muscles Gator got his name from a couple different places. His name itself is a play on the character "Muscles Glasses" from Epic Meal Time, but it's also reinforced by his only article of clothing: a yellow tank top that simply reads "MUSCLES".

Muscles himself is a plush alligator created in 1983 by the Dakin company. Dakin, founded in 1966, was an extremely successful producer of stuffed animals in the United States. Most of you probably know the company by its final name Applause, which it adopted in 1986. Dakin created high quality plush toys for various franchises for decades until closing in 2004 following the death of its CEO. While they made lots of licensed toys, the company made lots of generic or original ones too; Muscles comes from that line.

It is unclear on what exact date he appeared on stream, though he was frequently used as set decoration during the 2014-2015 seasons of Gatorbox. He also appeared in 2017 where he sat on the couch in lieu of a normal stream guest host.

The character Muscles is based around his love of fitness and working out. The personality cultivated for him by the community paints Muscles as a loveable "meathead", physically strong but not so bright however he has a heart of gold. "Muscles is the kind of guy who'd befriend you at the gym and let you use his weights, or gladly be your spotter for bench presses. He'd offer to share his protein shake recipes with you, but only if you can beat him in arm wrestling."

We're working on fitting our older mascots back into the stream by way of better emotes, commissioning artwork, and even just literally featuring their physical representations on camera more often.

In the meantime, however, you can dress like your favorite gator hunk with your very own Muscles Gator "MUSCLES" tee, a 1:1 recreation of his signature tank top: https://streamlabs.com/gatorbox/#/merch

(NOTE: The tee is a couple dollars more than a normal Gatorbox tee because making the shirt yellow instead of black/white costs slightly more to produce. Unfortunately we can't price it at $23.23.)