ZST vs. Mattel

Short and easy answer, no chance in hell, it can be a decent companion piece for figures for guys they can’t sign/ wwe won’t sign.

I don’t think ZST can be expected to compete with Mattel but I hope they’re good enough to sit alongside on the shelf to fill gaps that Mattel can’t or won’t be able to.

He doesn’t have the volume to compete with Mattel. He produces only a handful of figures per year at a few thousand each.

As far as who the 4th man is, it’s probably Andre or One Man Gang. I doubt he goes too niche with the 6” line and makes someone like Roadkill or Haystacks.

I'll be willing to try Double J depending on the price point and how the final production images look. I see more of a need for this than the retros quite honestly, and that's coming from a retro collector. As I'm not someone with a full collection of Hasbros and probably never will be filling in those niche names just doesn't do a lot for me, especially when the figures are really just four inch statues with some pose-ability.

Getting a crack at names Mattel won't get for your elite collection without having to pay a customizer or try it yourself is a nice thing, though. If they all have the same points of articulation, look consistent and are in scale I don't see why not.

I just looked at the Pillman figure. It definitely looks interesting. This is going to sound weird, but it looks like a modern day adaption of what a WCW Toybiz figure would look like. I kind of like it and it has that action figure-esq look as opposed to Mattel's somewhat more realistic approach. The likeness looks like a cross between Jakks WCW Jericho and Kurt Cobain. With that being said, it's cool to get more companies to make figures we can't get from Mattel. I only collect Mattel and don't really like mixing figures unless they look right in terms of scale/proportions. Also, to answer your question OP no. I don't think we'll have another figure line that'll touch Mattel's line of work at this point. AEW isn't even competition. I critique Mattel's work, but honestly I don't think any other figure line comes as close to their sculpts in terms of wrestling. The AEW figures look like they all have wedgies.

ZST Pillman reminds me of this:

^This.

Zst reminds me of a mix between storm and super7.

Both those lines are terrible at making human figures.

They are best suitable for cartoon/video game figures. (Mortal Kombat, dragon ball)

Storm Hogan for example, I bought because we never knew Mattel would get Hogan back.

It was on my self because I needed a Hollywood Hogan.

Soon as the ultimate came out that storm was yeeted.

I don't know, I remember Storm's Ali and Tyson being decent. But they absolutely incline towards the buffest possible representation of anyone, so they wouldn't be amazing for smaller wrestlers. I always think their face sculpts are nicely done, though, which isn't something I can say for most of Super7's on their real-person figures.

There are so many niche/boutique companies going right now that I can't keep track of who makes what. I think it's worth remembering that there is a huge distance between being a small shop that has a few pieces under your belt and a functioning company, let alone a major one at the scale of Mattel, Jazwares, Super 7, etc. Even companies like PowerTown and BossFight have had struggles, despite decades of inductry experience. Many of these other companies have FAR, FAR less than that.

As we saw with Chella, even with some success behind you, the wheels can basically come off at any point. There's an opportunity to fill a market gap for collectors, but as always, caveat emptor.