Looking Back At The Legends Series....Yes, AGAIN

Hello again, welcome back, thanks for reading and thanks to those who have shared my blogs on social media, it's really appreciated.

Before I get onto this week's topic lets cover some stuff I have been writing about recently. So, many of us backed the Mattel Creations New Generation Ring/Entrance with figures. Again, many of us have received our, rings but I have a follower on twitter who's "got lost" - he should be getting a refund this week but on the plus side, as the Macho Man was being shipped separately he has still took delivery of that (before me too) so as I said, that is a plus. One thing I know is for sure, it has soured him for any future crowdfunding projects from Mattel Creations. He has secured a Diesel but if anyone reading can help a brother out, he is looking for a Doink UE figure, so get in touch with me and I'll let him know.

Think you'll back another project with MC or will that depend on what it is?

So, this week I wanted to revisit the Legends series. When I first started this blog I focused on the Legends quite a bit, it is my favourite line and the original line had some absolute bangers. I do have a favourite and I'll be mentioning that later so, what I think I'll do is a list, a list of my favourite figure from each series. I'll do a part 2 for the second incarnation of the Legends figures from Mattel and all the woes that came with them.

This will be tough because many series have multiple great figures but I can only pick one from each series, here we go.

WOW, series 1 featured The Road Warriors, Dusty Rhodes, Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat, Sgt. Slaughter (AWA style) and 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin. Really hard to choose just one, I could choose one of the Road Warriors but which do you choose? So, I think I'll go with Dusty as I have to pick just one.

 

 

For series 2 we had 'Superfly' Jimmy Sunka, Terry Funk, 'Ravishing' Rick Rude, Kamala, The Iron Sheik and Jake 'The Snake' Roberts. For this series, I think I have to go with Roberts with that iconic look from 1992.

Series 3 had some strong contenders, we had Brian Pillman from his 1997 run in the WWF, Big Van Vader based on his 92 run in WCW, The Rock, Mr. Perfect (this was the first WWE Mattel figure that came with a title belt, in this case, the classic IC title that Perfect won in 1990 on two occasions), the British Bulldog, again, like with Pillman, based on his look in 1997 when they were both rolling with The Hart Foundation (along with Bret & Owen Hart and Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart) and the final one in this set was 'Hacksaw' Jim Duggan complete with 2x4. It has to be Mr. Perfect who gets my pic in this, great figure and the IC belt just tops it off.

The 4^th series saw 'Mr Wonderful' Paul Orndorff, Hillbilly Jim, The Ultimate Warrior with IC belt based on the time he first won it at Summer Slam 88, Demolition Ax, Demolition Smash and George 'The Animal' Steele. So, like with the first series, we have a classic tag team, both in the series and earlier I picked a figure not part of the team, I don't think I will do that this time and I am going with Demolition Ax.

Series 5 I think is the best overall series but doesn't feature my favourite Legends figure, that's to come. So, we got the 'Macho Man' Randy Savage, 'The Model' Rick Martel (really good figure and really sought after), Akeem the 'African Dream' and Bam Bam Bigelow based on his iconic look of Wrestle Mania XI.

 

 

Series 6 was the last series until they brought them back  a few years ago, this set saw The Ultimate Warrior based on his look from Wrestle Mania VI, he came with a Winged Eagle title belt however it was a tad inaccurate as it had a yellow strap whereas that belt should've had a black strap as the Warrior that day ended up with 2 belts, the world title of course and the belt he brought to the ring, an IC title with...yes, a yellow strap (we would eventually get the yellow strapped IC title many years later with the Royal Rumble 90 Warrior and when they released this figure in the Ultimate Edition line, we got both belts). We also got Eddie Guerrero who came with the Undisputed WWE title belt and we got 3 Von Erich figures, we got Kevin Von Erich, 'Modern Day Warrior' Kerry Von Erich and the 'Texas Tornado' Kerry Von Erich and it's this Texas Tornado figure that is not only my favourite Legends figure but favourite Mattel figure full stop, oh I'd love an Ultimate Edition of it.

In the mix, we also had some tag team sets, I think they were exclusive to Toys R Us, we had The Bushwhackers, Roddy Piper & Bob Orton and The Iron Sheik & Nikolai Volkoff. It always puzzled me (bearing in mind I wasn't collecting Mattel figures at this time) why they didn't release a team that had the tag titles, of course they could've released them with Demolition in series 2 and in fact, Sheik & Volkoff were WWF tag team champions and one point. These didn't sell too well and were soon put on clearance. The next set would've featured the Rockers and The Von Erichs (of course, as mentioned above, we got the Von Erichs in the end).

 

We also had the Matty Collector set,  they were ones voted by fans and were sold by mattycollectordotcom and they were, Andre The Giant with WWF title, Diamond Dallas Page (later re-released in the regular Elite line with a change of hair colour and waistband), King Kong Bundy, Tully Blanchard with WWF tag team title, Arn Anderson with WWF tag team title and a tag team set of The Rockers that we didn't get previously. These were harder to get hold of but was able to complete the set. I think the Bundy one is my favourite from this set.

Lastly, we also got a Ringside Exclusive Macho King Randy Savage in the Legends packaging.

 

 

I will cover the more recent Legends from Series 7 onwards in another blog in the future.

That's it guys, thanks for reading, please share where you think apt. 

You can find my links HERE