ozz
Main Eventer
Joined on: Aug 1, 2011 16:37:04 GMT -5
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Post by ozz on Aug 1, 2016 16:26:02 GMT -5
Lucky you got Haku and not, say, Outback Jack from the same series :laugh:
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jason1980s
Main Eventer
Joined on: Sept 30, 2009 14:58:56 GMT -5
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Post by jason1980s on Aug 1, 2016 16:47:19 GMT -5
I imagine we looked at those Wrestling Ring catalogs photos like one might look longingly at a mansion, one day hoping to own one.
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FUSamBaker
Main Eventer
Biggest crush on Sami Zayn.
Joined on: Sept 6, 2005 19:25:20 GMT -5
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Post by FUSamBaker on Aug 1, 2016 20:05:42 GMT -5
We all remember the 2 page spread in PWI "LAST CHANCE" with every ljn pictured right? Well for my 10th bday my mom ordered me Red shirt hulk and ultimate warrior (Cmon it was summer 1990 wm6 just happend 4 months earlier) and we all remember checking the front porch every...single ...day ...for weeks...and...weeks ...and...weeks (loved the days of no internet trackable packages) well after waiting the 3 years for my package to arrive (8 weeks =3years to 10 year olds) low and behold my...Jake Roberts and Haku showed up....WTF!!!!! (YEP I really said that in front of my mother) so after 48 hours of nonstop crying and 52 phone calls it is established to send the package back and the mistake will be corrected...so another 4 years go bye (ten weeks) and my mom hands me a catolog sized envelop from "the wrestling ring' saying we are sorry but both your items are perminently out of stock please look thru our catolog for an instock replacement ....I ended up with what I'll call 'the best of the rest' Strike Force. I would have cried haha. Gotta love the old magazine/catalog orders. When I was a kid, the catalog ordering was just starting to fade out to the Internet. I was about 7 when the Star Wars Power of the Force exclusive Oola came out. I remember waiting ages for it to arrive. It felt like years to me!
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ozz
Main Eventer
Joined on: Aug 1, 2011 16:37:04 GMT -5
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Post by ozz on Aug 1, 2016 21:03:21 GMT -5
I imagine we looked at those Wrestling Ring catalogs photos like one might look longingly at a mansion, one day hoping to own one. I remember having my wish list circled, starred, or filled out for "when" I was able to get them ordered. "New Hulk Hogan", Ultimate Warrior, Big Bossman, and a couple others were on there, but alas, it never happened.
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Post by hbkjason on Aug 2, 2016 2:17:15 GMT -5
I grew up in Scotland and back when I was a kid and Hasbros were all the rage (I think this was 90-91) a department store called What Everyone Wants in a town called Kirkcaldy had pegs and pegs of the LJN bendies figures. They really did not go to well with the Hasbro's, but I did not care at 99 pence each I got every single figure and I always took them to my grand parents house. I had Hogan, Piper, Steamboat, Orndorff, Andre The Giant I pretty much had the whole set. The only one I never managed to get was Macho Man. One thing that I do remember was always standing Jesse Ventura at the side of my ring as he was the commentator.
Anyway, fast forward a year or two and I was way to cool to have these old and in my words rubbish wrestling figures so I gave them all to my younger cousin. Whose dog then ripped them all to pieces and buried them around the yard!
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jason1980s
Main Eventer
Joined on: Sept 30, 2009 14:58:56 GMT -5
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Post by jason1980s on Aug 2, 2016 13:57:04 GMT -5
I imagine we looked at those Wrestling Ring catalogs photos like one might look longingly at a mansion, one day hoping to own one. I remember having my wish list circled, starred, or filled out for "when" I was able to get them ordered. "New Hulk Hogan", Ultimate Warrior, Big Bossman, and a couple others were on there, but alas, it never happened. For the longest time I figured the 1988 and 1989 series' were mail order exclusive. For the early and mid 90s I never saw one in any flea market, plus there were never any card backs (black card, but have never even seen one in-person) plus the ads for the mail order. I always figured "wrestling ring" was an LJN sister type company. Never guessed they were just like a "John's Collectibles" or "Figures, Inc." type place. I still wonder if the 1989 single toy images were taken from an LJN catalog. I know the one larger group photo (1987/1988) was from the 1988 catalog but wonder about the other images (even the earlier series' grouping photo both with Bulldogs, Macho, Liz etc...). These images were obviously from LJN but I've never seen them anywhere but WR ads in PWI or WWF magazines.
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ozz
Main Eventer
Joined on: Aug 1, 2011 16:37:04 GMT -5
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Post by ozz on Aug 2, 2016 14:21:21 GMT -5
I remember walking into TRU one day w/my grandma and cousin (I keep telling this story here but it's awesome and I remember it almost clear as day) and seeing the series 5 figures. Between us we ended up with DiBiase/Honky (me) and Bam Bam/OMG (him). All cool figures (coincidentally all colored rubber w/painted skin) and we hadn't seen them advertised so to see them exist was a complete surprise!
Likely up until then we'd frequented the store(s) and kept seeing the same peg warmers we already either had or didn't want, and had trouble ever seeing the Harts, Bees, Kamala, etc.
As far as Series 5 goes, I never saw Hacksaw, Ax, the shirted Hulks, don't think I saw Tito/Martel and definitely did not see the tag pack. I did see and/or have the rest of Series 5.
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FUSamBaker
Main Eventer
Biggest crush on Sami Zayn.
Joined on: Sept 6, 2005 19:25:20 GMT -5
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Post by FUSamBaker on Aug 8, 2016 20:41:19 GMT -5
Btw I keep meaning to ask you guys this, how much were LJN's at retail back then? Like TRU and Kmart. I don't mean to seem like a young'n haha but I was born in '91 so I grew up with BCAs and TTLs on the pegs. They seemed to cheap to me back then. Not to mention TRU in my area had an entire isle just for wrestling! Haha I could go on and on (going wayyy off subject) but I remember Wrestlemania 2000 TTLs down the entire isle, then about 30 Dr. Deaths, 30 Jackies and a small pegs section for ECW and WCW had a decent set up. But that whooooole isle though...man it still gives me chills.
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mesteve
Mid-Carder
Joined on: Apr 10, 2011 22:45:19 GMT -5
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Post by mesteve on Aug 8, 2016 21:34:18 GMT -5
Btw I keep meaning to ask you guys this, how much were LJN's at retail back then? Like TRU and Kmart. I don't mean to seem like a young'n haha but I was born in '91 so I grew up with BCAs and TTLs on the pegs. They seemed to cheap to me back then. Not to mention TRU in my area had an entire isle just for wrestling! Haha I could go on and on (going wayyy off subject) but I remember Wrestlemania 2000 TTLs down the entire isle, then about 30 Dr. Deaths, 30 Jackies and a small pegs section for ECW and WCW had a decent set up. But that whooooole isle though...man it still gives me chills. For me I remember the magic number always being six dollars. My goal was to save up $6 and once I did I would beg my Mom to bring me to Toys R Us , KB-Toys or more often to Zayre, a discount chain that we had in Massachusetts. Zayre always had the better selection there, maybe because people didn't think to look there for toys. Every once in a while I would find good figures at Bradlees, another discount chain we had. I remember seeing the Wrestling Ring ads for the first time for the new 1989 figures, and thinking how crazy expensive the new figures were at $16.99. Even the older figures were $11.99 in those ads. When I asked my Mom for some of the new figures she looked at me crazy once she saw the price, but she still ended up getting me some.
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FUSamBaker
Main Eventer
Biggest crush on Sami Zayn.
Joined on: Sept 6, 2005 19:25:20 GMT -5
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Post by FUSamBaker on Aug 8, 2016 21:57:41 GMT -5
See that's what always confused me. I've seen a few vintage ads listing the price at $16. I mean that's even bad by today's prices! I can't imagine with inflation how much that was back then!
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mesteve
Mid-Carder
Joined on: Apr 10, 2011 22:45:19 GMT -5
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Post by mesteve on Aug 8, 2016 22:02:12 GMT -5
I remember walking into TRU one day w/my grandma and cousin (I keep telling this story here but it's awesome and I remember it almost clear as day) and seeing the series 5 figures. Between us we ended up with DiBiase/Honky (me) and Bam Bam/OMG (him). All cool figures (coincidentally all colored rubber w/painted skin) and we hadn't seen them advertised so to see them exist was a complete surprise! Likely up until then we'd frequented the store(s) and kept seeing the same peg warmers we already either had or didn't want, and had trouble ever seeing the Harts, Bees, Kamala, etc. As far as Series 5 goes, I never saw Hacksaw, Ax, the shirted Hulks, don't think I saw Tito/Martel and definitely did not see the tag pack. I did see and/or have the rest of Series 5. I can totally relate Ozz. One of my fondest memories was when I was in fifth or sixth grade, which would have been around 1987/1988, and at school they had something like a show and tell, except it was only displays set up for others to walk by and look at. This was for students to bring in anything they wanted to show off to the other students like hobbies etc. As our single file line of all the students was walking past all the displays, I remember seeing from a distance one kid that had a display of his WWF wrestling ring, with figures set up inside it. I immediately noticed the ones I had and the ones I knew I needed. But soon enough, as I was getting closer, something made my jaw drop and got me more excited than I think I've ever been, only I had to stay completely silent and play it cool because I was in school. There set up in two of the corners of the ring were these two figures that I had never laid eyes on. I didn't even know who they were at first, but as I got closer I read the words down their pants which said Bulldogs. I was thrown off at first because I think at that point the British Bulldogs were no longer wearing the maroon colored tights so as a kid I never saw them even wrestle in those outfits, so I didn't recognize the figures at first. Up until that point in my life I had never even seen a picture of the figures anywhere, as they didn't appear on the card backs of the figures I owned at that time, which weren't many. I was in amazement, and tried walking as slowly as I could so I could stare at them longer. I was shy, so I didn't say anything to the kid, but man that was a crazy day. All I could think of from then on was where could I get those figures. They instantly became my favorites.
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Post by blu3blazer on Aug 9, 2016 8:20:29 GMT -5
My funny story is selling all my LJNs together in one lot for $80 when I was 18 years old back in 1999. Then to find out years later that guys like the Ultimate Warrior, and white shirt Hulk Hogan went for big money used and played with, and that they were in the lot of LJNs that I sold. That kind of sucked. Ugh. My mom sold all of my He-Man toys when I was 10 or 11 for like $10 or $15. I had TONS of figures, probably 90% of those that were out. And I had tons of the vehicles, Castle Grayskull, Snake Mountain, the Evil Horde's headquarters, etc.
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kostan
Jobber
Joined on: Aug 25, 2015 9:13:23 GMT -5
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Post by kostan on Aug 13, 2016 8:28:22 GMT -5
Thank you FUSamBaker for starting this topic. It's such a feel good experience to take this trip down memory lane and also to read about other people reliving some good moments from the past.
I totally know what people mean when they say they were staring at those Wrestling Ring advertisements. I'm from the Netherlands and there were no LJNs available over here. The first time I ever saw them was in WWF magazine, somewhere in 1988 I think.. it has pics of LJNs like Koko and Bob Orton. Loved those. Then around the same time the Wrestling Ring advertisements in PWI. As a little boy I often stared at those images, playing make believe as to what I would do if I entered a toy store which had those figures. Which one(s) I would buy first. Etc etc.
I never saw those in a store anywhere. However, now the little boy is not so little anymore and Ebay is my fav place to be to hunt down these figures. Shame is that 99% of the time the seller is based in the USA and with the Ebay Global Shipping Program shipping costs to the Netherlands are often approx. 40/50 USD.
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dixol
Main Eventer
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Post by dixol on Aug 14, 2016 12:23:23 GMT -5
I went my friends house once, and he had a piece of cloth over one of the guys heads, with a rubber band around the neck to hold it in place. I asked him why he did that and he said it was a mask, cuz one of the guys lost a loser leaves match, but came back under a mask. I went home and stole the idea. I didn't have any little pieces of cloth, so I got white printer paper, cut it, eye holes and all, and used clear tape to keep it all together. Colored markers were used to decorate the mask. Some of them actually turned out really nice.
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Thrashard
Superstar
Joined on: Sept 30, 2012 10:09:13 GMT -5
Posts: 561
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Post by Thrashard on Feb 5, 2017 20:30:17 GMT -5
I have lots of great memories from LJNs, some of my favorite personal stories:
- When my mom called the magazine ad to get me my white shirt Hulk in 1989, the guy on the other end of the phone asked her “do you want an Ultimate Warrior too, hes very popular right now?” my mom asked me and I just blurted out “NO!” without even thinking just because I was so happy to be getting Hulk… in hindsight I can’t fn believe I didn’t just say yes and I never got the Warrior Ljn.
- The day I found a long haired Andre at Woolworths with my grandfather, they sold everything there including pets like birds and fish. Well after I found Andre I went over to look at the birds and one of them crap on me from the cage. I wasn’t taking it too well to say the least lol, everyone told me it was good luck and I believed it since it was the only time I ever saw an Andre ljn at retail lol.
- Finding the Kamala ljn at Toys R Us one Saturday morning, it’s still a vivid memory for me I was ecstatic, only time I ever saw it. Funny part was the package was opened a little bit, but I still got it and even at a young age I was so paranoid that it came with his mask and someone stole it. I always wanted to see another one at retail to make sure it had no mask at the time but never did haha.
- My aunt was a big wrestling fan in the 80s, so more times than not whenever she would come to our house she would always bring me a new ljn. Well one day she showed up with my cousins and they just came from the mall and got me a nice new Brutus Beefcake ljn. I was pretty happy… until my cousin goes “Yeah we were gonna get you AX but some little kid walked away with the last one!” This was before I had even known they made an AX or saw the pictures in the magazines, I was heartbroken lol and suddenly my Brutus didn’t feel all that great anymore. Needless to say I never found Ax at retail.
- For whatever reason even though everyone on the planet seemed to own him, I had a hard time finding the original yellow Hulk ljn at retail. It’s not like today where if you go search for wrestlers and want a John Cena there will be 100 sitting there (back then that was Corporal Kirshner lol). I had a really big collection built up before I got that Hulk. I remember walking into KB Toys one Saturday at our normal trip to the mall and feeling especially “down” because I just wanted a fn Hulk and didn’t feel like walking out with a random “jobber” like Ted Arcidi or Tito Santana or Bruno which seemed to always be the case lately. I remember walking to the aisle with my head down already feeling defeated, looked up and there was the yellow Hulk staring back at me. I grabbed it and started running though the store screaming at the top of my lungs “THEY HAVE HULK HOGAN!” and my mother yelling at me to calm down. Can still remember it pretty vividly and how our usual trip to Marshall's after KB, which normally felt like HOURS didn’t seem so bad that day having a Hulk to play with in the carriage while my mom shopped.
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ozz
Main Eventer
Joined on: Aug 1, 2011 16:37:04 GMT -5
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Post by ozz on Feb 6, 2017 0:02:30 GMT -5
I went my friends house once, and he had a piece of cloth over one of the guys heads, with a rubber band around the neck to hold it in place. I asked him why he did that and he said it was a mask, cuz one of the guys lost a loser leaves match, but came back under a mask. I went home and stole the idea. I didn't have any little pieces of cloth, so I got white printer paper, cut it, eye holes and all, and used clear tape to keep it all together. Colored markers were used to decorate the mask. Some of them actually turned out really nice. My cousin and I made silly putty masks for the Killer Bees when it was time to fool the ol' referee... lol
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lamby23
Mid-Carder
Joined on: Dec 16, 2009 14:10:15 GMT -5
Posts: 262
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Post by lamby23 on Feb 7, 2017 9:00:16 GMT -5
All great stories....lots of great memories here.
My first ljn's were Hogan vs Shiek thumb wrestlers for Easter. I made a wooden ring with nails for posts and rubber bands for the ropes. I desperately wanted the larger LJNs though. Later that year at my birthday I got my first LJN, a single carded figure of Dynamite Kid. It was the only figure I got though. My birthday is in November so I had to wait until Christmas to get some more to wrestle him. That Christmas I got the Ring and the Cage from my grandparents, however it was the AWA wooden ring so my Dad let me use it until Boxing Day and then had to clean off all the paint rubs and return it for the proper LJN ring. The figures i got included Kamala, Mean Gene, Corporal Kirchener, Machoman,, and a single carded Davey Boy Smith to complete my Bulldogs. Sadly I opened both of my Bulldogs! Had i been able to see into the future and know how much they are worth now carded. However I can answer the question as to which poster they have in them...... It was the tag team Bulldog poster. It was rolled like the regular single posters but the folded to a smaller size to fit in card. I remember being angry that my new poster had so many creases in it since it looked like it was scrunched up and stuff in! Lol
I loved LJN' but my true love was GIJoe so the bulk of my money was dedicated to them. When the black card series hit, i was at toys r us buying some gijoes and i saw the new ''89 series which I never heard of. So i picked up Warrior and Rick Rude. Again had I known....the shelves had Haku, and Warlords and Black Strap Andres etc.....
I did however get a Warlord a few weeks later. A friend down the street was selling his LJNs. I bought about 25 figures off him for $1 or $2 a piece. Since he just bought Warlord he wanted $5 for him. I talked him down to $3!
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ClassicFan2
Main Eventer
Joined on: Oct 22, 2010 15:25:00 GMT -5
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Post by ClassicFan2 on Feb 7, 2017 13:17:26 GMT -5
I still find a box of LJNs at a flea market/farmer's market that I frequent. Trouble is, its always Volkoff, Sheik, Muraco & Snuka. And they are in terrible condition. Same here. I could probably fill a storage box full of Studds, Hogans and Savages I've seen at garage sales. Oddly enough, I've never seen a Snuka in my life lol. Not even at flea markets. yeah, its always the same guys. maybe a Terry Funk beat to hell as well or something. back in the day i hardly ever saw and of the good ones, it was always the same old guys on the shelves.
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FUSamBaker
Main Eventer
Biggest crush on Sami Zayn.
Joined on: Sept 6, 2005 19:25:20 GMT -5
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Post by FUSamBaker on Feb 7, 2017 20:57:39 GMT -5
Same here. I could probably fill a storage box full of Studds, Hogans and Savages I've seen at garage sales. Oddly enough, I've never seen a Snuka in my life lol. Not even at flea markets. yeah, its always the same guys. maybe a Terry Funk beat to hell as well or something. back in the day i hardly ever saw and of the good ones, it was always the same old guys on the shelves. Haha funny you mention Funk! I was about 10 when my grandma and I went to a flea/antique show. I look down and there was a wooden crate of LJNs. They ranged from played with to post HIAC match haha. They were $5 to boot! Well I geeked out over Terry Funk. He wasn't too bad except for what looked like fork marks on his nose and worn knees (wonder what he was doing haha). I also grabbed Slick who's face had peeled off and a third who I can't recall. But I loved that Terry Funk! This was around 2000 so I don't remember there being any other Terry Funk figures to my 10 year old knowledge haha. That Terry was well played with in many hardcore matches in my fed!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2017 4:06:43 GMT -5
A little over 10 years ago, during my vinyl record collecting phase, I used to frequent thrift stores such as Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village on a regular basis.
During one of these hunts, I stumbled across a loose LJN Koko B. Ware figure in Value Village's toy section. Being fond of the bird man, I picked up the figure and examined it's condition, which was pretty decent save for his pet parrot "Franky" that was missing. But, just as I was about to put the figure down, I noticed a bit of writing on the sole of Koko's left boot.
At first, I assumed the writing was just the name of the previous owner of the figure. Unfortunately, what was written on the sole of the boot was far more insulting. The kind of insult that questions a man's orientation.
Since then, I haven't been able to track down any LJN figures at Value Village.
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