MeeThinks 9.19.06: Going Old School (Part III of IV)
Posted by John Meehan on 09.19.2006
Exploring the "New Generation" of WWF's Hasbro action figures!
Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for all your e-mails and contest entries from two weeks back! This week, we're stepping even farther back in time in our four-part journey through this fan's history of fandom.
If you missed the column that kickstarted this quest, do kindly allow Mee to catch you up to speed:
A few weeks ago…
I stopped back up to the Meehan household in sunny (and *rural*) New Jersey. While visiting with some old friends and the family, my folks brought it to my attention that I'd still left a few Tupperware containers of my crap from when I was a kid upstairs in the family attic. Being a good son (or wanting to look like one, at least) I hauled one of the tubs back to DC and…
WHAM!
Like a wave of olfactory bliss, I was all at once overcome by that familiar-yet-pungent odor of decade-old rubber and plastic playthings of years gone by. Yes folks, I'd in fact stumbled upon the motherload… for there in a 28-gallon tub before Mee lied twenty years (and countless dollars) worth of professional wrestling action figures. Scads of them, too… dating WAAAAAY the hell back to the 12" days of molded rubber and spanning up and through the golden years of wrestling's mid-nineties action figure renaissance. From foot-tall Andres to six inch Beefcakes, from power-punching action through ringside catapults… I was sitting on a goldmine of memories, e-bay-bound knick-knacks and stinky rubber.
Three weeks ago, we probed the later part of my high school years and unearthed a dusty old 3 ½ inch floppy disk that revealed my passage from "mark" boy to "smart" young adult wrestling fan. Two weeks ago, we profiled the the heyday of it's late ‘90's resurgence as "MeeThinks" tackled the action figures of The Attitude Era.
And this week...
It's MeeThinks and Hasbro in a six-inch plas-tastic rush of nostalgic glory!
Sound like a plan?
Rock & roll.
Again, rather than pen any one sort of "long-form" article on my findings, I figured I'd serve up a montage of photos from my sojourns on the action figure frontier. Hopefully, the photos and the blurbs that accompany them might make for some fun and nostalgic reading. Here's hoping you enjoy!
The Ten Things I Learned From the Action Figures of the "New Generation"
1. Hulk Ruled
It pretty much goes without saying, but throughout the late '80's and the early '90's, there was one name above all others that was simply synonymous with The World Wrestling Federation. Love him or hate him, that man was The Immortal Hulk Hogan. While Flair and Steamboat were showing the South how a ***** classic was done, Hulkamania was running wild all across toy stores and kids merchandise around the nation - and any wrestling fan in the making was almost assured to be caught up in the Hulkster's wake of popularity. I for one was no exception, and I'll proudly admit to owning more than my fair share of Hulk Hogan memorabilia. From trading cards to pencil toppers, to novelty tooth brushes and cameras (yes, cameras!) to all sorts of action figures, Hulk Ruled and their was little point in rooting for anybody else on the WWF roster. Now sure, I was a huge Randy Savage fan to boot... but the Red and Yellow had the decade on popularity lockdown, so if you were a WWF fan in the 80's any other performer was pretty much relegated to "my #2 favorite guy behind The Hulkster."
And though so many members of the Internet Wrestling Community might have you believe otherwise, there is almost 100% more likelihood that they began watching wrestling because of the hype surrounding Hulkamania than for the mat classics that were being conducted by guys like The Great Muta and The British Bulldogs around the same time. Sure, we all stayed (and came to love) the more finessed technical prowess of the smaller guys -- but there's just no denying that *most* modern day wrestling fans owe much of their initial fascination with the "sport" to the glitz, glamor and larger than life appeal of Hulk Hogan and the WWF marketing machine.
2. Theme With Variations
Before Jakks stepped into the action figure game, Hasbro was where it was AT in terms of all things WWF. Thanks to a keen (if cartoonish) attention to detail and a pronounced dilineation between most of the WWF's gimmick wrestlers of the time, this resulted in a SWANK collection of action figures that each bore an uncanny likeness to their real-life counterparts -- and they didn't even need RealScan technology! Yes, the characters were each so wonderfully distinguishable that there was little room for doubt as to which one was which (for -- even judging by name alone -- who could ever confuse "The Undertaker" with "Doink The Clown"?!) -- but that doesn't mean that our friends over at Hasbro had to build new and exciting sculpts for each of these grapplers. Quite on the contrary, the kind folks at Hasbro simply resorted to a "theme with variations" approach to action figure production, and each of the figures they produced pretty well managed to fall into one of four categories of "[noun] [verb]-ing action."
For many, like the "Gorilla Press Slamming" Hulk Hogan (version 1.o), this consisted of a spring in the torso that snapped a figures hands from "up" to "down" position in slam-like fashion. They'd borrow this same action for figures like Ax of Demolition and a number of others, and they'd tweak it to a two-fisted closed-hand "punch slamming action!" feature for a boatload of others (like The Berzerker, for one).
Type two was a human spring. Figures like Brutus Beefcake and the Rockers variant of Shawn Michaels simply came with a huge-ass lever sticking out of their back, and kids were expected to push down on the thing and let the spring do the rest of the work as the figure "jumped" ala Ram Man of Masters of the Universe fame. Now the ginormous back lever sure made it a *bitch* to pin these guys shoulders to the mat for a three-count... but definitely a cute little trick, too, if I do say so myself.
The third action ability was usually some variation of spring-trigger "[noun] punching" or "[noun] stomping action," which pretty much boiled down to a spring-loaded arm acting as a cue for a straight-arm punch (ala Virgil), a "headlock punch" (ala Rick Rude"), a wicked bear hug (Hogan 2.o) - or my personal favorite - a kickass leg stomp (ala Million Dollar Man 2.o, Irwin R. Shyster). Devastating, I know.
Our fourth and final action accessory was what you're looking at in the photo above. Basically, it was a simple "twist and release" motion where you could cock a figure's arm WAYYYY back behind him and let that sucker fly for a bone-rattlin' clothesline that would make even JBL blush. Kinda like Balrog from Street Fighter II would store up the most crippling blow in his arsenal by holding back a punch for as long a time as was humanly possible, kids would often twist the hell out of their figures in hopes that an extra two centimeters might just score them the surefire knockout clothesline that dreams were made of. You'll note that each of the figures above are locked in the same position... that's because Razor and Savage have been superglued like that after one of those "haymaker clotheslines" went terribly, terribly awry.
Ahh, such simpler times...
3. Simpler Times Indeed...
Since the last write-up was longer, I'll keep this one on the short side:
It's amazing how black and white the whole face/heel dynamic was, in retrospect. Looking at the case study of Shawn Michaels depicted in the three figures above, for example, we'll see just how clear-cut his descent from "plucky fan-favorite" to "arrogant prick badass" really was. WWF was assuredly marketing their product to kids, and nothing says "bad guy" better than the addition of a pair of leather gloves and sunglasses, not to mention the ULTIMATE transformation to "the darkside" by way of an all-black ring attire.
Yup, HBK was a bad guy alright. I mean shit man, black tights?! Leather gloves!? Better-than-you sunglasses?!?! The guy might as well have been wearing a Darth Vader mask, I tell ya'.
4. Gimmick Wrestlers Galore
This one's sort of a corelary to the rule listed above, but it played such a HUGE role in the turn-of-the decade WWF that I absolutely thought it warranted its own sub-category, so here goes.
Gimmick wrestlers RULED the "New Generation" of the World Wrestling Federation. WCW even tried to get in on that act too, come to think of it ("Captain" Mike Rotunda, anyone?).
From wrestling clowns to grapplers doubling as grave diggers by-night, there was no doubt that the late 80's and early 90's WWF was absolutely brimming with characters that straddled the line between "larger than life" and flat-out "human cartoons." For a number of these characters (well, ok... maybe just 'Taker) - the outlandishness of their gimmick actually paid off and resulted in a long, lucrative career with the company now known as World Wrestling Entertainment.
For others?
Well, not so much.
So here's to YOU, Barry Darsow a.k.a. "Smash" from Demolition, a.k.a. "Hole in One" Stewart Pain a.k.a. "Repo Man." And here's to YOU, Charles Wright a.k.a. "Kama Mustafa," a.k.a. "Papa Shango" a.k.a. "The Godfather." And yes, here's to YOU, Giant Gonzales (formerly of "El Gigante" WCW infamy). Love the airbrushed bodysuit, by the way. ;-)
5. Fragile - Handle With Care!
Though action figures are, as a general rule, pretty well prone to some damage and wear and tear, there's little room for doubt that WWF's Hasbro run was among THE most injury prone toy lines in the history of kids' playthings. Hollow sculpted plastic (often loaded with springs, levers and other various mechanisms just waiting to misfire) is fragile enough on its own... but when you take it into consideration that these things were designed to be smacked into one another for the sake of pantomiming "wrestling" matches seen on tv -- well then you're just askin' for trouble. Just off the top of my head, I'd like to take a moment of silence to mourn the loss of action figures like Rick Rude (R.I.P., arm-snapping related death), Andre The Giant (R.I.P., torso-shattering-related death), Million Dollar Man 2.o (R.I.P., full-body dismemberment related death) - all of whom died valliantly in the line of action figure duty.
In the photo above, you can see some of the "battle damage" of the figures that made it out of my childhood alive. Jim Duggan looks pretty worse for wear... and Hogan and Warrior each appear to have given one another "the finger" (or two, or three, or...). I.R.S., meanwhile, still dons the scars of a Razor Ramon beatdown - which may or may not have been incurred the very same day the guy debuted in the "Meehan Wrestling Federation" alongside of fellow Laneco $5 acquisitions like the Repo Man and Papa Shango.
6. Tag Team Two-Packs RULED!!!
Gotta' love the 4' tall Marty Jannetty, the pseudo-bondage gear of "Ax" and "Smash" of Demolition and the virtual indistinguishability between Butch and Luke of The Bushwhackers... but damn if those figure two-packs didn't make for some kickass additions to our action figure ranks. The matching tights was really what put it over the top for Mee, I'd say... as it pretty well guaranteed that the team was either "in it for life" or destined for a new figure apiece should they ever break up. Either way, it made for some killer tandem contests and an indescribable collector's joy whenever we so happened to stumble upon two matching figures for sale in the same store. For after all, what parent could ever force their kid to choose one figure over the other when the fate of the unity of a world famous tag team was at stake!?
In other words -
If you found both a Rick AND a Scott Steiner in the same toy aisle, odds were pretty good that you would be walking out with not one but TWO figures by day's end.
7. I'm (Garage) Sale-ing Away
Speaking of Rick and Scott Steiner...
A few years ago, my folks and I were rummaging around a flea market and we just so happened upon an old box of WWF Hasbro action figures. Since I'm the all-things-wrasslin' connoseiur and all, Mom even offered to buy Mee one of the figs "for old time's sake" as we passed by. Not wanting to look childish (after all, I *am* just shy of 24) AND still wanting to impress my girlfriend (who just so happened to be walking alongside of us at the time) - I laughed off the offer and we set about our way to the next vendor's van-full o' crap, thinking nothing of my missed opportunity to score a pretty solid addition to my rather sizable wrestling action figure collection.
Boy was I stupid.
In retrospect, I can honestly say that my single greatest regret in life was *not* picking up those two 13-year-old WWF action figures for the bargain basement price of $1.50 apiece. Each of the four figures shown above (Hogan, Cowboy Savage, Doink and Tatanka) were all recent garage sale and/or flea market acquisitions to my collection - and I'm thoroughly pissed that I wasn't able to nab a Steiner Brothers pair in much the same fashion. Garage sale-ing and flea marketing is a *GREAT* way to complete or add to your action figure collection, and while the quality is hardly anything to write home about... the fact that you'll have a few more figures to grace your "collectables" shelf for the low, low price of less than a meal at McDonalds is definitely worth the investment. Again, maybe not worth it if you're the "mint in package" type collector... but if you're just looking to round out a roster of action figures from yesteryear?
Garage sales are where it's AT, my friends.
8. Relive EPIC Battles!!!
I know I mentioned something to this effect last time we went looking through stacks of action figures, but it bears repeating:
There's nothing like using your toy collection as a time capsule into the feuds, performers and storylines of yesteryear.
Hogan/Warrior? Bring it on, baby - this time the match will continue until somebody loses a finger!
Hart/Michaels? Heck yeah, bitches... watch as The Heartbreak Kid falls victim to the dual-handed "Hitman Slam" (just crank those hands and let the plastic body hit the floor!).
Thanks to the magic of Hasbro, all of your favorite performers and epic battles from yesteryear are as alive and well as any WWE DVD of today. Whether you're cowering to the greatness of a 4-inch Andre or simply rewriting the history books and booking the WWF Title around the waist of The Million Dollar Man... there's nothing like a plastic-bout of revisionist history to help you rediscover all the fun and excitement of pro wrestling that helped make you a fan in the first place.
9. ... and that not-so epic undercard...
While you're retro-booking WrestleManias to fit your action figure liking, be sure to pad those cards with some of the most gimmick-tastic, campy and over-the-top cartoonish crap that so much of the late '80's and early '90's wrestling had to offer!
Big Boss Man versus The Mountie you say? It's a deal! Loser spends a night the dungeon of Castle Grayskull.
Rick Martel versus Jake Roberts in a "Blind Man's Bluff" match? You're ON! Now if I could only find some Play-Doh with which to fashion a blindfold or two.
In other words...
Not *everything* has to be "epic" and main-event-caliber, ya' know. And for all of its faults (and yes, there were plenty) - late 80's wrestling most definitely went a long way in reminding fans that there's still quite a bit of fun to be had in watching pro wrestling even if you're not banking on every bout being a ***** workrate classic. So "thanks," New Generation. In spite of your Whoopie Cushions, head licking, Max Mooning and TL Hopping - you still managed to bring a smile to the faces of your fans after all.
10. Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here
Not really that much to say for this one, except that it's always fun to bring all "the troops" out of their dusty old storage tub just so I can set 'em all up once again and enjoy that nostalgic rush of yesteryear as they fall out in rank.
Pretty cool, no?
Since the "guess the figure" challenge from last time was such a hit, I'll open the floor for an even bigger challenge for this go-round. There are 30 figures in the photo above. Now, even though I'm pretty sure that most of y'all will easily be able to identify the bulk of them - I'm curious to see who can successfully nail *ALL* thirty for next week's column.
Winner gets a pizza.
And by "pizza," I mean a heartfelt electronic pat on the back.
Ready, set, GO!
And With That, I'm Outta' Here
Thanks again for reading, folks, and here's hoping this week's nostalgia trip was just as much fun for y'all as it was for Mee. Till next week (and I'm hoping for scads of reader entries!), have a good one, enjoy football season (Pats are 2-0, and Denver is LONG overdue for a New England ass-whoopin'!), and always stay positive!
