2021 Retro figures Zombie Sailor/Chella Toys/Nerd NJPW/ JSD

I think the figures look good. They aren’t Hasbro style, but they are at least in size. Still, no one currently signed is someone I’d want to spend $40 on a little figure of. I hope the line is successful and expands so one day I may end up spending money on figures in it.

I will say, the Zombie guy seems to be stand-offish.

For the Chella, I’d be more inclined to spend the money on figures since they line up better with my Mattel collection. Get me Buddy Rogers, Pedro Morales, Ivan Volkoff and the other unmade WWF Champions.

I've always likened the Hasbro line, in particular, to being almost caricaturistic in nature. I think that's where ZST's figures deviate for me, and that, in of itself, isn't necessarily his fault. Nobody would accept the Hasbro 123 Kid sculpt in 2021. Someone putting that out would get laughed right out of the business. We can look at it and see the attire and with an understanding of the approaches available in the early 90s accept that it's a representation of Sean Waltman, but if Sean Waltman never got an action figure, and ZST signed him for his first set of H&F, who's paying $40 if he rolls that sculpt out as the final pitch for Thursday's pre-order?

I think that's kind of the problem. It would probably be really easy to produce a more Hasbro-esque representation of the names he's signed, but you'd be off your rocker to do so and then expect people to pay $40 a whack for them. In that respect, I don't fault them at all for going in the direction they did (those head sculpts are really well done). Where I do fault them is when they put these spectacular sculpts out and then say "they'll fit right in with your old Hasbros!"

Glad a bunch of my posts got deleted for no reason. A+ modding there.

If this entire board's stance was "if you don't like the business practices of a figure manufacturer, don't post here - complain to them", WF wouldn't exist.

Probably his background being a dealer and his hubris of rubbing shoulders with the Major Pod guys who aren't exactly the best people either.

Kinda disappointed in the pod guys for starting to come across passive aggressive and defensive.

No way they ship in time for Christmas. I'd bet a Coke on it. Even the pre-order graphic (that he seems to have scrubbed from Twitter) is listing the ETA as December - February.



Enough cannot be said about this, either. I dropped the podcast ages ago, but kept up the social follows for a bit longer (have since dropped them, too). It was almost subtle, but around the time that the Elite Squad membership shifted to account for the releases, there was a brief, marked shift in their tone toward Mattel. They suddenly started coming off as less tongue-in-cheek "hahahaha Sweaty Bill amirite" and more directed and harsh in their critiques of the product. I don't know if someone called them out or something because it kinda dialed back after a couple of weeks, but it definitely lent itself to the "scratch our backs or we'll try and break yours" approach they seem to have adopted over the past year or so.

It's totally relevant. Whether or not Ryder and Hawkins are beneficiaries of ZST's efforts or not is beside the point - they're clearly aligned in a very close, personal way, and know well enough how to butter one another's bread for the benefit of all involved. I know some people think that ZST should just be treated like any other company and that it's irrelevant to discuss the branching aspects of his business, but the groundwork has been laid here for a couple of years now. Trying to posit that the (presumed) success of ZST's line isn't largely thanks to his association with the Major Bros would be one of the biggest bold faced lies in the history of action figure collecting.

you're buying two sets just to sell them? hope they arrive beat to hell

I’m gonna be the guy to disagree there. We can argue about the reasons, people’s opinions of the podcast, the merch, the people who buy the merch, whatever, but from a business standpoint, every figure or figure m-like product Cardona and Myers have offered or been a part of since they left WWE have sold exceedingly to a rabid audience. Including them in the first series of the line makes total sense from that perspective. Re: Swoggle and Mark, not nearly as close to a guarantee, but I would wager selling roughly 3,000 of each of those (which seems to be the run #) will happen relatively quickly thanks to the MWFP FB fandom alone. Again, I’m not going to argue whether that’s a good thing, bad thing, or indifferent thing, but from a business standpoint it he moves make total sense.