Skip to main content

Wrestling Figure Plug

Hi Scott,

I'm about to move in with my girlfriend and she's giving me the old 'justify being nearly 30 and having 300 wrestling figures on display' nag. Hence this blog: http://oldwrestlingfigures.com/

Any chance of a link? Might buy the guys on the shelves some time...

Cheers mate,

Michael

Hey, my wife doesn’t mind that I collect UFC figures.  In fact my daughter stages battles between Randy Couture and Kimbo Slice all the time.  Kimbo usually loses and then shows up on Sesame Street looking to pick a fight with Elmo.  It’s been kind of a downhill slide for him, I’m not gonna lie. 

Also, it’s weird for me to see people getting nostalgic about the 90s Hasbro figures, because I had no experience with those.  It’s the giant molded rubber LJN figures that were my childhood experience, and they were MUCH more challenging to do any kind of useful finishers with. 

Comments

  1. Everybody does the "you're nostalgic about THAT?!" thing to people younger than them, but I gotta say it really seems like children of the 80s think they have the sole rights to nostalgia. 80s nostalgia has been rampant for so long that kids of the 00s probably feel like they grew up on it themselves, but then when I see 90s-era nostalgia stuff it seems like I see a million comments to the tone of "Jesus, people are really nostalgic about THAT shit?" Like when that one Nickelodeon channel shows the 90s Are All That block, or when AV Club reviews Pete & Pete. Hey, we have fond memories of our entertainment growing up the same as anybody, Transformers and He-Man don't have the sole right on retro-cool. 

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had experiences with both the LJN and Hasbro toys growing up. I didn't have too many of either set, but enough to produce a few memories. I do have to say that those LJN rubber monstrosities were AWFUL. They looked fine but you couldn't do shit with them; they had the flexibility of a bar of soap. Putting on matches was pointless. At least the Hasbro figures had a few moving parts.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah I had a few LJNs when I got into wrestling, but the only one I played with was Hillbilly Jim -- but since it was practically immobile, naturally he became Andre The Giant, which is funny to think I picked up on that as a kid. I was a Hasbro kid otherwise, although I think my favorite

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love that Virgil is one doing the job in every one of these pictures.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What was awful was LJN's NES game.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I saved a couple & unloaded most of my wrestling figures on my nephew once he got old enough not to choke to death on stuff - he doesn't know who anybody is, but he does enjoy pretend violence. I'm also lucky that my girlfriend understands the nerdy need to display action figures, and even has a few of her own (Ash, He-Man, Skeletor) on the bookshelf.


    Those 90s Hasbro figures were the shit. I liked 'em because, let's face it, wrestling toys are never gonna be as posable as they "need" to be, so why not go slightly cartoony with 'em?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Pete & Pete holds up pretty damn well.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I have a lot of Jakks figures I'll probably be trying to unload in the coming months, since they've just been sitting in a storage bin for nearly a decade.  I'll link to it on my column when I get it all together.

    ReplyDelete
  9. The Jakks Bone-Crunching series is pretty much the New York Yankees of wrestling action figures, notwithstanding the infuckingsane Classic Superstars line.

    ReplyDelete
  10. If the chick you're moving in with is already asking you this, you need to reconsider moving in with her.  If you give in and give up something you like, you're setting a bad precedent for the future, trust me.  Who the fuck cares if you like collecting wrestling figures, what does she like?  Tell her to justify the stuff she keeps.  

    ReplyDelete
  11. They're immensely over-priced?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Be a fucking man and keep the wrestling figures out of principal. I hate it when people are like "sorry guys I can't smoke, my girl would kill me hahaha." That's child shit. Be a man and do what you want.

    Definitely not trying to be some internet badass. I usually do what my gf wants and treat her like gold anyway but you shouldn't let anyone make you get rid of stuff you want to keep. Draw a line in the sand now or it will be too late.

    ReplyDelete
  13. My sister used to slap me with the corporal Kirshner one all the time. That shit hurt.

    ReplyDelete
  14. This. If she doesn't accept you for you, the relationship isn't worth it. If you have to justify the things you like to your girlfriend, she won't be your girlfriend much longer. And if she is, you'll end up miserable.

    Every time I see something like this, I'm a little more grateful for how awesome my girlfriend is.

    ReplyDelete
  15. 300 action figures? 40 year old virgin flashback lol.

    But I have my Sgt. Slaughter and Fridge William Perry GI Joes at my parents house with my childhood things! GI joes were the shit cuz they moved around. I remember I had Ted Dibiase(with the green tux!) and Warrior WWF toys they always pushed on coliseum video. Such junk toys, they should have had GI Joe style WWF toys!

    I remember when Slaughter turned heel on the fridge in 91 after years of tag teaming against the world! Lol great memories

    ReplyDelete
  16. O shit I just had to look up GI joes after this, there is a Roddy Piper GI joe! Wtf its 500 bucks though...

    ReplyDelete
  17. My wife's never seen it (a hair older than I am, and she didn't have cable as a kid) and I have the first disc of the first season right now from Netflix, I'm still waiting to line up our schedules. 

    ReplyDelete
  18.  That's something I always try to tell people when they get into serious relationships: I'm not saying never compromise or to just be a selfish dick, but you need to set limits early or you will lose any and all power you might have. It's sexist but true nonetheless: women have a tendency to dictate what will be considered acceptable in a relationship, and anything you give up at the start will be much harder to regain later. It's worth putting up with a little bit of strife early on, and unfortunately those early puppy love days are when you're the most afraid to rock the boat for fear of losing that person. It's a tightrope, but you gotta walk it.

    ReplyDelete
  19. LOL. 

    I had a couple of the Jakks Bone Crunching ones near the end of my action figure playing days and I can see why people would like them as display items, but as a kid who wanted to play with them, they kinda sucked -- they just couldn't take the beating that those Hasbro figures could. 

    Oh sure, maybe you'd lose a few of Rocker Shawn Michaels fingers in a fierce battle, but they held up well until you tried... oh I don't know, dropping them out of tree onto a concrete sidewalk.

    Those Jakks figures on the other hand, they were almost a little bit too movable and their legs would come off with one swift pull.  All of my Jakks figures ended up Zach Gowen figures in the end.

    ReplyDelete
  20.  Shawn Michaels fingers in those were just the worst, they broke off constantly. I was glad that they came out with a solo-Michaels not long after and I could use the Rocker Shawn as any generic blonde wrestler. Sometimes he was Jarrett, sometimes he was Terry Taylor, very often he was Steven Dunn of Well Dunn because that's who he looked most like. I also had bad luck with any of the ones that gave the big swinging punch that rotated at the waist: my Jim Neidhart, Rick Steiner, and Tatanka all lost an arm.

    I only had a few figures from the first sets of the Jakks ones before I outgrew them but they were pretty shoddy. My Razor Ramon lost his arm and I had to superglue it back in place and it didn't move, and then not long after his head popped off.

    ReplyDelete
  21. "women have a tendency to dictate what will be considered acceptable in a relationship [...]"

    I call bs on that. I have lots of female friends who have experienced otherwise (prime example: I know a girl who has been crazy about horses her whole life, even owning several over the years. after being in a relationship for some years, her boyfriend actually insisted that she had to "choose" between him and her hobby. well, the result: he got dumped :d). I guess it comes more down to what type of people they are.

    ReplyDelete
  22. that girl's right though, smoking is pretty stupid.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Kids don't know how good they have it today with their pose-able wrestling action figures.

    I remember getting my rubber-esque Hulk Hogan in the 80s and being so mad that he couldn't do anything but be cannon fodder for my Galvatron and Mumm-Ra toys.

    ReplyDelete
  24. I don't have time for a chick. I have to watch wrestling.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Haha nah it's a space issue; we've only got a small one bedroom place and, alas, we don't have any shelving that isn't being used or isn't in places that could damage the figures (kitchen, bathroom). Cheers for the advice though!

    ReplyDelete
  26.  Amen to that. I still remember WWF Wrestlemania on the NES. Even as a 6-year-old I knew that game was garbage. Nothing like a wrestling game where you couldn't wrestle, and walked around like you had a stick up your ass.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Well that guy didn't do a very good job of dictating what was acceptable in that relationship, did he? Your friend decided that a lack of horses wouldn't be acceptable in their relationship and exerted her control. It's not always a bad thing, it just is what it is. Me & my wife have very similar tastes about many things and she tolerates me wasting money on wrestling dvds and tattoos and my bass & stuff, but even then I don't just go and buy furniture for the house without her input. It's like that for most guys that I know.

    ReplyDelete
  28. LOL.  That's not a bad substitution (Steven Dunn).  I had a broken Hulk Hogan figure that was Dino Bravo for some reason (?)

    ReplyDelete
  29.  My extra Hacksaw was usually either Steve Williams or Scott Norton (both of whom I mainly knew more from Apter mags than anything, although Norton made it to WCW not long after). I had the solo Marty too, so the extra Marty often stood in as either Timothy Dunn (I swear, only because the Michaels looked like Well!) or, sometimes, British Bulldog.

    ReplyDelete
  30. dude the 80s ruled. period.

    best time for cartoons, video games, drugs, money, crack, wrestling, horror flix, porn, coming of age teenage movies.

    you name it.

    i defy another decade to be greater than or equal to the 80s.

    ReplyDelete
  31. i said that when i was 15. it took me another 2 years to get laid.

    ReplyDelete
  32. OK, I don't know about anyone else, but I just laughed myself silly imagining Elmo pulling a Seth Petruzelli on Kimbo.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Well, if anything, you had to use your imagination with the figures.  Before the Bone Crunching series started, I remember buying an old Hasbro ring from a friend for $5 and then having all kinds of odd feuds with random action figures.  Walter Payton & Bernie Kosar were dubbed "The Professionals" and feuded with Cyclops & Juggernaut from the X-Men, a Lex Luger WCW figure (that had half of his head chewed off by something or other) feuded with a Terminator action figure, and the GI Joe's I had were a light heavyweight division of sorts.

    I had several of those huge and heavy WCW rubber figures too that came out around 1995.  Those you couldn't do much with at all, but I tried.  I have a Hulk Hogan, Kevin Sullivan, Jimmy Hart, Johnny B. Badd, two Vaders, a Ric Flair, and a Sting boxed up somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  34. I had so many of those old WCW hard rubber figures. I had Hogan, Macho (nwo and wcw version of both,) Blonde and Crow Sting, Harlem Heat, the Nastys, I even had Jimmy Hart. I remember once they were trying to weed those toys out in favor of the newer WCW toys and they had a big sale at KB Toys. My mom picked me up a bunch of them and I was in heaven. Too bad they were awful to play with. One thing I remember is that on the box of each of the figures, they had adjectives based on whether or not they were a good guy or bad guy. The interesting thing was that they would write "bad guy, villain, heel" or "good guy, fan favorite, baby face," this was the first time I remember hearing the term heel.

    ReplyDelete
  35. I think there's a difference between accepting someone for who they are and putting up with an expensive, space consuming and ultimately pointless hobby. I love wrestling figures and collected pretty hardcore from the time I was 17 until around 23ish. The Jakks Classic Superstars line was my crack of choice. I also had a shit ton of old hasbros. My wife didn't ask me to get rid of my love for wrestling, but she did talk with me and basically said, "Hey, we're moving into a place where you won't have a garage or a ton of storage space. Maybe we should part with some of your hundreds of wrestling vhs tapes and action figures." Initially I got kind of defensive, but once I realized that all of this stuff was just gathering dust anyways, I got rid of a ton of it. I kept around 20 of my favorite figures and I rotate which ones I have displayed on my bookshelf. It was helpful for me in the end, because I could feel myself developing hoarder tendencies. I was spending way too much money on a habit that was really unnecessary. I think it's cool to have a collection, but when I think about the thousands of dollars I've spent on wrestling over the years, I wish my wife would have been there to step in sooner.

    ReplyDelete
  36. I thought that was hilarious as well.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Sorry, but 80's cartoons are overrated. The fact is, G.I. Joe, He Man, Transformers, Thundercats, Robotech, Smurfs and others are terrible cartoons. There, I said it. Go back and watch them, they're awful. We had some quality stuff in the 90s. Batman the Animated Series is enough to qualify us for greatest cartoon decade ever.

    The 80's did have a lot of great kids movies, though.

    ReplyDelete
  38. I'm definitely nostalgic for the hasbro figures. I'm 26 and grew up playing with the hasbros and later the early Jakks toys. I still remember the day my sister threw my Hulk Hogan figure on the concrete and it shattered. I wasn't filled with rage, just a deep, deep sadness.

    ReplyDelete
  39. All hobbies are pretty much pointless, that's why they're hobbies.  I based my comment on the original post in which the girlfriend said, "you're 30, get rid of these", nagging.  Not on, "we're moving to a small house and have no room for these."  Two completely separate arguments.  My point is, it should be your call.  Maybe she has a ton of shoes and she could get rid of those.  We could go in a million directions here.  Now, if you were "developing hoarder tendencies", then yeah, you need someone close to you to tell you so and help you not be one.  As for the money?  As long as you didn't go homeless and you enjoyed yourself, don't have any regrets, it's not worth it.  The point is to move on if you're not into collecting the stuff anymore.  Funny enough, I've only ever collected baseball cards and that was a few years in high school, a long time ago.  I keep them in boxes and really, if the value ever goes up on them, I'll sell them.  Not much of a collector.  Ultimately though, my point was, ultimatums to get rid of something you like by someone you're moving in with is not a good thing.  If you still love the stuff, use it/display it, have the room, no one should tell you to get rid of it.

    Hopefully I cleared this up.

    ReplyDelete
  40. batman tas was great.

    optimus prime dying had millions of kids cryin in theaters.
    thundercats story was awesome as it progressed. lunataks. the trials. that was good shyt.
    robotech sucked.
    he man sucked.
    basically 80s cartoons were commercials.

    but there was a series that could give batman a run for its money.
    jayce and the wheeled warriors.

    ReplyDelete
  41. isn't this why prostitution exists?

    ReplyDelete
  42. 70s porn >>> 80s porn. towards the end of the eighties (if not even sooner) the porn industry had totally gone downhill, leading to all that "Gonzo"-style garbage that pretty much is more than 90% of porn right now.

    ReplyDelete
  43. I do see your point. There's definitely a difference between nagging and presenting a reasonable argument as to why someone should ditch part of their collection. I would have had a much different reaction had my wife come at me like the original poster described.

    ReplyDelete
  44.  Oh man, everything I had was a stand in for wrestling figures: Terminator, Captain Planet, Swamp Thing, the little mini GI Joes as midget wrestlers, and of course my dozens of Ninja Turtles. My ace triumph was one of those Ninja Turtles from the second movie that flipped over from its human form into one of the villains: Rocksteady (the rhino) was a chunky blonde guy and made a perfect Dusty Rhodes. Bebop worked pretty well as One Man Gang, too, IIRC.

    ReplyDelete
  45. I had Jimmy Hart as an active wrestler and since he had both of his arms extended in front of him, I just gave him a belly-to-belly suplex as a finishing move.  He was usually the jobber of the bunch, for obvious reasons.

    ReplyDelete
  46. you could have did a toy version Havoc2000 with the stings!

    ReplyDelete
  47. The five-part trials of Lion-O is one of my favourite cartoon memories.

    ReplyDelete
  48. I'm filled with so much regret that I never made that happen.

    ReplyDelete
  49. I've never even heard of Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, but my interest is piqued now.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Man. All those 5 parters were good. Some of the best character driven stories the Cats put out.

    With lasting ramifications.

    Love T-Cats.

    ReplyDelete
  51. First things first, Best cartoon theme song. EVER.

    Secondly, it was written by a younger JMS. Of Babylon 5/Supreme Power/Rising Stars/2000s Spider-Man fame.

    ReplyDelete
  52. lol... i was just kidding bro...

    ReplyDelete
  53. Does anybody have a Dungeon of Doom set?

    "BROTHER MY BROTHER!!!" as Nash would say...

    That would be cool.

    What would also be cool if wrestling figures were more true to life.

    All new Jack with cocaine!
    The new Sunny, NOW WITH PILLZ!
    Get your oven mitts on Terri Runnels now with VD!

    ReplyDelete
  54. How have I never heard of this? I am not a huge fan, but I dig JMS. I'm going to have to check this out, looks like there are some cheap dvds on amazon.

    ReplyDelete
  55.  80s drugs and 80s crack reaquire theri aown separate catergrories lol

    ReplyDelete
  56. My sister put my Hasbro Big Boss Man figure in her Barbie pink Cadillac and wheeled it as fast as she could into the garage door.  Since he wasn't wearing a seat belt, he was propelled from the passenger seat (Barbie was driving presumably) and met a gruesome end, shattered into a million bits.  Given the Cadillac was used, I'm pretty sure the Honky Tonk Man had something to do with it.  I'm still investigating...

    ReplyDelete
  57. couldnt agree more with "children of the 80s and 90s" having to use their imagination with their wrestling figs. .  I especially remember Mumm-Ra fitting in perfectly with LJNs as the Ultimate Warrior or the rare Ninja Turtle figure Casey Jones acting as any and every Japanes wrestler with the Hasbros from Hakushi to Tajiri to the great Muta LOL

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment