Worst experience with Hasbros

I ordered the 3 mail away figs from the wwf mag and they never came . I got a letter saying that there weren't enough orders so they cancelled it all together .
after WM 10, I went to a house show at MSG, and they had Bret and Undertaker hasbro figs, in sealed baggies for sale . I bought them, opened them and played with them . what did I know, I was 10years old . I then painted the taker purple . I painted the hasbro mail away taker!! OH BOY .

Gather around and let me tell you a saga of love, lost, and redemption.

The LJN Wrestling Superstars have long been my favorite wrestling toy line, but I was a little too young to enjoy the time when they regularly adorned the pegs at local toy stores. The WWF Hasbro line, however, was rolled out at the perfect time. I was just getting into wrestling when Hasbro unleashed its first batch of wrestling figures (with real wrestling action, no less!), and of course, my first figure was Hulk Hogan, the reason I had become fixated with wrestling.

So while Hogan was my first Hasbro figure, it wasn't long before I had my sights set on the rest of Series 1. Over the weeks and months, I finagled most of the series from my mom through various occasions and random visits to Toys R Us. One figure that always seemed to allude me was Andre The Giant.

At first, it was coincidental. I'd see a number of Andre figures in my travels through the various toy aisles of my city. But in my eyes, he was perennially second banana to the likes of Ax, Smash, Brutus Beefcake, heck, even Akeem. Actually, that's not true. Akeem was my brother's, but his Hasbro figures always seemed to end up in my possession. ;D The point is, it seemed like I was always choosing another Hasbro figure over poor Andre. At one point, I even opted for a glow-in-the-dark Swamp Thing figure instead of Andre. Stupid!

Eventually, I had secured the entire first series and all that remained was Andre. And then it started. During a Saturday visit to Target, my mom, in a rare moment of not caving in, declined my request to add an Andre to our shopping cart. I was bummed, but didn't realize just how elusive that guy was about to become. Seemingly overnight, Andres vanished from the toy shelves. At first, I didn't think much of it. Then it became clear that no stores in the area had him, nor did they seem to have any in their restocking orders.

By this time, Series 2 and 3 had hit the shelves, and it was becoming a more rare occurrence to even see a Series 1 figure in stores, unless it was someone like Brutus or The Big Boss Man. And so, in my young world, I had developed a vacancy that only an Andre The Giant Hasbro figure could fill. My mom, being a collector of various things herself, empathized with me and openly regretted not letting me get the figure when we had the chance. In my house, Hasbro Andre The Giant became something of legend.

But this story has a happy ending! Let's scoot along to Christmas 1993. I'm opening lots of nice gifts, and when suddenly, I tear back some holiday wrapping paper to reveal... yes, folks, a MOC Andre The Giant figure. No, my mom had not lucked into one in stores. She had taken the secondary market route, which as a lot of you know, was not a cheap endeavor in the pre-eBay world. If I remember correctly, she paid $100 for it. Needless to say, that baby stayed in its original packaging, where it remains to this day. It's one of the few pieces I have not sold, and will never sell out of sentimental attachment.

Epilogue: My mom, seemingly learned a lesson from this, and never let us pass up an opportunity to purchase a WWF Hasbro figure we didn't have. Unfortunately, the series was chugging down the homestretch of its run, but it still meant that I got the Yellow Card, Red Card, Purple Card, and Dark Blue Card figures several at a time, instead of one at a time. And when the Jakks figures hit the shelves a couple of years later, she was a good enough sport to put them in a shopping cart a series at a time. The Jakks figures paled in comparison to both the LJN and Hasbro lines, but I amassed a MOC Jakks collection of hundreds in the line's first four years. They never held the sentimental value of the LJN or Hasbro lines, so those were sold off long ago. But I've never quite had it in me to part with my favorite LJN or Hasbro figures. And you'd better believe that includes Andre.

I kept my hasbros in a shoebox, they kinda rolled around and bumped into each other alot, hawk wound up missing a spike, that always bugged me a bit...

Paid $7 for a French carded Ultimate Warrior #3 at a toy show in 2000 instead of paying $20 for the American version. That's what I get for being a cheapskate.