Collector’s Corner With Matthew Barnes
Collector’s Corner
Join Matthew Barnes for the first edition of this exclusive, multi-part look at the world of pro wrestling action figure collectibles.
Admitting to being an toy adult collector can sometimes feel even harder to “own up” to than being a wrestling fan (and that takes some doing), but increasingly wrestling companies have leaned into the adult collector market. Whether a cynical cash-grab or genuine fan service is up for debate, but it doesn’t stop the voracious appetite modern collectors have for figures from a variety of eras, no matter the cost.
Evidence of this comes in several forms, but can be seen in the range, availability and, ultimately, price of some of the items currently available. In the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at vintage figure lines, modern WWE releases, classic superstar lines, crossovers, customs and upcoming releases in 2025. Believe me, there’s a phenomenal amount of ground to cover here, and that’s before we even think about entering home video, DVD, belts and other merch.
To start our long and winding journey, we first dip a toe into the water and look at a potted history of action figure collecting.
As we’ll talk about in coming instalments, all collectors started somewhere, and the release of modern retro figures is a huge indicator of where a lot of us got started. Whilst WWE hasn’t revisited their original run of LJN figures, they have worked alongside Mattel to revisit the awesome Hasbro figure line, and many other companies have rapidly followed suit. This has all but eliminated what was the burgeoning art form of custom figures, and has replaced it with guaranteed quality and an array of figures that build upon the original Hasbro releases in at times magical ways.
Other companies have piggybacked on the success of this line and signed their own wrestlers to figure contracts, widening the scope of what’s available in the modern era, but some of these figures themselves, whilst awesome, are prohibitively expensive, with many collectors balking at the endless range of variants on offer that render collecting to the completion of a single line almost impossible. With that said, these lines have included everyone from Tommy ‘Dynamite Kid’ Billington, Adam Bomb and King Kong Bundy to Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and Nick Aldis. Ring announcers have finally got their own figure releases thanks to these lines, and it seems that, with each passing week, there is a new release on the horizon that guarantees collectors will be reaching for their wallets once more.
We’ll look at these releases down the road, though we’ll simply add for now that quality control and the standard of these more unofficial releases can be hit and miss, whereas the WWE Retro releases generally offer a more premium product. There’s also the fact that WWE and Mattel have far greater licensing power that bolsters their offering, with recent lines including The Hart Foundation, Greg Valentine in Rhythm and Blues attire (the original Hasbro holy grail) and even Jimmy Hart and other managers, as well as modern stars such as DX and the NWO.
Whereas WWE opted not to revisit its LJN line, AEW did dip its toe into this water, with poor results. Even now, years after release, versions of Cody Rhodes languish in obscurity for next-to-nothing on Amazon. Suffice to say, this experiment hasn’t been repeated. Why? Timing is perhaps key; whilst the LJN figures hold fond memories for a lot of people, the vast majority of collectors became fans during the early nineties, when WWE’s Hasbro and WCW’s Galoob lines held sway. The LJN figures don’t fit with figures from this era, as whilst they resemble the Galoob style, they are much bigger, and so didn’t sit easily alongside the others when it came to playing with action figures as a kid – and, of course, what many people are collecting aren’t the figures they admired from afar as a kid, but those that they lay on the floor playing with whilst The WWF and WCW played on grainy CRT screens in the background.
The Galoob figures are an interesting topic, and one which we can’t wait to get to in a separate article, because whilst they lack any degree of articulation (these were literally solid figures in a single pose), the were works of art compared to their Hasbro counterparts, and because of their size, and the size of our young imaginations, could easily be played with alongside their WWF rivals. It also helped that every figure in the line included its own belt, whereas the only way you could get a WWF belt was with a Hasbro wrestling ring (even though every figure worse exactly the same belt!). The Galoob ring was also far different to the Hasbro ring, and many fans aspired to own both.
Despite the love for the Galoob releases, until now any retcon has been avoided. Until now… indeed, MLW recently announced its own range of Galoob-style figures for 2025. Suffice to say, the news was greeted with deep joy by vintage figure afficionados. What a time to be alive!
All good things must come to an end, however, and both Hasbro and Galoob had brought their original lines to a close by the mid-nineties. What followed was a true mixed-bag of styles that it’s hard to imagine fans will clamour for revivals of in the years ahead. Indeed, the surge of collecting modern figures didn’t fully burst into life until Mattel took the reigns in the 2000s. Whilst its predecessor, Jakks, had some success with its Classic Superstars line, there are light years in quality between Mattel elites and the Jakks equivalents. It isn’t even close, though some of the Jakks figures command big bucks.
But, all in good time. For now, it’s enough to have an idea of the arc that we’ll be covering in the weeks ahead. A taster, if you will, of how action figures released, fired up, hit the mat, kicked out at two and hulked-up with a fierce revival over the last ten years of so.
There is so much to come, and I hope you’ll join me for this wild ride, brother! (Slinks away having been booed out of the website…)
Ahem….
There is so much to come, and I hope you’ll join me for this wild ride, ooooh yeah. Diggit?!
