The big rubber wrestlers

For years of childhood,my brother,myself and my good friend Greg had "wrestling matches" involving figures of wrestlers that were not truly so.
Figures from various makes as Evel Knievel,Dukes of Hazzard,Welcome Back Kotter and the MEGO superheroes to name a few were transformed into the wrestlers of the day in makeshift rings for one reason-Wrestling was not mainstream enough to make toys of the grappling stars.

That ended in late 1983 with the announcement that Vince McMahon's WWF would be releasing figures in the following spring.
The first two waves were most of what we had and some of series 3.
Between ours and Greg's we could cover almost all of the figures released in those first three series.
The LJN figures varied in look from pretty close to exact (Tito Santana and King Kong Bundy) to not really close (Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff) and didn't really do much.
Really didn't do much is being super generous on my part because they actually did nothing.

The eight inch figures were made of hard rubber and were painted with a type of paint that tended to flake off after the mildest of "action".
I have even seen figures that have lost paint standing on shelves that shows how vulnerable that the figures were to flaking.
Most of the figures after being played with didn't look very nice and as a result the line doesn't have the resale value of opened figures of other lines from the same age.

Their ability to do things were limited to basically your imagination because they did nothing being a molded one piece figure that had zero movement and was more or less you picking them up and slamming them.
Most either were in a one or two arms muscle flex pose or a open stance that appeared to be in an amateur attack mode,which is the last thing one would expect from Big John Studd.
King Kong Bundy in particular was an interesting figure as it had zero "soft" points (The other figures had softer arms and legs where they flexed/posed).
The Bundy figure was like handling a brick and if that figure got thrown at you or anything else,it could do damage.
I understand why Bundy was made in this manner due to his characters size,but if Bundy was made like this-why not the even larger Andre the Giant in a similar weight/style?

The line was immediately popular because of the novelty,but after a few years the limitations of the product led to lower sales and lower production levels to the point that series four and five ( I only have Ted DiBiase,Honky Tonk Man and Adrian Adonis) were harder to find leading a self-fulfilling end to the figures.
LJN went out of business and Hasbro scooped the WWF contract up,reduced the size,added a "move" usually a punch or leaping move and changed the material to a hard plastic.
That move would revitalize the WWF brand in the toy market and it's still going strong to this day.

For all the limitations,it was always fun messing around with them and their previous "stand ins".
Maybe it was more the company and the time spent than the actual games being played that made the memories of an era now gone by.
Good memories.

Thanks to Mace Michaels for jogging my mind and making me think of this as a good topic for the day.

Photo Credit;Unknown