The WWE Action Figure Mania

WWE action figures are very popular among wrestling fanatics and the wrestlers are no less than celebrities. Thus their action figurines are considered as collector’s items and they are also pretty costly. And these prices tend to increase with the demand and popularity of the wrestlers. At the moment the wrestlers holding the top five places on the action figure ranking are Jeff Hardy, Ray Mysterio, Kane, John Cena and last but not the least Undertaker. These legends of the world of wrestling have found their way above the super heroes of today, yes according to a survey in 2011 WWE action figures ranked on number one ahead of a lot of kid’s all time favorite fiction superheroes like Gi Joe, Batman, Spider Man, Ben Ten etc. The reason can of course be the diversity of market focusing on WWE as it is equally popular in adults and kids. Whereas, the fictional characters are just popular in kids.

These action figures have gone through a lot of alterations and modifications since its first release in 1984, by LJN and then the contract passed through Hasbro and Jakks Pacific finally landing with the famous Mattel who is also the current producer of WWE Action Figures. The first action figure ever produced was a single piece made of sole rubber and it did not accommodate any joints or point of articulations although it was a very accurate model of the real wrestler it was portraying. Then with time improvements were made and different features and accessories were added to these action figures, more specifically these include limb gestures, cloth lines, medals as well as theme songs specific to the wrestler through a microchip embedded inside the action figure. The point of articulations of the WWE action figures to date increased from none to around 28, thus making it handier and now these figures are even used to make animated shows of wrestling. A lot of different kind of merchandise is featured on WWE which includes music, comic books and video games but action figures are the most popular of them all and WWE invests a large sum of its royalty in these action figures.

WWE action figures have become collectibles because they were launched at the point when the trend of action figures becoming articles of collection was quite high.  Nowadays the rare action figures are worth close to thousands of dollars among the WWE wrestling buffs.