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Old 12-12-2020, 01:20 PM   #201
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Aww, I'm sorry. I'll try and remember to get around to it soon.
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Old 12-20-2020, 01:54 AM   #202
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Finally got around to finishing up restoring my WWF LJN "Rowdy" Roddy Piper.



The sealant wasn't dry yet when I took this picture but I'm going to bed. It'll probably look better by tomorrow. I had to buy a decal for his shirt and my finger slipped a little when applying it, but it's no big deal, in person you can hardly tell. They also sent me a whole sheet of extras so I'll definitely be getting more Piper figures to mess with, anyway.

The original figure came with a kilt that almost everyone lost immediately, and finding one with the kilt is stupid expensive. They also made it way too long and I never liked how it looked, anyway. So I just got some plaid fabric and made my own at a more reasonable length. They also molded the belt onto the figure itself, which was an odd choice, especially since the kilt that came with the figure was so long that it would cover the belt to the point where it wasn't visible anyway. Because of the figure's hip positioning, there really wasn't any way to get the kilt to sit properly underneath the molded belt, so I took some faux leather fabric and made a more proper-looking belt out of that. Overall, I think it looks pretty good.

When I have some spare cash I plan to pick up one or two more of him at the flea market. They next one will most likely turn out a lot better, especially if I find one without so many nicks and dings in the rubber. Also, for this one I just wanted to restore it to the original factory colors (red trunks, knee pads and boots) but Piper more often wore blue trunks and pads and either brown or black boots, so the next one I do I plan to paint in his proper attire. This one was more or less "practice".
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Old 01-26-2021, 10:43 PM   #203
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I've been touching up some more WWF LJN figures lately. Lotta fun, getting them "display-ready". Some of my buddies are "purists" and they HATE that I do this, but I totally don't care. I don't wanna display toys that look like they got hit by lightning, I'm just not doing it. Plus, I just plain like to paint and these are great practice.

This will end up being multiple posts because of the Image limit, since I wanna do some Before and After shots.

First up, a pretty easy one, Tito Santana. This one didn't need a lot of work. Here's the Before and After:


Next up, another pretty easy one, Andre The Giant:


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Old 01-26-2021, 10:49 PM   #204
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This one's a little more involved. Junk Yard Dog needed a LOT of work, including completely redoing the face and head:






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Old 01-26-2021, 10:56 PM   #205
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Another one that wasn't too tough, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan. The 2x4 is an eBay repro, because believe it or not the authentic one that actually came with this figure costs like $300+ if you can f*cking find one. For $20 this one does the job!




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Old 01-26-2021, 11:01 PM   #206
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Finally, we have the late-series Hulk Hogan figure:





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Old 01-26-2021, 11:06 PM   #207
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Finally, here's the Hogan with a custom WWF Title belt I got in a set off eBay. These belts are made of craft foam, glossy paper and velcro, and they look really good!



I got the belts as a set - World, Intercontinental, and two Tag Team belts - for about eight bucks and they really make these LJN figures pop! Just search "WWF LJN Custom Title Belts" on eBay and they should turn up. Lots of talented people out there. I'm getting more and more of these figures so I'll undoubtedly need more of these belts soon!

Anyways, I'm still working on a few others but I needed to take a break for a few days and work on other things.
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Old 01-27-2021, 07:28 AM   #208
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Wow, you worked some magic! You brought those figures back from their graves, especially the bearded one. I have to say you're pretty good at color matching too.
You should check the YouTube channel "Toy Polloi", there's a Brit guy who deals with toy repainting and restoration. No wrestling stuff but a lot of american action figures from the 70s and 80s, maybe you can steal him some more tricks.
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Old 01-27-2021, 07:47 AM   #209
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That's awesome, thanks for the heads-up!

The "good" thing about these LJN figures, is that they used pretty common and "cheap" paints - which is both why they rub off so easily AND are so easy to color-match. 99.9999% of any red they have, for example, matches perfectly with basic Apple Barrel "Bright Red" you can get at Walmart for under a buck. On "better" figures I prefer to use something good like Testors, but the "cheap stuff" both matches and adheres to this type of figure REALLY well. By contrast, the "good paints" often don't color-match as well. I go over all painted areas with Mod Podge to seal the paint, which is something I don't think LJN bothered to do at the factory since the factory paint rubs off of these damn things if you so much as look at them funny, and again that type of sealant works really well on these particular figures.

Given how incredibly hard it is to find these figures in GOOD shape, and how common some of them are, so long as there are no huge nicks or dents in the rubber I have no problem picking up a figure like Junk Yard Dog that's in such rough shape and just giving it a full makeover. For a $5 beat-up figure and 50 cents worth of paint I can have something that looks like new! And if you've never done this kind of thing before, I can say that you just plain look at and feel differently about toys after you've fixed them up. Cool Toys are Cool Toys but the toys I've put work into touching up or restoring are now "Special".

Glad you like 'em! I got some more in the works, and I'm picking up a few more this weekend. I need like 40 more guys to complete the line, so I'll be at this for a WHILE.
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Old 02-02-2021, 04:06 AM   #210
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I had no idea that there ended up being so many of those LJN figures!

From memory, I had Big John Studd, Hulk Hogan (yellow), Hillbilly Jim, King Kong Bundy, Paul Orndorff and the Junkyard Dog.

I also liked the Hasbro line in the early 90s, only had a few though- Macho King, Big Boss Man, and Brutus the Barber Beefcake.
I had a friend who had the ring and a ton of them though.
I always wanted The Million Dollar Man!
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Old 02-02-2021, 07:45 AM   #211
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I know! There's about 65 individual characters/sculpts in the LJN WWF line and about 70 figures altogether, counting repaints for guys like Hogan with shirt, S.D. Jones, and the Referee. Everyone except the British Bulldogs was available on a single card, with them being the only Tag Team Exclusive. It's pretty overwhelming! Even with a good number of the earlier ones being more common, it'll take me years to collect them all, I figure.

I love the WWF Hasbros as well, I have a lot more of those. Still missing a bunch of them from the later sets but I think I have like 3/4s of the line. I think Million Dollar Man is still fairly common as he was an earlier figure; finding him with the Million Dollar Belt might be tricky, though.

My Hasbro ring is very beat-up from all the use it got, but I recently got some repro stickers and new ropes, so I plan on doing a full restoration in the near future. That'll be fun.
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Old 02-03-2021, 06:45 AM   #212
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I was going to start collecting the Hasbro figures around 10 years ago, there was a nice big lot going pretty cheap and I figured that would be a good "in" but I talked myself out of it.

Postage to Australia from the US is really bloody expensive these days and there's extra charges on top...of course all the good toys are in the USA, we always get dicked down here, especially back in the 80s and 90s so you don't see them pop up.

The same went for the WWF itself...VHS tapes and the one match the TV would have on Sunday!
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Old 02-21-2021, 05:46 PM   #213
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Been working on touching up a few of my WWF LJN figures.

Here's some Before and After shots of Jake "The Snake" Roberts:


I wasn't able to find paint that color-matched perfectly, but I like this better anyway.

Here's some Before and After on The Ultimate Warrior:

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Old 05-15-2021, 01:54 AM   #214
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Man, I really gotta start posting stuff on my Instagram so it won't disappear. Sorry!

Anyways, I did some more fix-ups on some of my WWF LJN figures. Mostly simple stuff this time but I still did a full repaint on everything even when the figures only needed a touch-up here and there. I like the paint to be uniform. Most of the stuff that needed fixing was just the hair and eyebrows but there were a lot of little rub spots everywhere that needed smoothing out, anyway, even if the pics don't really show it. So even if you can't tell, each of these guys got a full top-to-bottom repaint.

Here's a Before and After on Magnificent Muraco:



Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat:



Captain Lou Albano:



And finally, Hillbilly Jim:



Jim's the only one I did any real tinkering with. His outfit wasn't too badly-scuffed aside from the boots, so I maybe could have just done those and his hair and called it a day, but I really didn't like how the original paint job just ignored the buttons, clasps, and the bandanna in his pocket, simply painting all of it solid blue. So I went over all the details on his overalls with gold and painted the bandanna in his back pocket red, and it looks a LOT better just with that little bit of extra detail.

Lots of these figures had that problem, where they'd have very detailed sculpts but the lazy paint job would hide a lot of it. Since most of these figures are so hard to collect (not this batch, though; these are all common and cheap guys) I generally just try and restore them to looking as they did in the package and not deviate too much. But sometimes I can't help it and I just have to "fix" little things like that because I know it'll look better that way.

I'm not a huge fan of how plain that Steamboat figure is, though (even though it made for a very quick and easy repaint). So one of my next projects will be to buy another one and give him his red tights and headband.

I'm working on another half-dozen or so at the moment, but these are all I've gotten finished with so far. I really like working on these because they're so easy. It's good practice since you can't really screw anything up.
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Old 06-08-2021, 07:39 PM   #215
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Been doing some more LJN work. I finally finished restoring my Hart Foundation, including some custom belts I bought off eBay to replace the stock ones.

Before:


After:


Anvil:



Bret:

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Old 06-08-2021, 08:16 PM   #216
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I also did a full restoration on a beat-up Hogan I got for like $5. I swore I took a Before pic, but I can't find it now. The thing was covered in black marks, almost all of the paint was rubbed off, and some of the rubber looked like it'd been chewed off. So after a hot bath, a deep scrub with nail polish remover, and a total repaint, I got a pretty good 1985 "Blue Trunks" Hogan out of it:

This is a rather common repaint people do of this figure, but I added some details most people don't bother with. For one, I painted the laces white (technically, I painted the boots all-white and then painted around the laces in light blue), and to give the hair and facial hair some texture I painted it in gold and then dry-brushed some pale yellow over it.

But the big thing is the lettering on the headband. Most people, if they bother with that logo, they use a decal. But I managed to nail it free-hand on the first try. Really happy about that.
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Old 06-15-2021, 12:14 AM   #217
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So I actually did this one last year, but I wasn't calling it "finished" until the shirt I ordered for it came, and that took forever because the company that makes the figure clothing is overseas and the pandemic messed with that. But this week I finally got all the shirts and jackets I ordered from them, so I can finally finish some of my wrestling figure customs!

WWE "Ruthless Aggression/Classic Superstars" RAVEN








The impetus for this custom was quite simple: Jakks only made ONE Raven figure while he was in the WWF, and while it was pretty good, it was in the "TitanTron Live" Scale, which lacked articulation and were smaller than the RA/Classic Superstars figures. They later made a "TNA Legends" Raven around 2008 or so, but it was a little big for the line, scale-wise, and since it was based on his TNA appearance he had braided hair rather than his "classic" ECW/WCW appearance. I'm a huge Raven fan, and I wanted a more basic Raven figure that scaled a bit better with the other RA/Classic Superstars guys.

The "recipe" was pretty easy, just a 2003-era Triple H head on a RA Jamie Noble body. I'd originally hoped to just use the Raven head from the TTL figure, but turns out the TTL and RA figures have a totally different neck peg situation going on, so that was out. Out of all the RA-scale heads I looked at, the "angry frown" Triple H head was the closest match for Raven. It's not perfect, but with some paint touch-ups it can pass, especially if he's looking down. The hair's a bit less curly than I'd like, but sometimes it was more straight and wavy than curly and tangled so it's technically still accurate. I repainted the hair with a mix of dark and light brown, with gold highlights, and then gave him Raven's "chin beard". Again, not perfect, but close enough if you squint.

I didn't have to do much for the lower body. They didn't bother painting the "ripped" parts of the jean shorts, so I went ahead and did that with some flesh tone to fill the "holes" and white for the frayed areas. The calves were solid black, so I painted over them with flesh tone as well.

The upper body was a lot of work; I knew I'd be getting the shirt but I wanted him to have all of his tattoos, anyway. So I painstakingly hand-painted all of his tattoos using various photos for reference; I couldn't get the "Rust Never Sleeps" lettering to come out clear enough on his right arm, so again I went for "close enough if you squint". He's got some scar tissue on that arm, so I very lightly scratched some of the paint off after the tattoo was done. I added some extra "tape" going midway up his forearm using Apoxie Sculpt, then painted it white. The Sandman shirt is the thing that ties it all together, though.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. There's a chance I might one day find an even better head, I guess, but otherwise I think it's pretty good. I got a leather jacket, too, but it's a bit too tight and I didn't feel like messing with it right now. If I manage to get it on I'll take more pictures. And I think I found a flannel shirt for him to wear around his waist, so again, if that works I'll take more pictures.
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Old 06-25-2021, 01:07 AM   #218
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Man, those pics vanished fast. Weird.

Anyways, I updated it with the flannel shirt off another Raven figure.

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Old 10-11-2022, 02:29 AM   #219
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Blog post about the LJN Hogan I fixed up in his blue and white attire a ways back, with pics and video:
https://theroxxshow.blogspot.com/202...338175de872184
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