Tuesday, June 18, 2024

JUNE IS WRESTLING MONTH: As Close As I’ll Get To A ‘Holy Grail’


A lot of toy collectors have “holy grails”, items they’ve been searching for forever and want more than life itself. I don’t really have that.

I’m not really into vintage stuff. My nostalgia is for the properties and characters, not the merchandise, so other than good modern versions of beloved characters that nobody’s making (cough cough The Tick cough cough), there was only one figure that truly eluded me when it came out, and that I was finally able to get at a good price.

That figure? Masters Of The WWE Universe: The New Day. Basically, they took the Man-E-Faces figure from He-Man, gave him the three faces of Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston, and Big E, and did him up in New Day colors and a unicorn horn to spin the faces.

It’s brilliant. A truly inspired mash-up. Even more hilariously, if you look at the rest of the line, there’s only two other figures in the line that even qualify as proper mash-ups, and only one of those is any fun. There’s a Trap-Jaw Steve Austin, and a John Cena as blue Faker He-Man. That last one is clever. The entire rest of the line is shockingly bad.

Anyway, The New Day MOTWWEU came out… in 2020. So for obvious reasons, I wasn’t out hunting for it. Shipping of non-essentials was weird anyway, and online availability was weird too. So I didn’t get one. But I kept an eye on eBay, and for years, the cheapest ones were running about 50 bucks, and that was too much.

But a few weeks ago, I looked, and it was close enough to retail, even after shipping, that I absolutely was going to get it. Less than $30, in fact. Damn near a bargain.

And I was even happier when he arrived, because he’s essentially Origins scale, which is essentially the same scale as the Cartoon Collection. Maybe a smidge smaller, but certainly very compatible. And he has Origins-style articulation, too, so more joints than they probably needed for a line like that where clearly minimal effort was made. 

So he’s a proud part of the collection now, and I’ve already had additional photo fun with him.

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