Wrestling Memories: WrestleMania III & The LJN Bendies

Wrestling Memories: WrestleMania III & The LJN Bendies

Happy new year everyone! I hope 2020 is great for you and your families. I just wanted to thank all who take the time to read these. I actually work from home and have done for a while now…. It sucks, but getting to write these has really been a highlight for me and kept me sane so I appreciate it. I started working from home when my son was born as being a stay at home dad is awesome, but I wanted to make a little “walking around money” thus I started working from home. It has gotten to the point where I need a change, but writing one of these every couple of weeks keeps things interesting for me.


I have talked about this before on other boards, but I feel it could get some great discussion here too. As I got into wrestling in 1989, I missed out on WrestleMania’s 1-4 when they happened. However my “gift” for Easter in 1991 was WrestleMania III on VHS. I was super happy to get this tape as I had never seen this event before and the front cover with Hulk Hogan and Andre The Giant was something I had seen advertised before, seen in stores and I had always been interested in.


In the time I was off school for Easter vacation I must have watched that VHS tape every damn day! Of course, Macho Man Randy Savage vs Ricky the Dragon Steamboat was awesome, but I actually really enjoyed seeing Tito Santana, The Hart Foundation, Roddy Piper, Jake the Snake Roberts and of course Hulk Hogan too. Actually, one of the matches I always found a ton of fun was Hillbilly Jim vs King Kong Bundy with the little people wrestlers as well. Because of this show, Hillbilly Jim really became someone I liked. When I got into wrestling in 1989, he was not around, so I only really knew him from Prime Time Wrestling but when he came back with The Godwin’s I thought it was awesome.


WrestleMania III was a show that I really did enjoy as a child. It is an amazing spectacle and truly one of the most iconic events in WWE history. I recently watched the event back and I must admit it has not held up as much as I would have liked. Sure, Steamboat vs Savage is great, watching Hogan slam Andre is awesome and seeing Alice Cooper with Jake Roberts is badass. However, I must admit most of the enjoyment I got from watching this show again recently was due to the way it was tugging at my nostalgia strings.



There is a lot of confusion as to when WWF Hasbro figures were released in the UK. Most people will say 1991. However, I can hand on heart say that I got my first WWF Hasbro figures (Ravishing Rick Rude, Million Dollar Man, Macho Man Randy Savage, Ultimate Warrior, and Big Boss Man) before Christmas of 1990. These figures were awesome, but they were of what was modern guys at the time. So, I had these figures then a few months or so later I got the WrestleMania III VHS tape which was my whole world and I could not relive those matches with the figures I had…… until a short while later.


Here in the UK, I would say that WrestleMania VII time was when I really noticed the WWE taking a hold on people. It was everywhere and there was a local market that sold a bootleg Hulk Hogan shirt that was the WrestleMania VII Hogan with the flag and also a bootleg Ultimate Warrior shirt that was him in this weird rectangle on the front of the shirt. Tons of kids I knew had these shirts. Anyway, on a trip to a place called Kirkcaldy in Scotland my mum dragged me into a store called What Everyone Wants. It was a large discount/department store and I had gotten many Star Wars figures there over the years. On this day though, they had the LJN WWF Bendies and they had the whole set!


These were dirt cheap; I want to say either £1.99 or 99p each so I was allowed to get one of every guy and also a ring. I thought I had the actual Bendies ring, but it was actually this knock off “American wrestling” ring that they were selling with the figures. I was blown away by these as I never knew they existed. I was a kind of weird kid in that toy lines did not mix! If I was playing Turtles, I was playing Turtles, if I was playing Star Wars, I was playing Star Wars. There was never any mixing of universes with my toys and that would stand true for wrestling figures too, I would never in a million years use these new Bendie wrestlers with my Hasbro’s or my WCW Galoobs.


It did not matter! You see I was still in love with WrestleMania III and now I had more figures from that event, specifically Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, King Kong Bundy, Hillbilly Jim, Randy Savage, and Ricky Steamboat. I played the hell out of these figures and due to loving the match he was in at WrestleMania III so much, Hillbilly Jim was the king of my WWF! I played the hell out of these figures and for a while I would sit watching WrestleMania III and playing with the toys at the same time. I was really lucky in that I was able to watch this iconic WWF event on VHS and the stores in the UK started getting in LJN Bendies by the truckload around the same time. While I did not find the Bendies until 1991, I have heard others found them in 1990.


To this day, even after my recent viewing WrestleMania III is a show that I have a lot of nostalgia for. While Hogan slamming Andre is great as is Ricky Steamboat rolling up Randy Savage. I cannot think about this show without thinking about the number of times I had my own even more spectacular WrestleMania III with the WWF LJN Bendies! I kept my Hasbro’s from when I was a kid, but the Bendies I eventually took to my grandparents and would play with them there…. So did my younger cousins and they eventually got destroyed!


I would love to add the WWF LJN Bendies to my collection again some day and hopefully I will come across them at a boot sale one of these days.


Have you guys ever been so into an event that you would use your wrestling figures to recreate it over and over again? I do not think there is another wrestling event that I associate with toys as much as I do WrestleMania III and the Bendies.