WRESTLING ACTION FIGURES OF THE EARLY 1990S / AUTHOR: KEVIN WILLIAMS / PUBLISHER: AMBERLEY / RELEASE DATE: 15TH OCTOBER
There’s a great book waiting to be written about the WWF (as was) action figure line of the early 1990s but, unfortunately, Wrestling Action Figures of the Early 1990s isn’t it.
Williams’ book makes for a decent catalogue, and it’s illustrated throughout with colour photographs of the action figures – some mint in box, some standing loose – and he goes to great pains to include all the figures in the line, including rare mail-away items.
What’s missing is any sense of concept. The book opens with a short introduction that fails to set the scene for how monstrously ubiquitous the World Wrestling Federation was at the time the figures were released. Nor does it give any perspective on Hasbro as a company, and there is very, very little on the design and production of the figure line.
What Williams does include is some good personal insight, although even that leaves you wanting to know more about which figures he collected, what he did with them, and whether they sat alongside the WCW Galoob toys or the earlier WWF LJN models on his bedroom shelves. What’s here makes for an admirable, weighty ‘zine.
Wrestling Action Figures of the Early 1990s is a decent enough reminder of a magical time in both wrestling and action figures, but the lack of any context, or much beyond the physical figures themselves, leaves us still waiting for that indispensable Hasbro WWF encyclopedia.
