The World Cup was fast approaching and Corinthian was busy preparing their range to coincide with the tournament being held in Japan and South Korea. Prostars Series 15 consisted entirely of figures in the England national kit, 20 players and the manager.

 The figures themselves were highly detailed, all painted in the kit to be worn for the 2002 World Cup and we also saw a host of new and first time sculpts. Gary Neville was re-sculpted and the figure was a huge improvement on the previous efforts, so much so it was used for all future releases of the player, not hard to see why considering how true to life it actually was.

 For me the finest sculpt in this series was that of Owen Hargreaves, you have to love that Perm hairstyle, it just made him stand out from the rest. England’s 2 goalkeepers were sculpted again, Seaman even featured his Pony tail and the Martyn was vastly improved too.

 Steven Gerrard was another to be re sculpted, an improvement on previous efforts but still not the greatest likeness of the legendary player, but they were getting better. Nicky Barmby and Steve McManaman both had new sculpts made of them and both were improvements on the previous figures.

 The remaining 14 figures are all repaints of those previously released as part of other series or ranges. The other 14 are - David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand, Robbie Fowler, Alan Smith, Emile Heskey, Joe Cole, Ashley Cole, Andy Cole, Sol Campbell, Teddy Sheringham, Michael Owen, Paul Scholes, Wes Brown and lastly manager Sven Goran Eriksson.

 The figures were released on a variety of packaging formats, firstly they were released in 3 player packs, which were distributed more widely and sold in high street stores such as Woolworths and Toys ‘R’ Us. There were 6 different variations on the 3 player packs, which meant Andy Cole, Owen Hargreaves and Gary Neville were not featured in any of the 3 player packs.

 Corinthian also released a 12 player box set which contained these figures: Eriksson, Seaman, Ashley Cole, Campbell, Ferdinand, Gerrard, Beckham, Scholes, Hargreaves, Andy Cole, Heskey and Owen. The 12 player box set was released on the 11th of March 2002 and sold exclusively in Argos; you could not purchase this box set from Corinthian directly.

 Corinthian also wanted to keep the collectors happy, so the result was to release all 21 figures as single blister packs as Prostars Series 15. The series was released on the 11th of March 2002 with the figures sold in their official collector centres, from a reseller or via a mail order stockist. Gary Neville was exclusively released as a single blister as part of Prostars series 15, he did not feature in any of the 3 player packs, nor was he included in the 12 player box set.

 Obviously Corinthian had to guess as to the 23 man squad Sven would take with him to the World Cup, as at the time of release he had not announced it of course. Corinthian did very well to guess as many as they did, with only Gerrard, Barmby, McManaman and Andy Cole the only players not to make the squad. Gary Neville never travelled due to injury so was replaced in the squad, which is perhaps the reason why he was omitted from inclusion in any of the multi packs and used only in the collectors edition series.

 The best seller from the range was of course Golden Balls himself, David Beckham, with Sven Goran Eriksson and Michael Owen both selling well. The blisters produced in the lowest volume were Martyn, Barmby, Brown and Neville. It is my personal opinion that the Neville is the hardest figure to find, given as he was produced in low quantities and then only issued in the series and not part of any multi pack release.

 The range as a whole did very well, despite England’s departure from the tournament at the hands of Brazil at the Quarter final stage. The collectors information file which came issued with the single blisters did contain details on how to claim 1 of the 2 special redemption figures, however as these are not England nationals, I will not detail them here, instead they will be detailed as part of Prostars series 16.

 Prostars Series 15 also saw another significant change to the collection, in the fact that the Platinum packs were redesigned entirely, to further enhance their collect ability. Here are the new features of the Platinum packs:

• The backing card was based on the generic backing card used in the regular Prostars series but instead it was coloured Platinum.
•  The Collector card was replaced by the all new certificate of authenticity, which described what range the figure was from and also how many had been made.
• The base was also painted Silver and given its own unique collector code which began with ‘PP’ which of course stands for Platinum Pack.

All these changed were well received by collectors, I myself have never been a fan or a collector of the Platinum pack but I do feel these changes gave them a whole new identity and further enhanced their value and collect ability.