I gotta confess, it's not my most favorite holiday. I don't get all "super into it" like some people do. BUT, it's still a fun time of year, and one of the coolest things about it is that there's so many ways to celebrate it. Some people get dressed up, some people decorate, some people marathon horror movies, whatever the scene is. That's all pretty rad.
But what *I* chose to do, is slap together some brand new episodes of "From The Vault"! In the spirit of the season, we've got a double-dose of Freddy Krueger this time, as I review both the NECA "Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" Freddy Figure as well as the Funko "Savage World" Freddy!
1, 2, Freddy's coming for YOU! And probably me, if we don't get these page views up. Go check 'em out!
Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - I like to customize or fix up old, beat-up action figures. Sometimes, I just fix up some scuffs to make the figure look like new, but once in a while, I'll buy an old "beater" just to do something cool with. I'm not great at it, as I only started a couple of years ago, but it's a great hobby, lots of fun and very relaxing. I highly recommend it.
A great way to get good at painting figures is to start with something not very complicated, something with a lot of wide open space and solid colors, and not much (if any) articulation. That way you don't have to worry about joint rub or stuff like that and can just focus on brushwork.
One of the best action figure lines to work on, consequently, is the old LJN WWF Superstars line.
If you're a wrestling fan of a certain age, you either remember or had at least some of these. They're rare and expensive in any kind of decent shape Now, but in the mid- to late-1980s these things were everywhere, and you could still find tons of them in decent condition in flea market bins all over the world. Sadly, as a kid I had no interest in toys that didn't move, so I skipped them and am now paying a heavy price on the secondary market, as they are no longer easy to come by... at least, not unless you don't mind buying them in a condition that is less "Near Mint" and more "Nearly Mangled In A Truck Accident."
Since I don't plan to ever sell my toys, I'm perfectly fine buying beat-up LJNs because it gives me a chance to both practice my painting skills and restore these big rubber statues to their former glory. I know this is blasphemy to some people who insist that only a "pure" LJN WWF figure is worth having, but I don't shit gold bricks. If I can get Honky Tonk Man for $50 instead of $500 and all I have to do is put some Flesh Tone on his face and hands, I'm perfectly fine with that.
As of now, I have a little more than half of the line, and I've gotten most of them fixed up to look as-good or better than new. We'll look at some of them here in time; some of them actually need a drop of touch-up here or there since I last looked at them. But overall, it's easy to restore an LJN to "factory fresh" condition because they're extremely easy to paint, so they're good practice if you're learning or just want to work on something very simple and stress-free.
One of the easiest figures in the line to find is the Series 1 Hulk Hogan. As he was WWF World Champion for almost the entire duration of the line, they produced millions and millions of this figure. To this day, go into any flea market wrestling store on the planet and they'll have dozens of Series 1 Hulk Hogans in various degrees of rough shape.
This one isn't mine, but it's a good general idea of what you'll find for about five bucks anywhere you go:
Since I already had one of these restored to "mint" condition and as close to the original factory colors as possible, a while back I decided to get another one just to try and do something fun with. It's cool that the default Hogan was released in his most iconic yellow and red attire, and a later figure was released in his white attire, but one of his more noteworthy looks from that era was never immortalized in LJN form, and that would be his blue and white attire:
Several companies would go on to release figures of Hogan in this attire, including Jakks, Mattel, and even Storm Collectibles. But oddly enough, LJN never bothered, even though it was a look Hogan wore often in that period before switching to the red and yellow look "permanently" in 1986.
So I went out on one of my weekend excursions to Englishtown Flea Market and hit up my favorite shop, Funkenstein Wrestling Superstore, and along with my other purchases I bought the shittiest Hogan figure they had that still had all his parts intact. A tiny bit of the hair on the left side of his head was shorn off somehow, but it's barely noticeable. I paid like three bucks, if anything; it was covered in black grime and had almost no paint left. I didn't take any Before pictures because it was too hideous. It took a long, hot soak in a bubble bath, a full scrub with rubbing alcohol and nail polish remover, but I managed to get it sparkling clean, eventually.
A couple hours and a few coats of paint later, and this is what I ended up with:
I was really happy with how this came out. As you can see by looking at the above photograph, I was able to match the colors nearly perfectly to what he actually wore back then. I also added some extra detail; rather than just paint a solid flat yellow blob on his head, I painted the hair and mustache in gold and then dry-brushed it with yellow for some highlights. This added more texture to the hair and comes closer to the way he actually looked in his younger days when he was "regular blonde", not "bleached-white" blonde.
The headband is one of the things I'm most proud of, as like everything else it was 100% by hand. Getting the "Hulkster" on there in such tiny script was not easy, but also not as difficult as I was expecting. It pretty much went on in one shot with no need for touch-ups; I was so scared to make a mistake I ended up being super careful with it and as a result it came out perfect on the first try.
I actually haven't seen a ton of people do this specific Hogan attire for the LJN figure; I've seen a lot of him as Rip from the movie No Holds Barred, and people do a great job with that, but it's not quite the same outfit after all. And I've seen a few of him in this attire, but modesty aside I think mine is better than most or all of those; a lot of those folks either skipped the headband deco, or didn't bother painting his boot laces white. I went for full 100% accuracy and am very thrilled with the result.
All I need now is a white, cloth-goods "American Made" shirt and a custom silver WWF Title belt in '85 style and he'll be 100%!
Here's a video I did for my YouTube channel that looks at the Before, During, and After of this project:
While you're there, check out some of my other action figure content, be it Hogan-related or otherwise. And let me know what you thought of this one! One of these days I'll look at some of my other LJN restorations; I just wanted to show this one off first since it's part-restoration and part-custom.
We're going WAY back for this one - my original Highlight Reel music video from 2012! The music is my original "permanent" theme, Fozzy's "God Pounds His Nails" which I used for the first few years of my career. All footage and editing by Kathryn Payne Productions. This is a collection of clips from some of my earliest matches, from 2010 - 2012. Getting this video out there was a big deal in getting some much-needed exposure, and it has led to many opportunities since. It pays to be seen, as they say! Enjoy this relic, straight from the vault!
Hard to believe it's been over 10 years since we put this together!
Welcome BACK to the RoxxShow! I mentioned recently how I'm often fortunate enough to be a guest on the various VideoGameMasters podcasts such as The Diving Cutter Podcast or The Fighting Podcast, where we talk about various things related to wrestling, games, and pop culture in general. Most recently, we did a HUGE deep dive into most of the more prominent vintage cartoons from the 1980s (and early-1990s) which were based on popular video games of the era.
Less of a "review" of these shows, and more a fond remembrance where we reminisce about a bygone era, where the video game landscape was wide open and adaptations of games in the larger pop culture sphere was brand new. It was uncharted territory, and some of us were there to watch it unfold in real time! There was SO much to talk about, we needed to break this into three huge Chapters, but it's more than worth your time if you're an '80s kid or just have a fascination with video game history in general.
PART 1: We look at the earliest video game cartoons EVER made, the 1982 Pac Man series and the following year's Saturday Supercade, which had the first-ever animated depictions of icons like Mario, Donkey Kong, Frogger, and more! Part 1 - Pac Man & Saturday Supercade
PART 2: Now we're getting into the REALLY good stuff, the stuff every '80s kid who loved video games remembers best - The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! Between Capt. Lou as Mario, those awesome Super Mario Bros. cartoons, or that EPIC Legend of Zelda series, this show was a huge part of so many gamers' childhoods, and it was a blast to revisit it in-depth! Part 2 - Super Mario Bros. Super Show
PART 3: THE FINAL CHAPTER! As the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, Mario somewhat took a step aside in the animation realm to make room for another fondly-remembered hero... Captain N! But that's not to say that Mario left the scene completely, as The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 and The New Super Mario World kept everyone's favorite plumber plenty busy! Part 3 - Captain N, Super Mario Bros. 3, & Super Mario World
At some point I might just do a little bit of waxing nostalgic here about some of these shows and my own personal memories, but in the meantime definitely check out these videos as they were a ton of fun to be a part of and we had some absolutely epic conversation about these shows. And rest assured, we'll be doing plenty more stuff on old-school video game cartoons in the future. There's the Sonic stuff, the 1990s Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat cartoons... lots of stuff still to come. Hang in there!
Huge thanks as always to Mark Rodriguez, Johnny Rodriguez, Ninja Panda, and Jupi for having me on! Be sure and check out their other videos on a variety of topics, from games to wrestling and everything in-between. Some of them are only on Odysee, but most of them can be found on the VideoGameMasters YouTube Channel!
I'm gonna go meditate on which Princess was hotter, Lana or Zelda. See ya when I see ya.
Alright, so I've had a lotta free time lately, and I've been looking at ways to fill it, along with ways to increase my general penetration on this here Internet gimmick. Seems like a lotta people have Blogs; I guess that's what you kids are into these days? Alright, I guess we'll do that; why the fuck not, eh?
So for those who don't already know, first of all smack yourself. The guy you're lookin' at is the one and only God of Thunder, the Lord of Rock N' Roll, the Icon of Old School, The God of Glam Rock, and the Master of the Multiverse, Rikki Roxx himself! Since 2010, I've been conquering worlds all over the Northeastern Independent Pro Wrestling scene for dozens of promotions, but in-between I like to talk about toys and movies and video games and shit. I mean, I know a lot of us do, I just happen to do it better while also being a lot better-looking than most. It happens, a'ight? Take it up with God, it ain't my fault.
Some General Facts About Me: I grew up in a place called Jamesburg, NJ, I was trained to wrestle by Nicky Oceans, Corey Havoc and JD Smooth, I've had hundreds of matches since 2010, and my Finisher is a Grapevine DDT variation I invented called "End of Days". Yes, I'm aware some other jackass calls his crappy move that, but I've had mine since 2012, and mine is also a lot better, so as far as I'm concerned he owes me some quarters for the Gimmick Infringement jar. But that's neither here nor there.
I'm a man of many obsessions, including but not limited to cartoons, toys, video games, comic books and movies. I collect tons of stuff from each, currently owning thousands of movies and video games on disc as well as over 25 longboxes full of comic books, mostly Superman but also plenty of Batman, Sonic, TMNT and more. Besides that, I have a massive toy and action figure collection going back to 1982, with thousands of figures from dozens of lines such as Masters of the Universe, all the WWF/WWE and WCW lines, various DC stuff, and more. The two main "characters" whose figures I collect are Hulk Hogan and Superman; I currently have over 50 figures of each, and I'm getting more all the time. Sometimes I do custom figures, and other times I buy figures in rough shape and fix 'em up a little bit, like old WWF LJN figures and stuff like that.
In addition to collecting stuff, I often do video reviews of various action figures for YouTube. There's a link to my Channel but I'll probably share some links to individual videos on here as well from time to time. Also, many of my matches and promos from my 12+-year wrestling career are available to watch on the channel as well.
I'm kinda just wingin' it here, so I have no promises about how often I'll update this, what kind of content I'll be doing, or any of that. I just figure one more way to get out there and reach a few people and hopefully entertain them can't possibly hurt. Thanks for comin' along for the ride!
Catch me on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/RikkiRoxxNWS/ If you send me a Friend Request, it helps to include a message about where I might know you from. I get a lot of stalkers, scammers, and crazy people, so I gotta be pretty selective sometimes, sorry.
Also, be sure and check out my Guest Star appearances on various episodes of The Diving Cutter Podcast and The Fighting Podcast, always a lot of fun, which can be found on the VideoGameMasters YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/VideoGameMasters09
Catch ya next time, an' if ya can't be Good, be Bad, baby!
