The Complete History of OSFTM WCW Figures

[Hasbromaniac]

(Please feel free to sticky this, if enough interest warrants it. More parts to follow.)



The Original San Francisco Toy Makers released a series of 9 standard figures in 1994. These solid rubber figures were a herald back to the WWF LJN figures from the 80's.

The first wave consisted of 7 of the 9; Jimmy Hart and Kevin Sullivan were not in the 1st cases but soon followed.

I collected the line right from the start and bought most of my collection straight from the cases of a toy dealer who sold at flea markets in NJ. I bought 2 of each figure, as to open one of each down the road. Unfortunately that never happened. The 1st seven individual figures were: Hulk Hogan, Sting, Ric Flair, Vader, Johnny B. Badd, Brian Knobs and Jerry Sags.



Ric Flair originally was released with blue trunks, blue knee pads and black boots:







Flair's ring attire was quickly changed to dark purple trunks and kneepads and light purple boots:







I never found the "blue" Flair variant at retail. The dealer I bought it from, said he found it at a K-Mart. This seems to be true , as through the years, other collectors who found this scarce figure, have said the same thing.



The Nasty Boys' Brian Knobs and Jerry Sags came without their names tattooed on their arms in the 1st wave. As the 2nd wave with Jimmy Hart and Kevin Sullivan shipped, the tattooed variants accompanied them. These cardbacks also had a slight printing change.


1st up is the 1st style cardback:






The revised cardback had the part in yellow changed:







I chose the Jimmy cardback as a segueway to his race confusion. There was a limited number of "black skinned' Jimmy Harts released. I guess from the pic on the front of the card, he didn't look "white"; must have been his tan. LOL!

I'm not sure that these were sold in the USA but if so, only in a select region. I was told that approx. a 100 had shipped out; take that with a grain of salt though:







A final note, Sting was released with blue tights and yellow boots on the single card. The tag team version with green tights and black boots was released on the single card as well; I believe that this was an error on TOSFTM part though. I will have a scan in my final post on TOSFTM error pieces.



***Collectors, please feel free to add anything of interest that I may have missed or something that I may not be aware of. Thanks for reading !!!***

[Deleted]

awesome man i love these sorts of posts

[wrestlelord]

My uncle used to work for the warehouse back in the mid 90's and has tons of leftovers and molds of Johnny B. Badd, Nasty Boys, and a few others. I haven't seen him in quite sometime but I will try to contact him soon and see if I can attain his collection of stuff while he worked there. I remember going to the factory and seeing where he worked and he let me check out the development office and packaging factory (I was really hoping to see the figure development process!). I vaguely remember talking to a man named Dave Galoob who worked there (as you can guess he was the founder/co-founder of Galoob toys). I was telling him about my collection and he asked me if I was satisfied with their new brand of toys (by that time I believe the playset was out with Vader/Sting). Since that day I've never heard anything about them. If/When I get those pieces I will contact you Hasbromaniac...I sold my OSFTM collection a while back and would like this to be part of someone elses praised collection.

[Mastermind]

awesome post..i never heard about the first release of flair with different attire...cool..thanks for posting this..

[Jordan]

I didn't know anything about these at all. Very good idea to do another Series thread. Very informative and intresting. Could of done with more pictures of the other figures in the series though. Good read, looking forward to series 2.

Infact i'm going to research these a little, thats how cool your post was.

[Mastermind]

i was also wondering if anyone knows about the stretch wrestlers that are written about on the cardbacks...did those ever see the light of day?

[Tim Sorenson]

nickrs2005 said:

i was also wondering if anyone knows about the stretch wrestlers that are written about on the cardbacks...did those ever see the light of day?

Those we're never released, to the best of my knowledge. Glad to see you're doing "History" posts again.

[Deleted]

how about those wrestling pals? i dont think i ever saw them

[ppl591]

awesome post, thanks and please keep up the history posts

[ppl591]

awesome post, thanks and please keep up the history posts

[sgte]

thanks man i'm just now going back and getting these figures - thanks for the info

[Lita's Lover]

Aww man I love these posts! Thanks for doing another different series man

[thegamehhh]

it was actually lewis galoob who founded Galoob I'm sure of it

[hbkjason]

Cool column glad to see your back doing them look forward to the next one. I always thought these figures looked cool but as I was not a WCW fan I always passed on them. for a display POV they look like they would be good do they stand ok or would they just fall down all the tiime.

[Chicago]

I still have all of them loose, minus the Hogan/Sting 2-pack, never bought that.

Wish I still had that ring, although I always thought the ring would break with how massive these figures were; especially Vader's fat ass.

[Scotty Flamingo]

I never understood why they switched from making these after 3 sets to the vibrating ones with only 1 series and then to the other ones with the button moves for 3 sets. They should have stayed with these and we could of had more guys instead of three different types of sting, hogan, and savage

["The King" Tony Stewart™]

I must have that blue Flair original variant. I have never seen that.

[thegamehhh]

hbkjason said:

Cool column glad to see your back doing them look forward to the next one. I always thought these figures looked cool but as I was not a WCW fan I always passed on them. for a display POV they look like they would be good do they stand ok or would they just fall down all the tiime.

Plus most places had them mail order only

[STOMWIJF]

hasbromaniac2 said:

The Second Series of TOSFTM consisted of eight figures. This line up unfortunately had part of the assortment from the 1st Series with the same paint schemes. These 2 figures were of Hulk Hogan and Vader.

The newer releases were of Johnny B. Badd in silver & black, Kevin Sullivan in navy trunks, Sting in red tights, Flair in green trunks, Jimmy Hart in red and Randy Savage. Below is an example of a Series 2 card front:








Here is a typical cardback. Notice no mention of the Macho Man ?:







The only other point of interest from the 2nd Series is that the 1st release Jimmy Hart was available in limited quantities on the 2nd Series cardback. I believe this to be a production error, so a pic will be included in the error topic; which will wrap up the run.


This was kind of short, so I will have Series 3 later in the week. As always, please add any notes/comments to this topic. I am always interested in learning new things about these collectibles.

Thanks for looking!

[STOMWIJF]

hasbromaniac2 said:

The 3rd series of TOSFTM figures consisted of 10 figures. The Macho Man (darker colors), Ric Flair (red trunks), Booker T and Stevie Ray (both in black and red) were the only 4 repaints from this assortment.

The other figures were new scuplts and are as follows: Hulk Hogan (workout gear), Sting (pre-ring attire, similar to the Galoob release), Big Bubba Rogers, Sgt. Craig Pittman, Alex Wright and The Giant.



Below is Flair on the light blue card:








Here is an example of a typical cardback from this assortment:










*** Both Booker T and Stevie Ray were released in Canada in their Series 2 Tag Team set "RED" attire. Can anyone confirm that this was a planned release and not an error ? I will include pics in the error topic that wraps up my run. ***





As mentioned in my earlier post, sorry that I'm not posting pics of anything that is common in the TOSFTM line. I want to finish up the TOSFTM posts so I can finally do a much requested History beginning in early August:

THE HISTORY OF WCW GALOOBS !!!






Two more posts to go here first. Next up is all 3 of the tag team series. The error post will be saving the best for last, as there will be a good deal of scans.