WWE Superstars Invade Eternia Becoming Masters of the Universe Figures
I am a kid of the 80’s. I was there, not realizing it but, living in the moment. Giant robots – Voltron, Transformers, and Go-Bots – and fantasy epics – He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Dungeons and Dragons, ThunderCats, Visionaries, Crystar – If it had a toy, I probably was into the half hour commercials for it that aired regularly. I was also a wrestling fan and collected those figures too (I miss my Stretch Armstrong style Hulk Hogan and Macho Man figures). Now two of those favorite things from my past have come together in a spectacular manner.
It was the 80’s
You would think that a cartoon about men wearing furry loin cloths and armor that look about on par for female role-playing game characters would be looked at weirdly. It probably was, I don’t know, I was young and didn’t care what adults and teens were thinking about my toys.
That was the basics of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a toy line that initially started fitted squarely in the Conan the Barbarian world. Some licensing problems or something happened, and the lead character was made blonde and He-Man was born.
He-Man eventually took on other worldly levels of popularity before an ill-fated live action movie was created and well, chinks in the armor were very much visible. The toy line had run its last lap and started to fall out of favor with fans (or we just outgrew toys, I am not sure which happened honestly).
In recent years we got more He-Man content, a third cartoon that was quite good but failed to move toys so it was cancelled (we will not be talking about the 2nd He-Man cartoon “He-Man in space”).
Wrestling was basically live action He-Man to me – even with a similar look. Larger than life characters duking it out in the ring, good vs evil.
Combining He-Man and WWE is a “duh” moment
I am not sure why it took so long to combine the two. He-Man is all about over muscular men fighting each other in outlandish worlds. WWF, back then anyhow, was all about overly muscular men (there was even a federal trial about it) fighting each other. The background story for most of these wrestlers were just as outlandish as the adventures that we saw play out on TV with He-Man. Undertaker was from “parts unknown” and Hulk Hogan was always portrayed as a ray of hope and trust in a dark world.
Why it took till 2019 for this combination to happen is beyond me.
It is here now, and it is up to us as fans to support this so that we might see more like it. Right now, there is Wave 1 available which includes these WWE Superstars:
Finn Balor
HHH
John Cena
Sting
Tiger Claws HHH
Ultimate Warrior
Wrestling ring separate, no figures
Two of these figures, John Cena and “Tiger Claws” HHH are only available in specially marked combo packages with the Grayskull themed wrestling ring.
Future waves will feature Man-E-Faces with the New Day, Macho Man-At-Arms, and more. If they do not use Undertaker for Skeletor then they have clearly missed an opportunity.
What you get is golden nostalgia
Each figure is packaged like how they were in the 1980’s. In the package is the figure, a weapon and any armor they wear, and a mini comic book. Just like they were in the 80’s. Seriously, they are going all out with these and the 8-year-old inside me is going nuts for it.
Where to get them
You can check Walmart for these figures but it seems to be eternally sold out. Locally at least one Walmart (out of 12 or so within 30 minutes of me) have the bundle package (Cena, special HHH, and ring) for $30 but no individual figures. That leaves eBay for these and well, eBay pricing comes along for the ride.
Which figure is your favorite? Who do you want to see brought into the “WWEternia” world?