Look at me in the eye.
Tell me, yes or no,
are you or are you not gonna fight him in WrestleMania III
for the World Heavyweight Championship? Yes or no?
Yes!
In the 1980s,
professional wrestling took the national spotlight...
and a new breed of superstar was born.
They were a rough-talking, rowdy bunch.
That's the kind of guy I am.
These acrobatic Adonises captured the hearts of millions
with their personality,
Woo!
...performance and pythons.
The world's heavyweight champion.
They were the world's first living, breathing...
Action figures.
So it was no surprise when they made the leap
from WrestleMania...
Let the battle royal begin!
...to retail mania.
At the time, nothing was cooler than pro wrestling.
This is the story of multiple toy lines...
This is an Evergreen brand.
...that have survived just as many competitive twists and turns...
The licensing guy went behind our back. It wasn't a way to do business.
...as the wrestling promotions that inspired them.
That's right. I bought my competition.
With decades' worth of triumphs...
We did $58 million our first year.
...and setbacks.
This led to a souring of the relationship.
There was a takeover.
And after over 30 years of keeping wrestling fans dolled up
from face to heel...
...these are the toys that made us.
♪ The continuing series About the toys that we all know ♪
♪ Plastic creations That last for generations ♪
♪ And we still cannot let go ♪
♪ Little molded figures That gave us big dreams ♪
♪ We'll go back in time And behind the scenes ♪
♪ It's the toys that made us Toys that made us ♪
♪ The Toys That Made Us is here ♪
In Egypt, thousands of years ago,
between their busy schedule of building pyramids and spaceships
for their alien overlords,
the ancients wrestled.
And mankind would continue to roll about shirtless
for people's entertainment for millennia.
- But back then... - It was mind-numbingly dull.
Because there were no body slams or people's elbows in those days.
It was just guys rolling around on a mat for like, four hours.
- Woo! - They're getting bruised up.
Ooh.
But when time limits were introduced in the 1920s, that meant...
Something new's been added to wrestling
that's making the turnstiles click.
Whether it was lucha libre in Mexico,
puroresu in Japan
or Gorgeous George entertaining folks
in American Vaudeville halls,
there was something undeniably theatrical about wrestling.
I see wrestling as a type of male burlesque.
It is a performance of masculinity.
In the early days,
these performances were bound by a complicated territory system.
In each separate territory,
you're building up your stories, you're building up your stars.
For example, Hulk Hogan was originally a star
in the Minneapolis-based AWA,
- but there was also... - Jim Crockett Promotions.
The Calgary Promotion of Canada.
And we had Cowboy Bill Watts running things in mid-South.
- You want more? - Nah.
- It's enough, right? - Yeah.
The territory system was often described to me by my dad
as being by the old-school, traditional rules.
You do not encroach.
You do not poach.
Until one man did. A McMahon.
Vince McMahon comes along.
Vince McMahon, Sr.
was a promoter in the northeast region with the WWWF or...
World Wide Wrestling Federation.
But it was his son, Vince McMahon, Jr.,
who would become the real godfather of professional wrestling
by predicting what cable television could do for the sport.
He saw the direction it was going, to go in to people's houses.
"Hey, I can offer you more."
Go into their TV stations. "My show is better."
And when he took over the company in '82,
the fearless Vince ditched one of the "W'"s
and one of the biggest no-nos in the territory system.
You do not poach.
They poached a lot of talent from every promotion that mattered.
"I want you, I want you, I want you,"
and takes the stars from all the territories.
Like the AWA and Hulk Hogan.
Hulkster, I must admit, I believe the odds are stacked against you tonight.
But Vince didn't just grapple wrestlers from other territories.
Vince McMahon added his own flavor
and made it more "wrestling entertainment."
There were bigger story lines and bolder characters,
and Vince brought in big-time musicians and actors
to draw in a huge new audience.
Cyndi Lauper, Captain Lou Albano, Mr. T.
I've kicked butt all around the world, all my life, you know.
And years later, this "Mr. T."
Not only had Vince changed the game, he changed the audience, too.
With WWF's insistence on appealing to younger-aged fans.
And you know what they like.
And we'll sell toys to them, most importantly, right?
Right. Speaking of which, by 1984,
the WWF had become a household brand,
along with names like Hulk Hogan, Junkyard Dog,
"Rowdy" Roddy Piper, and...
Jewish Lightning.
That actually wasn't a wrestler,
but rather the nickname for a mild-mannered toy salesman
from Philadelphia named Robby Kanoff.
I started in December of '78
as the national sales manager of Lewis Galoob Toys.
And I would have been the youngest sales manager
in the history of the toy business at that point, 23 years old.
Robby was an up-and-comer, but so was his new employer,
a toy company called Galoob.
Galoob was a small family-owned business.
There's David, brother Robert.
They were just an importer of cheap toys.
But they were selling the same thing as ten other importers.
Things like Jolly Chimp.
Remember the chimp that would clap and the eyes would bulge out?
How could we forget?
But it wasn't just Galoob that had it.
Five or six other companies were selling it, too.
Galoob was ready to quit monkeying around.
But they'd need to find a way to get ahead of the pack.
The key was getting a break with a license or two.
Licenses really helped build a business.
The Smurfs, A-Team, Mr. T.
But The A-Team was only good enough for B-minus sales.
And then Saul Jodel came in from Ideal Toy as marketing director.
My role at Galoob was to build the company
and develop a core brand
that we could go to the bank on every year.
But we're not going after things like Star Wars,
because that's not in our financial realm.
That didn't leave too many options.
And Saul would have to come up with something quick.
I got a phone call from Robby
and he told me about WWF.
I was a fan since I was 12 years old.
I'd go into the TV tapings in Philadelphia
at the old Philadelphia Arena, 46th and Market.
I said, "When you look at the studio audience, it's all kids."
To these kids, these wrestlers are superheroes.
It'll work.
And I thought he was right.
In fact, I went in to David Galoob
and said, "Look, let's go after WWF."
And David said, "I don't really know Vince."
He wasn't really comfortable with that idea.
So Saul did what anybody in his situation would do.
I called Vince and I pretended I was David Galoob.
Vince said,
"Well, we're already in conversations with another company."
And that company was Remco Toys.
Incredible company, but smaller than us.
With a long history in the toy biz,
Remco was known not just for Star Trek's most beloved toy...
Oh my God. With the light on top?
No, not that one. This one.
But Remco had other ways to make toys and prosper.
Remco would definitely ride the waves of popularity.
And they did it rather well with a number of toy lines.
"Riding a wave of popularity" is one way of putting it.
They had a knockoff for virtually every popular toy.
But this time, it was Saul looking to knock Remco out of the competition
as he... I mean, "David Galoob," pitched over the phone to Vince.
I said, "If you wanna do business with us,
I'm gonna send my right-hand man.
His name's Saul Jodel. He will be there tomorrow."
So Saul Jodel sent Saul Jodel and Robby Kanoff to New York.
And the next morning...
Saul Jodel and I met Vince McMahon in our New York showroom.
But what about that Remco business?
Vince told us how much Remco had offered, and that was $10,000.
So I offered Vince...
$25,000.
What do you think of that?
He said, "That sounds pretty good,
but how do I know you're a better company?"
Well, it should be obvious, but...
I said, "Why don't you call the head of licensing from Universal?"
We had just done the A-Team.
"And ask them who would you be better doing the deal with,
Galoob or Remco?"
The deal was practically in the bag for Saul and Galoob.
We had a handshake deal with Vince McMahon.
But Saul wasn't going to chance it.
Then I called up the head of licensing at Universal.
I said, "Would you say good things about us?"
He said, "Sure. Leave it to me, I'll take care of it."
And with that, the deal was done.
Uh...
- Maybe? - What I didn't know
was that Universal was buying LJN Toys.
LJN? Another toy company?
That gentleman from Universal Studios...
called and told them that we were interested in buying WWF.
And the next time Vince McMahon's phone rang,
it was LJN president, Jack Friedman.
Jack was very intuitive.
He saw the popularity of wrestling
and knew it would be a success.
What he did was he put an offer in for...
$200,000.
Eight times what Galoob offered.
I could even buy you.
Ha. Yeah.
I would have done the same thing.
Yeah, you did do the same thing. Ask Remco.
That's true.
But Vince hadn't thrown Galoob out of the ring yet.
Vince didn't change his mind, he just got a bigger offer,
and simply said to us, "Match the offer and it's yours."
Instead of thinking less of Vince, I thought more of Vince.
And I was ready to make that deal.
But not if the real David Galoob had anything to say about it.
He was feeling uncomfortable.
He said, "We have no proof that wrestling will actually sell."
So Galoob strategically counter-offered
with the one thing that Vince McMahon would never get from LJN.
75,000 and maybe I could offer a dinner with me.
Tempting, but Vince didn't bite.
Unfortunately, it would be table for one for Saul Jodel,
and heartbreak for wrestling superfan, Robby Kanoff.
I was very disappointed because nobody could sell it like me.
There's no doubt about that,
because I had the knowledge, but happens.
And LJN made it happen.
And that's no coincidence.
I mean, they were professional toy makers. Just look at all this stuff.
E.T. toy collection from LJN.
We had some big properties. We had Knight Rider.
- Michael Jackson. - He's neat, it's Michael
- We had Indiana Jones. - The movie, Dune.
And then it was time for wrestling.
♪ Bring home all the action You'll get more satisfaction ♪
By 1984, LJN Toys was ready to bring home all the action,
by producing the wrestling superstar toy line.
But getting the figures ready for market wasn't all fun.
It was very high...
high pressure.
I remember days when I was a grown man crying over certain products.
But what could bring a grown man to tears,
working on this delightful little toy?
After all, they only had to meet a couple of key requirements.
What was important
was that the figure looked like the wrestling figure.
When you do an action figure
for manufacturing purposes, what you do is...
You sculpt them this big so that you can get nice detail.
And then they pantograph it down to size.
Half-size. You keep the detail, you get really nice detail down here.
Requirement one, check. And requirement two...
That it was bendable.
They were gonna be bendy, so there's wire inside
so that you can pose them.
Sounds like a plan. It seemed as if nothing could get LJN bent out of shape.
The way these things turned out
was we had a sculptor do it twice up.
Two upscale.
So that later, you could shrink it down, right?
Gave the salespeople the wrestlers.
This is like this really big eight-inch figure.
The salesmen take them to the buyers.
Toys "R" Us, and the like.
But what about shrinking it down to half-size?
We didn't have time.
- But they loved it. - Oh, good.
What did they like about it?
They're freaking huge. Oh no.
They're not supposed to be that big, we forgot to tell you.
So from there on, we had to figure out how to make them at eight inches.
Oh, . How are we gonna do this?
While these double-sized, bulky Hulks were great for facial details,
could they remain...
Bendable, flexible.
That went out the door,
because you can't afford to do something this big
and still put wire inside.
So what are we gonna do?
Well, the toy designers needed to bring out the big guns.
The poses then became something that...
Everybody else we were competing with, they didn't have poses.
Since wrestling toys didn't exist yet,
boys' action figures like Star Wars and G.I. Joe were the champs to beat.
G.I. Joe did not have poses
because of the articulation, they were all stiff and hard.
We had these hulking guys. Look at this guy...
that's completely new in toys. And we did it by accident.
Beyond their talent for unintentional greatness,
another muscle LJN could flex
was the star power the wrestlers could command.
And they brought that action
to the 1985 Toy Fair.
We set up an actual wrestling ring at Toy Fair.
Jake the Snake and Hulk Hogan.
They were a rough-talking, rowdy bunch.
Forget the toy buyers.
The lobby was filled with kids
who wanted to press flesh with their heroes.
With kids and stores both clamoring to press the rubbery flesh of the toys,
LJN was perfectly poised
to dominate the world of wrestling action figures.
Except...
Battle Royal playset comes with six figures,
referee and official wrestling ring.
What? What toy company made that?
- From Remco. - Can't say you weren't warned.
They had a knockoff for virtually every popular toy through the mid-'80s.
Having been outbid by Saul and Galoob,
who were then outfoxed by LJN,
the original bidder Remco went with a smaller wrestling league, the AWA,
and released All-Star Wrestlers,
which was kind of a knockoff of one of their other knockoffs.
The Remco figures, they had that little He-Man look to them.
Big upper body, tapered waist, muscles.
LJN must have been really worried
about All-Star Wrestlers riding the coattails of their WWF line.
It didn't affect us at all.
The Remco figures lacked the personality of the sculpts
and the Wrestling Association was not as popular as WWF.
Those were kind of doomed to failure.
When those LJN wrestling superstars entered the ring...
There was no holding back.
Get all the WWF Superstars.
♪ Bring home all the action ♪
From LJN.
You couldn't keep an LJN wrestling figure on the retail shelf.
A large part of the LJN toys' success was they were large.
- I wrestled with them. - Wrestling Superstars are for real.
Bounce them, throw them.
- Crash them together. - A lot of that.
They could do what they saw their superheroes do on TV.
- Big match at my house. - I'll bring my guys, you have yours.
Over the next three years, LJN left its mark on the toy world
as they delivered hit after hit with their Wrestling Superstars line.
And with the success of Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling cartoon,
they were poised to release their first fully articulated figures.
The future was bright for LJN.
But in 1987, an LJN toy line called Entertech
would squirt on Wrestling Superstars' parade,
so to speak.
♪ The look, the feel, the sound, so real ♪
Perhaps too real.
LJN's highly realistic water pistols had doused the company in hot water
with a series of real-life bank robberies,
which led to troubling profit losses for LJN.
And by 1989, LJN's parent company, MCA Universal...
Said, "Screw this," and they closed our doors.
It's over.
LJN was sold to video game company Acclaim in 1990,
and Jack Friedman started his own video game company called THQ.
And Wrestling Superstars, well, it found its final resting place
with a Canadian toy distribution company.
Grand Toys.
They picked up a lot of the stuff that we had in the pipeline.
Wrestling Superstars '89, also known as the Black Cards,
was Grand Toys offloading LJN's remaining unreleased figures.
That arrangement was only for that year and only for Canada.
The very last series, the Black Cards, which were only released in Canada...
It's really a who's who of classic wrestlers.
A who's who of wrestling, perhaps.
But if no American kids could buy the toys,
how would WWF continue its dominance on the store shelves?
They're gonna award their licensed property
to someone who they feel can bring that licensed property to life.
And they knew Hasbro,
coming off of the success of G.I. Joe and Transformers,
had that know-how.
With its high ratings and rabid fan base,
WWF was a natural draw for Hasbro.
So in 1990, they charged into the ring with their WWF action figure line.
WWF figures, so close to the real thing, it's like being in a ring.
Hasbro respected the creative work of the LJN line,
and tried to preserve as much of the details of...
- No. - Oh, really?
I say "no" because we just swept away everything that LJN had done.
Because no one wanted to do these dog toys.
- What toys? - Dog toys.
No articulation, big rubbery things.
The kind of thing you'd throw at a dog to chew on.
You know, they were okay for the time, but we knew we could do better than that.
Hasbro's vision for the WWF toy line
was the very picture of refinement.
We had a real finesse towards sculpting
and a reputation for doing highly articulated, poseable figures.
And unlike the LJN line, they would be small.
About four and a half inches tall.
We wanted to make sure we could make these figures low-priced
and also make them collectible.
Hasbro's wrestlers also had a clever feature
that encouraged children to calmly contemplate their...
WWF figures with real wrestling action.
DiBiase lands a million-dollar punch.
Demolish him!
Each of the wrestlers have a mechanism that would allow them to wrestle.
And the mechanisms were all based on their signature moves.
So Ultimate Warrior had his line-jumping move.
Push down, and he could jump up in the air.
- Hulk is all about the... - Body slam action.
Also, he can bang them in the head like that.
The Bushwhackers win!
They were really fun toys.
Hasbro saw some action at the stores as well.
At its peak, well over $100 million, which is phenomenal.
And to keep the fans screaming...
Beyond these great little action figures,
we needed broader price points to really make it work, financially.
You know, year two, year three, year four, the wrestling ring, the belt.
Micro figures. We even got into role play.
And the role parents played
involved being talked into buying more and more expensive toys.
This is our talking Hulk Hogan.
This is one of our first forays into larger-sized figure.
It has a speaker on the back, here,
where the tears in his T-shirt are, so we were able to hide them pretty well.
We did a recording session with Hulk
- to use the actual voice. - Let's hear it.
Feel the power of Hulkamania.
Oh.
He definitely sounded like Hulk Hogan when we were in production.
Feel the power of Hulkamania.
Henry, will you please see what those boys are up to?
A lower tech but surprisingly hard-hitting product line was soft.
It's a pillow. My son would go to bed with this guy,
but before he'd go to bed, he'd put him in a head lock,
he'd wrestle with him, smash him on the ground.
Wrestling Buddies were a bone-crushing success.
- They made $30 million, first year. - Only problem was...
- From Tonka! - They weren't Hasbro's toy line.
These were like $3.99 a piece.
These were $19.99 a piece.
So you've got to sell a heck of a lot of these to equal one sale of these.
Drop kick!
Which would've made Wrestling Buddies stiff competition.
Except, in 1991...
Hasbro acquired Tonka...
so Wrestling Buddies became part of our overall toy line at the time.
It appeared that with Hasbro and Vince McMahon's monopoly
over wrestling action figures and 20-dollar pillows...
That's pretty much all they were.
...no one would dare challenge the...
Power of the WWF.
Wait a second, who's that coming into the ring?
In the late '80s, a challenger to Vince McMahon emerged and...
A big change happened, and that change was money.
So let us peer into...
The deep, deep pockets of Ted Turner.
Yes, let's.
In 1988, billionaire Ted Turner launched TNT, a sister channel to TBS.
He also bought a small Southeast regional wrestling organization named...
Jim Crockett Promotions.
He renamed it World Championship Wrestling.
- Also known as... - WCW.
Ted Turner had a belief that he could beat Vince McMahon.
And why not? He's rich, right?
So these two financial titans
turned their impressive, dimpled chins toward a face-off, and...
Turner threw his hat in the ring.
WCW Power Hour began airing on TBS in 1989,
but there, among the blood, sweat and... chairs,
was an old wrestling fan desperate to get back in the action.
The WWF was doing so much business
that I felt there was room then to go for WCW.
Even if we're gonna get the leftovers, it's still gonna be significant.
But for the hungry Galoob boys,
these leftovers had a slight tang of revenge.
Did we wanna be in the wrestling business?
Sure, we did.
Did we want back at Jack?
Of course.
We had to do it.
So, after cutting a deal,
Galoob was finally in the wrestling toy business.
But from the outset, in a bit of a bind.
So we had a very short time,
from the time we made the deal till we had to ship.
As a result, we made solid PVC figures without the articulation.
- Well, Galoob were underdogs. - Dog toys.
They were PVC, initially, like the original LJN WWF figures.
Not our finest hour, but we got something into the market.
For Galoob and dogs everywhere,
revenge tasted bittersweet,
but mostly plasticy.
- But for toy fans... - Are you ready to fight?
Then step into the ring and take on Sting.
...there was actually a good appetite for Galoob toys.
We still put this up there as one of the best Stings ever made.
And Sting escapes.
Oh! He's gonna finish him off with the body slam.
The likenesses were uncanny with Lex Luger and Sid and the Steiner Brothers.
They were really nice-looking figures.
But the coolest part about these belt-bound beauties?
You could now have dream matches against your WWF figures.
But these cross-pollinated punch-ups were limited to the playground...
Toys "R" Us, the official headquarters for World Wrestling Federation merchandise.
...because it turned out
that toy retailers were quite cozy with WWF.
Here's an Ultimate Warrior slumber bag.
Who wouldn't want to cuddle up with this guy?
But this left Galoob's WCW toys out in the cold.
They were a lot more difficult to find.
I remember never seeing them in Toys "R" Us, ever.
So Galoob knew if they wanted to be invited to the slumber party,
they'd have to really impress the cool kids.
Get me out of here!
And thus, a perfect storm was brewing
to create the greatest salesman the toy world had ever seen.
Jewish Lightning.
That is where Jewish Lightning started.
Robbie loved wrestling so much,
he thought of himself as a wrestler.
Absolutely. They would call me either J.L. or just Lightning.
I was in custom-made suits, black silk shirts, sunglasses, always.
Mr. T starter kit around my neck. I mean, I helped invent bling.
He would slap his chest, he'd cut himself, he'd put makeup on.
The customers loved it.
- This is what Robby looked like. - And I was known for my headbutting.
I headbutted Rick Steiner.
And he looked around and said, "Nobody ever hit me that hard in my life."
He's got Rick Steiner hurting right now.
You'd do anything for a sale.
Well, I had a very hard head, too.
But behind the scenes at Galoob,
headbutts had turned to backstabbing.
There was a takeover. There was an overthrow with David Galoob.
The guy whose name is in the company was kicked out,
along with the WCW license.
But David Galoob wasn't the only one to go.
I had David's back, and it was known I had David's back,
so there was no way they were gonna keep me.
So David went in July, I went in September.
Saul followed in October or November.
happens.
Ted Turner's WCW was suddenly without a toy line,
and that had to sting.
But at Hasbro, things weren't really faring much better for their WWF line.
- Sales had softened. - But not in a comfy way.
WWF was going in waves of popularity,
very much driven by who their top personalities are.
And you can't always sustain these amazing characters,
like Hulk was and Andre the Giant and Macho Man and people like that.
The show and the ratings started to decline a little bit.
It just got to a point where it wasn't really viable for us to renew the license.
And for the first time in ten years,
Vince and the WWF were without a toy line, too.
But they were also without Hulk Hogan,
who had decided to hang his bandana at...
Where else but WCW?
Oh, what happened to that rule?
- You do not poach. - Well, turns out you do.
Hulk Hogan is here!
And wherever the Hulkster goes, so, too, do the toys.
But with Galoob dumping the WCW license,
guess who was there to snatch it up.
Jewish Lightning.
It may have seemed that the Galoob grapplers
were out of the game for good
after getting booted from their own company.
But no!
Free from shareholders, David, Saul and Robby formed a new company,
The Original San Francisco Toymakers.
We were good friends, we knew how to be successful together.
But unlike their Galoob wrestling toys...
- Dog toys. - ...they got these ones right.
Our wrestlers were all articulated,
all poseable, many had action features.
There was quite a buzz about these new toys.
Uh...
Our guys vibrated.
I don't think we sold too many of these guys.
- But mostly the vibes were good. - We spent lots of time with the wrestlers.
And one particular toymaker...
Jewish Lightning.
...was as happy as a pig in mud.
I'm not gonna name the wrestler that in my bed.
- Ah! - That was a big too.
This is his initiation story. They trashed his room that night.
- Who'd do something like that? - I'll give you a tip who it was.
"You gotta say your prayers, take your vitamins..."
Feel the power of Hulkamania.
Yeah.
And the worst part of it all
was that Robby felt proud that he was now in the brotherhood.
I wanted to be one of the boys since I was a kid.
That's what made me good with it.
- Meanwhile at the WWF... - I'm Vince McMahon.
Vince McMahon and his successful Monday Night Raw live show
were without a toy line and Hulk Hogan,
as Ted Turner and the WCW
had thoroughly discarded the old secret rules.
- You do not poach. - Yeah. Those ones.
Not only did he take Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage...
not only did he lure away Lex Luger,
he even stole from Vince his commentator,
the legendary manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan.
- Want more? - Nah.
- That's enough, right? - For Ted, no.
Vince McMahon was having to go up against an enemy
who was richer than he was, and it changed everything.
Maybe not everything, but it definitely changed Monday nights.
For years, Vince and the WWF had dominated.
Monday nights at 9:00.
- It was a live show. - It's bigger.
- Uncut. - And better than ever.
Uncensored. Anything can happen.
But in 1995, anything did.
WCW announces...
WCW Monday Nitro is on Turner Network Television,
every Monday night, 9:00.
- When? - Monday night, 9:00.
- But what about... - Monday nights at 9:00.
Oh boy.
Nitro was an instant success.
Raw is war.
And thus began a revival of sorts,
and the dawn of a new golden era of wrestling.
WWF versus WCW.
Billionaire versus billionaire.
Time slot versus time slot. Toy line versus...
Oh, what's going on there?
The Hasbro figures just completely vanished.
WWF hadn't had toys for over a year.
We needed wrestling figures, right?
Of course, by '96, the fresh faces of WWF's newest superstars
were desperately in need of toys.
So guess who crawled out from under a rock?
Oh, this guy.
Having left LJN and being out of the toy biz,
Jack's old pal Murray wondered if he should...
Get back in the toy business.
We did a handshake with Vince,
and that was the start of JAKKS Pacific.
Who now made...
The official WWF action figures.
- You ready to crunch somebody's bones? - Of course!
- I knew that you were. - However...
They were complete and utter garbage.
Get that piece of crap out of my ring.
The joints were all over the place. It was almost like a puppet with strings.
I wanna be a real toy.
This would be fixed. Not just...
Because Stone Cold said so.
...but because of 1990s computing power.
The history of figures...
I think what you will see if you look back
is it continues to progress towards authenticity.
Using lots of high tech gadgets,
including this state-of-the-art 3D scanner,
he can reproduce any character in all their miniature glory.
So when JAKKS Pacific released their next line of toys...
They finally looked like them,
not like a caricature of what it was supposed to be.
That was them.
The technology was cheap...
Rotor scaling was extremely cost-efficient.
- ...and accurate. - Right down to those rock-hard abs.
The moment someone perceives that they look a little bit bloated,
they're pretty much calling in.
But the insecurities didn't just end with bloated wrestlers.
With the escalating hostilities between WWF and WCW,
stealing talent back and forth,
taking potshots at each other on live television...
All I'll say about Ted is he's a son of a bitch.
WWF was, for the first time in its existence,
really scrambling, really searching for a foothold.
They needed a way to stand out.
- They needed... - Eastern Championship Wrestling.
Also known as...
- Go! - ECW!
They were the ones with the table matches.
- The chair matches. - Oh my God.
They were the ones with the barbed wire.
Just wild mayhem.
But no one was gonna be making ECW toys.
However, the Monday Night Warriors
would be making adjustments to their overall vibe.
By getting raunchy, by getting real.
By getting authentic and gritty.
- Thanks to the... - ECW!
- ...WWF now had... - The attitude era.
- And WCW had... - Keep wearing black.
A baddy Hulk Hogan.
Every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth
is totally disgusted with you, Hulk Hogan.
- Your fans can stick it, brother. - But the fans didn't stick it.
The fans ate it up.
Suck it!
A lot of kids got in trouble
for going to school and telling their teacher to "suck it."
During the late '90s, despite the war, everyone was winning,
JAKKS Pacific with WWF
and the Original San Francisco Toymakers.
Yeah.
And their WCW toys.
But for these underdogs who hit it big in 1998,
that's when the...
...really hit the bed sheets.
- That was a big too. - I got a phone call
from the new licensing agent,
"You know, Saully-Wally, you won't be having WCW next year."
I said, "Why not, Al? We've done a good job."
He said, "Will you pay five million dollars?"
I said, "You know we don't have five million dollars."
He said, "That's why you won't have the license."
The Original San Francisco Toymakers were outbid
by superhero action figure makers, Toy Biz.
We were looking to expand our horizons,
and the license for WCW came across our desk,
and we ended up putting in a bid
- and being awarded the license. - Just try to top us.
Toy Biz got to work,
and soon these were the WCW toys kids were playing with.
Sure, it hurt us.
And as for David, Robby and Saul...
I understood it. We wouldn't be able to match Toy Biz's guarantees
and royalty agreements and everything.
They're just so much larger than us.
Retreating into a toyless void, the Toymakers wondered if they'd ever...
Hang on a minute.
- Is that lightning I see? - Jewish Lightning.
Of course Robby knew that there was another,
very minor wrestling organization based out of Philadelphia.
Eastern Championship Wrestling.
Or otherwise known as...
ECW!
- Wait a second. Those guys are nuts. - Yeah.
- You wanna make toys for this stuff? - Oh, yeah.
I don't think there were many people interested.
But now that we're official wrestling groupies,
we're not gonna not have a wrestling line.
And so in '99, we had...
Wrestling figures and ring each sold separately.
Get extreme!
It was a great line.
You got chairs, you got tables, you got crutches, you name it.
- And don't forget... - Barbed-wire baseball bat
- with one figure. - They were awesome.
The first year, we sold, I think, six million figures,
which was a lot.
By the turn of the century,
wrestling toys were more well covered than barbed wire on a baseball bat.
With three wrestling leagues and three toy lines,
could it be that the war was finally over?
Everyone could just enjoy their favorite wrestling toys in peace.
- Heck, no. - No.
- Much like a wrestling match...
You always wondered who would come out on top.
Well, in 2001, we found out once and for all.
Tonight, the Monday Night Wars are over,
and the victor, Vincent K. McMahon.
It might have been Vince's nuanced negotiating skills that sealed the deal.
Because you have to grab your competition by the throat,
just like I did to WCW.
But for Ted Turner,
there was a bigger burden hanging around his neck
when AOL acquired Time Warner in 2001.
WCW was already hemorrhaging money.
They year before, in 2000,
WCW had lost 60 million dollars.
That's how much they lost.
And ironically, it was Ted's disregard for the old rules...
You do not poach.
Yup, those ones, that ultimately did him in.
With the big names they had stolen from WWF,
they were wasting a ton of money.
And AOL brass is not happy with what's been going on.
In the span of two years,
Ted's Monday Night Nitro went from the world's biggest wrestling show
to Vince McMahon for a puny...
Four million dollars.
It's bonkers.
Which must have made Vince and his fans very happy indeed.
I own WCW.
I own the WWF.
And you will treat me with respect!
Well, Vince's relationship with his fans was complicated.
- As for Toy Biz and WCW figures... - Our contract expired.
There goes Toy Biz.
You gotta understand what it means to be a competitor.
Good point. What about that other wrestling league?
- Eastern Championship Wrestling. - Yeah, that one.
ECW!
And you know what Mr. Throat Squeezer did next?
I squeezed the life out of your competition.
Exactly.
WWF was able to put ECW out of business and then buy them as well.
Every single one of you will be buried.
Oh no. You don't mean...
We gave up the license.
There goes all Original San Francisco Toymakers.
And finally the storm had cleared.
It was a decent run.
Which means for the future of wrestling toys...
Everything just funnels to Jack.
Without any throat-crushing at all,
Jack Friedman and JAKKS Pacific had done away with the competition.
Vince rebranded as WWE,
and JAKKS Pacific set about making any wrestler
from televised wrestling history,
- just because they could. - Hats off to JAKKS,
because they definitely catered to a lot of the hardcore fans
when we needed it, when nothing else was on the market,
giving us that craving that we so desperately required.
How about beloved brawler, Bruiser Brody?
Yep, and Gorilla Monsoon as a wrestler,
and later as an announcer.
Even famous comedian-turned-wrestler Andy Kaufman got a figure.
- They made everyone. - Don't tell me you're the Gobbledy Gooker?
Except for Gobbledy Gooker.
At least not yet. Hashtag, give us Gobbledy Gooker.
We had super short runs.
As a matter of fact, we had some employee editions that we did.
We did Ric Flair, one of 20.
That really drove collectors crazy when they came out.
Today, it'd probably sell for five or six thousand dollars.
It has rhinestones, it has...
It's even cut out on the back so you can see how detailed the robe is.
This is one of my prize possessions in the collection.
Now, speaking of short runs, you're not gonna believe this, but...
In the mid-2000s,
WWE ended up suing JAKKS Pacific.
What over? Surely not the Gobbledy Gooker thing.
There was an employee from WWE,
and there were people that worked... A company that worked with JAKKS...
You know what? The main thing is...
This led to a souring of the relationship.
So, just like Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels,
Vince threw JAKKS out the window
and went looking for a new toy company.
Everyone in the figure community was concerned
because JAKKS was doing such a great job with the line.
Wait. Do I see lightning?
No, no, no.
Nope. Well, perhaps it's tiaras.
- Hang on a minute. - This is a man's sport.
Not anymore, Ric Flair.
As Mattel released a delightful and popular assortment of the guys...
One of the best things about Mattel is their inclusion of female wrestlers.
It was interesting.
Fans think they don't have a say, but they actually do, a lot.
Because of the women's revolution taking place in WWE,
they are incorporating way more female wrestlers into their lines.
And they've also expanded out to be almost like a Barbie line...
of figures as well.
They have a 12-inch and a six-inch scale of figures.
Speaking of scale...
One of the biggest pet peeves of the JAKKS line
is that they were not in scale.
Mattel said everything's gonna be in scale.
If this guy is a few inches taller in real life,
his figure is gonna be a few inches taller.
It was a very smart move.
That alone gave them a ton of credibility with collectors.
Beyond that, they just stole my playbook.
Bam.
Let's be honest.
There have been a lot of playbooks,
a lot of toys and a lot of toy companies.
It is crazy how after all these years,
they went through so many different variations and companies
and they're still going strong.
Well, for more than three decades,
the pure entertainment of professional wrestling
has lit a fire in the American psyche.
It's definitely good versus evil, and there's nothing like it in the world.
Nothing compares with the athleticism,
the showmanship and the incredible feats of strength
these mighty men accomplished every Monday night, and beyond.
But it's the men who turned this Adonises into bedroom behemoths
we need to thank.
Because I...
I had gone after it for such a long time.
You know...
only in America.
Right? I was living the American dream.
It's hard not to compare the history of wrestling toys
to what happens in the ring.
You always wondered who would come out on top.
Twists, turns and reversals.
Did we want back at Jack? Of course.
- Winners... - Dog toys.
- ...and losers. - Our contract expired.
They said, "Screw this," and they closed our doors.
They've been up against the ropes.
They were just so much larger than us.
Sure it hurt us.
You're fired.
- Good guys and bad guys. - That was big too.
They've made mistakes.
They're freaking huge. "Oh no."
They brought home the belts.
They made, at its peak, well over 100 million dollars.
Which was a lot.
With millions of people all around the world
playing along, shall we say.
They were really fun toys.
Because although the wrestling is fake,
what these toys have brought to kids is very real.
Wrestling is fake?
-- Addic7ed.com --