Where are the Steiner Bros!???

I think it’s Legends series or bust for getting a proper Steiners team. It’s the best fit for them, and if they can’t make one of those assortments, what hope do they have for getting the Ultimate treatment? What sounds like a no-brainer to us as fans may not correlate with what Mattel’s team has planned for the months ahead. God help us if there aren’t at least a few Steiner Brothers fans working at Mattel. To end up with Ultimates, they’re going to need all the support they can get from within.

When I was a kid we went to Shoney’s as a family after church. While eating, my mom found a cockroach in her mac and cheese.

It's Mattel...did you really expect them to do the smart thing and put out the most wanted look immediately? It's always in their best interest to gamble and wait to see if they lose the license first.

So, I've been thinking about this thread a lot since yesterday for whatever reason, and honestly the more I do, the more I have a take that's going to get me heat with a lot of people.

First, let me preface by saying I LOVE the Steiners as a tag team, and I'm DESPERATE to have a tag team representation of them from the late 80s/early 90s (I frankly don't care if it's NWA/WCW or WWF as long as it's colorful) in my collection. And yes, it will be a major fail/botch job by Mattel if we don't get them.

That being said, I think that people are letting their own fandom and their desire for new figures kind of cloud their perspective on not getting tag team Steiners yet. For starters, and again I know I'll get heat, I really don't think the classic tag team version of the Steiners was more wanted overall than Big Poppa Pump. Reality is, unfair as it is, the Steiner Brothers as a tag team haven't been celebrated by WWE in their version of history for a long time. Solo Scott has more, just by the osmosis of being part of the NWO, so honestly it makes sense that within the first year of having them available we got a mainline Big Poppa Pump Elite and had a crowdfund whose arguable star figure was Ultimate NWO BPP (and it was a misstep for Mattel to count on that crowdfund, but that's a separate topic that's been beaten to death). Seems kind of obvious that we will get a Scott, likely in NWO biker shorts as part of the Ultimate line (either in the regular wave or as a MNW figure) sooner rather than later (hopefully sooner since the crowdfund didn't work). Honestly, the fact that we got a Rick Elite from any era as quickly as we did has more to do with his son getting a massive star grooming push than anything.

And that leads me into the second point, which again people will slaughter me for, the Steiners overall as a team are not treated at the historical level by WWE that would merit inclusion in the Ultimate line. Now, again, they SHOULD be IMO, but they're not. Mainline and retail exclusive Ultimates have been reserved for main event (at the time the lineup was solidified) current talent or bankable A-Level legends, and that's been the case for online exclusives/crowdfunds/potential crowdfunds outside of Doink, who seems like more and more of an outlier as the approach to the line has evolved. Again, I think Big Poppa Pump fits that criteria, they tried t build a campaign around his Utimate already, and he's almost a given to get one in the bikers look. Even when it comes to the RSC two-packs, the 80s/90s Steiners as a team are not treated at the same level as the Usos (Major part of the Bloodline, just headlined WrestleMania, postponed by WWE as the greatest "modern" tag team ever, solely evolving into them being positioned as the company's greatest team of all time period) or the Outsiders (Do I even have to breakdown how huge a deal WWE still presents Hall and Nash and the NWO as?) Now again, would I BUY Ultimate Steiners? Yes. But, truthfully and objectively, the way the Steiners are presented in the overall presentation of WWE's version of wrestling history, it seems much more likely that they'll get Elites (either in the mainline, or IMO more likely the Legends line) than Ultimates. I'd love to be proven wrong here TBH.

TL:DR I want Steiners badly, but I think there's some overthinking and overestimating going on.

What does that mean??? Are you hinting that we're not getting The Steiners??

my contact with wwe has confirmed that the steiners have been released from their contracts

Lmao yeah she did. I think they wanted to give her meal for free but we said no thanks and walked out. Never went back.

Get ready for Reverend D-Von and Hardcore Champ Bubba Ray figs before the Dudley’s everybody!

They went in the HOF in 2022, but it's been established over and over again that a HOF induction doesn't equal a Legends deal. Their Legends deal was announced in January of 2023, so it's not really that long at this point. That said I do get it in the sense that Mattel has dropped the ball on stuff before, so I understand the consternation to a point, but I just think people are really taking it to the extreme (and also, I really think expecting them to get Ultimates is a stretch). RE: The Rick issue, TBH I'm torn how much I think that's affected things. On the one hand, obviously it did as far as promotion of the DFG Elite. However on the other I'm honestly not sure we would have had another set of Steiners announced yet either way. I'll honestly be concerned they're never coming if we don't see anything at Mania or SDCC.