Hello everyone. I hope you all had a safe and happy holiday season and I hope that continues as we enter the New Year. Christmas has come and gone and it took me a few days to realize this, but I didn’t receive a single wrestling related gift.
Let me explain.
In my circles, I’m known as the wrestling guy and when in doubt during any gift giving time of year, someone gets me a wrestling gift. I’m not nearly the collector I was in my younger years. My wife and I had a very relaxing Christmas but still, not a single WWF/WWE labeled item in my stocking or under my tree.
Maybe it’s some weird sign that I’ve finally grown up?
Nah!
The thought of this made me harken back to my first Christmas as a wrestling fan. Santa Claus answered the call of my new-found fandom and hooked me up with some WWF Wrestling Superstars figures by LJN. The figures are 8 inches tall, made of solid rubber and bear a close resemblance to their real life counterparts.
Six figures had entered the Greene household with the first two being Brutus Beefcake and Rowdy Roddy Piper with the removable kilt that I immediately lost. The other four were a bit of a mystery to me.
Ricky Steamboat, George “The Animal” Steele, Junkyard Dog, and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff had left the WWF by the time I had started watching wrestling so I didn’t know their moves or what they had accomplished.
A tape of WrestleMania 4 revealed that Steamboat knew martial arts and carried a baby to the ring so I summed him up as a good guy Karate man. I made up moves and stories for the other two and Orndorff had the honor of being re-christened the Ultimate Warrior with face paint and homemade tassels.
Unfortunately, the Wrestling Superstars line was discontinued shortly thereafter so I never had a chance to add other figures to my collection. But I didn’t care because I was perfectly happy with what I had received and played with them for hours on end.
Over the years, people have told me that they had their G.I. Joes clash with the wrestlers in plastic combat. I experimented with this concept once but things went off the rail with swords, machine guns and fighter jets causing disqualifications which made this a one-time endeavor.
Christmas is my favorite holiday and wrestling is my favorite pastime. Naturally, for me, they go together like peanut butter and jelly. There will many holidays to come with plenty of body slamming goodies. This time around, I will have to settle for my Bose Soundlink stereo.
Thank you for reading my blog and I can’t wait to get the ball rolling again next year!
Ringside Logic 