Memory Mondays - LJN WWF Wrestling Superstars

Any one remember these?

HOLY CRAP!! I nearly s*@# myself when I saw this back in 1987.  I would sing that song in my head all day and couldn't wait to get to the store to see if there were any new figures I could get.

I was a HUGE WWF Wrestling fan in the 80's. I bought all the toys and magazines, went to the live shows when they came to town, my best friend and I would have Main Events where we would right all the wrongs that happened earlier that morning on the weekly wrestling show, we would customize their paint jobs, it was awesome. I think you loved it or hated it, and I loved it.

I'm pretty sure this is what got me into obsessive toy collecting. Yes I'm a huge Star Wars fan and that is still the main focus of my collecting, and I loved ET. Both of those came around before WWF for me, but it was these poorly sculpted, paint peeling, solid rubber figures that pushed me over the edge. I would constantly ask to go to the store or calling stores to check, I would make my parents drive me across other cities while on a vacation just to check the toys stores. And it was a given that if I found a figure I did not have I would get it, I knew, my parents knew, there was no begging or empty promises of doing chores by me, no, my parents somehow knew I was obsessed with this and just bought them all. I was pretty lucky.

Now I am living with the result of this obsessive behavior, but why stop now. Looking through Ebay and finding a vintage star wars toy for $200 then thinking to myself "hmmm, that's pretty cheap" is now a normal event in my life. If I could only buy everything I see, that might spoil it though. Am I alone? I don't think so.

Anyway, I still have all the WWF figures from my childhood, but instead of showing pics of those I'll prove to you that I was obsessed. See Below:

 

Those are pictures of the posters that came with each figure. I had those plastered all over my wall. 

 

These are the cards that came with the figures. I didn't save the bubbles because they were too big but I couldn't toss out those cards (a practice I still do today, and I think my kids are following suit). Was that normal for a 10 year old? I don't know. 

As I'm writing this post I'm watching the latest episode of WWE Wresting, I don't usually watch it anymore at all, but this post made me all nostalgic for some fake fighting, its just not the same though.

Today my WWF collection sits boxed away for the most part, but I think I might have to bring it out after I get my Star Wars sorted out.

Any one else have a WWF collection? Post it on your blog and leave a comment so we can all check it out.

ET Thursday

ET spotted hanging out with his celebrity friends. He must be gearing up for the 30th anniversary tour.

Puppets you say...

Well, Jeremy's Dark Crystal post, one of my absolute favorite childhood moves, reminded me of a little friend I have hanging on the wall of my work room.

Do you all remember Spitting Image? It was a British tv show from the 80's. I loved the look of these extreme caricatures when I was a kid, still do. I found out that the tv show ran into the mid 90's! wow, so I guess it wasn't just an 80's thing.
Here's a picture of an album produced back in the day.

Well, one my parents took me shopping at Toy City (in my part of Canada we didn't have Toys R Us yet, we had Toy City which was pretty much the same thing, it dissapeared and Toys R Us came into town). While walking down one of the many isles I spotted this:
Wow, I was blown away. A Spitting Image foam head puppet of Ronald Regan. I think they also had the queen, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, maybe... I can't really remember, and I can't find any info about them on the interwebs. I do remember it came in a cool box, but that's it, nor do I remember how much it was, maybe $10 or something which at the time was kinda expensive. The picture above shows Ronnie hanging on my taxidermy wall along with my miniature bull head, but that's another post.

These are totally cool, made of soft squishy foam rubber, you stick your fingers in the back and start the show, see look:

Much to my delight after have though I lost this in a garage sale purge many years ago, it appeared in a box full of wwf wrestlers (again, we'll save that for another post). To my surprise it was still soft and squishy as the day I bought it.


As far as puppets go, that's about all I have except for the rubber Yoda on my shelf.
If anybody else has one of these or knows more about them I would love to hear about it.

ET Thursday

"I don't know where your spaceship went, I was just counting my parsecs and when I looked over it was gone!"


ET is never going to let Chewie spaceship-sit again.

This cool little figure is from the same sculpt as the wind up ET but no wind up peg. Almost perfect for Star Wars or other figs to interact with.


It says its from Spain, maybe a bootleg but pretty cool, one of my favorite ETs

E.T. Thursday

Unfortunately, ET stole a car and was last seen speeding away, showboating for the cameras.
Hopefully next week ET will be OK.

So...

Was this an April Fools thing?

My childhood is hurting...

Memory Modays

Hey, I remembered another memory today.

Remember these guys?


I recently rescued these guys from a basket at my parents house. My kids and nephews where throwing them around. When I saw this I was thrilled and horrified. Thrilled because I thought I had long lost these guys at a garage sale or something. I was horrified when it occurred to me that the kids were throwing these mint vintage toys around, ahh -geek faint-.
Anyway, I quickly rounded them up after the kids were distracted with something else.
Now the toys reside on my shelf, giving the dust a new home, so I may look at them everyday.


As a little bonus, this past valentines day, my daughter received this from her best friend. (see below)


This was really awesome to see because I thought they had re-issued mad ball merchandise. Upon closer inspection I looked at the date on the card and it was from 1987! Wow, where did this kid get these valentines? I gathered the guys around to discuss what to do with the card. Now the card sits with the Mad Balls on the shelf. -new memories-

Let me know if you guys remember these too.

Anyone remember their individual names without looking them up?

E.T. Thursday

Its that time again, every Thursday I will try to find something new about E.T. to post.

This week I've chosen the E.T. storybook. Not the one narrated by Drew Barrymore, no no. This one is narrated by the king of pop, Michael Jackson. Wow, this is incredible.
Apparently Michael Jackson was infatuated by the movie making process, and would reportedly show up on the movie set of many films. I guess he wanted to be a part of the E.T. craze and made Spielberg let him do this. Anyway lets take a look.

Open it up and there is a record with a nice follow along book and a poster. Where the poster? keep looking.


Here it is in all its framed glory, hanging in my hallway, ready to scare my kids and make my guests feel uncomfortable, he he.


That's it for this week, let me know what you think of it.

Also, congratulations to last weeks E.T. give away contest. Below is a list of the winners:

Reis

I guess we know how many people look at the blog now. They don't know what they're missing.

eBay Oddities

Every Wednesday is "eBay Oddities" here on Unpunched.

Amidst our random searches on eBay we often stumble upon weird and wonderful treasures.

This week I present to you: Vampire Bat in Coffin Taxidermy

Holy Smoke?! Wouldn't you love to have that hanging on your wall? Would you pay $70 for this? I might.

Ready for action! You can remove your vampire bat out of his coffin to take on an adventure with you!

Back to sleep you go, until tomorrow night.

No bats were harmed in the making of this post.. except maybe for the one in the coffin.

E.T. Thursday

Hey, here is this week's look at the world of E.T.

An E.T. key-chain.


Looks how it unfolds...wow.

And its double sided


I know its not that great, but I had one of these when I was a kid and lost it just a few years ago.
I decided to find a replacement and ebay was the answer again. This was only a couple bucks with shipping so I nabbed it right away, simply for the nostalgia of it.

The great thing is, they didn't just send me one, they sent me 4 of these suckers!
Ya I know, no big deal, but I thought it was cool.

So now I have 3 extra E.T. key-chains, hmm what should I do with them?
I know, how about a little contest, the first 3 people to email me and say they want one will win a free key-chain. Oh my gosh, how can you not be excited? Oh ya, and you have to be an E.T. fan to get one.
Here's my email malcolmsjunk@gmail.com
And don't forget to leave a comment on this blog post.

So there you go, lets see if more than 3 people actually read this blog.

E.T. Thursday

Well this week we have a treat for you E.T. lovers.
I found this terrific E.T. mug on Ebay and had to get it. At only $5, or whatever it was, how could I go wrong?
You know that one of the great things about collecting E.T., there are so many different and strange things out there and they are still relatively cheap, some just as expensive as they were on the shelves in 1982, holy crap that's 30 years ago. So I guess E.T. Thursdays are my way of celebrating the movie's 30th anniversary.
Any way back to the mug, check out these nice pics I took.


Look at the ceramic wonder in front of you, no, not the toilet, the mug.


Wonderful weird detailing on the back.


And I guess this belonged to Dan...


and was made by MH in 82.

So my guess is that this is a bootleg creation, fairly nice sculpt for a bootleg though. I love E.T. bootlegs, I love all bootlegs though. The strange off model characters, or crazy things like a face on a mug, these things might not have made it past the licensees, so fans make them or a company trying to make a quick buck make them, I don't care. I love looking at them
I have a couple more bootlegs coming up but I'll keep them secret till then.
That's it for this week.

E.T. Thursday

I'm a bit late for this post, but its here finally, just what you've been waiting for, its
E.T. Thursday!!

OK, this week's offerings come from Avon, the make up company? Yes, the very same, they made all sorts of beauty products and decided to cash in on the kids market. The result of their research lead them to create this wonderful E.T. Shampoo bottle.


Not much to play with as a kid. the head comes off and the shampoo pours out the top, yay!
Well, as a kid that loved E.T. I know I would have bought this no matter how lame it was to play with, and I did.

With that said its a pretty cool display piece, and now that I am an adult I have a house that I can stick this crap in. awesome...

Amongst the garage sales and moves I lost this item, so I picked up this one on ebay super cheap.

Hopefully this will quell your E.T. cravings until next week, until then BEEEE GOOOOD!
uhg, sorry about that...

Memory Mondays

Remember this show?

My friend and fellow Unpunched blogger Jeremy and I watched one of the episodes the other day entitled "The Soldier and Death"

This reminded me of a time when programs like this one, Amazing Stories, Eerie Indiana, and Tales From The Darkside graced the airwaves. I really like these kind of shows. Loved the puppetry in this series, I was always trying to make a creature or puppet (unsuccessfully I might add) when I was a kid. The unrelated story-lines every week were a way to keep it fresh and new each episode, and I hope a new show similar to these ones will find its way to my TV one day.

Well, back to remembering...

RIP Ralph McQuarrie

I just found out the news from a fellow blogger's blog that Ralph McQuarrie past away over the weekend.
I really believe there were two major components that made the original Star Wars trilogy amazing.
One was the music.
The other was Ralph McQuarrie's designs.
So many iconic designs throughout the original trilogy, I know as a kid that fueled my imagination and creativity. It was noticeably missing from the prequels.
It is sad to hear that he is gone.

E.T. Thursday

Each Thursday we will showcase a cool-ectible from the insanely popular movie (if you were alive in 1982 you'd relate) E.T. The Extra Terrestrial.

WHY?

Well because I liked that movie and so back off.

What I find amazing about E.T. Collectibles is that the movie really only had 1 character to base all of its merchandising on. To see the range of great and strange products amazes me, which is part of the reason why this collection keeps growing, that and the nostalgia thing.

So without delay here is the first item, probably the strangest (and perverted?) E.T. item I personally have, I give you:

THE E.T. FINGER LIGHT

What do you guys think of that?