Wacky Wrestling VHS Boxes #10

SummerSlam is here! And you know what that means, time for another entry in the Wacky Wrestling VHS Boxes series. Along with the usual WWF old school goodies, I found some more obscure scans online from classic NWA/JCP and a weird tape from Japan.

The Wrestling Classic (1985)

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

The Wrestling Classic was the first widely distributed pay-per-view event in company history and featured a 16-Man elimination tournament along with a WWF Championship match between Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper. I've watched this event a couple times and each time I never really was impressed. Most of the tournament matches are very short, maybe only a few minutes each and the Hogan/Piper match was decent.

The box here is pretty straight forward as were most of the early WWF tapes from this time. The interesting this about the title of the tape though is "Wrestlevision". I'm not sure if that was a line of tapes they had planned but this was the only tape released with this banner. The back is pretty basic but makes the claim that Hogan is the "9th WWF World Champion" and this is a true statement if you combine Bruno's reigns as one, ignore the Antonio Inoki win, and also the fact that the title was held up for a month during Bob Backlund's run. The back also has the list of participants in the tournament and judging by the way the list is ordered, it's easy to see who they were pushing at the time.

Anyway, if you haven't seen this particular event before, I think it's worth at least one watch just for historical reasons.

Biggest, Smallest, Strangest, Strongest (1985)

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

Going from a pretty basic looking video box to this crazy looking and eye catching box, here's a tape called "Biggest, Smallest, Strangest, Strongest". While I've never seen the tape itself (I think it might be available on WWE Network) from the notes I found, it's pretty much a highlight tape designed to showcase some of the more unusual happenings from the WWF in the 1980s. The matches that are featured show Gorilla Monsoon, Hillbilly Jim, and Ivan Putski in action plus two midget matches (that's what they were called back then).

The case design is pretty eye catching with lots of photos both on the front and the back showing some of the craziness that one would be likely to find should they rent this tape. The back is interesting though mentioning some of the skits that are included but also claims that Pampero Firpo, Bepo Mongol, and Grand Wizard are shown. I find that pretty random at least from a WWF tape in the 80s.

WING Scaffold Match (1992)

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

Well, this looks pretty bizarre. I saw this scan on VHS Wasteland and I knew I just had to talk about it. I mean, where else but Japan will you see a VHS cover showing a guy hanging off the side of a scaffold? WING was the offspring of Japanese hardcore wrestling promotion FMW and only lasted a few years before shutting down. During their run, people such as Mr. Pogo, Manami Toyota, Great Sasuke, Dick Murdoch, The Bruise Brothers, Ivan Koloff, Miguel Perez Jr., Bill Dundee, and The Headhunters wrestled there. Shortly after shutting down, the IWA emerged from the ashes of WING.

As for this tape, while I've never actually seen it, I had to do some research on what was included. From that I found it's a compilation tape of the main event matches from the March 11, 1992 and March 13, 1992 shows featuring matches such as Mr. Pogo against Kanemura, Ivan Koloff against Mitsuteru Tokuda, and Miguel Perez Jr. (of WWF Los Boricuas fame) against The Iceman in a scaffold match.

1992 Battle of the WWF Superstars

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

Battle of the Superstars was a series that Coliseum Video and the WWF put out for a few years in the early 90s and consisted of matches filmed exclusively for video. The one thing about these tapes is that they have lots of interesting matches, like Randy Savage against Berzerker. There are also some interesting multi-man tag matches on here like Jim Duggan, Sgt. Slaughter, and the Bushwhackers teaming against the Beverly Brothers and Nasty Boys but the one match on here that sounds really fun is Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper going against Ric Flair and the Undertaker.

The cover of the tape really sort of grabs you with the big Battle of the Superstars logo, Jake the Snake choking out Roddy Piper and all kinds of craziness. The back is just as wild with Bret Hart punching the Mountie in the stomach, the listing of most of the matches, and some other stuff. This is really, really and eye catching tape cover.

War Games: Bash 87

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

"Let the War Games .... begin!"

Hearing that during when WCW was about to put on what was probably their signature match would give me chills. I got those same chills and excitement last November when NXT brought back War Games and had one of the most insane matches I've ever seen. The original concept however debuted in Jim Crockett Promotions in 1987 during the Great American Bash tour.

For 1986 and 1987, Turner Home Entertainment released compilation tapes of some of the top matches all around the tour. This particular tape contains both War Games matches from the tour along with other top matches such as Dick Murdoch against "Dr. Death" Steve Williams in a Texas Death Match, Rock-N-Roll Express vs. the Midnight Express, and Ric Flair vs. Jimmy Garvin in a Cage Match among others.

The artwork on the front of this tape with the fencing and the drawings of the War Games combatants is really cool. The one thing though I never liked with WCW/NWA tapes is that the back didn't have the match list. It had a summary and write-up more along the lines of what you'd see on the back of an actual movie.

With that, I'll put the bow on this entry in the Wacky Wrestling VHS Boxes series. I hope everyone enjoys SummerSlam tonight with Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns (again ... ugh), Ronda Rousey vs. Alexa Bliss, and A.J. Styles vs. Samoa Joe. It should be a pretty interesting show.

WrestleMania Week: Fun With Funkos

Happy April everyone! It's a new month and WrestleMania week trudges forward. Tonight is when everything kicks off in full with the NXT Takeover special on the WWE Network. For something different today, I though I'd share the WWE Funkos my wife and I have in our collection. I'll admit, I'm not a huge collector of the Funko figures. They're cool and all and I'll get them as I see fit for particular things I'm interested in but I'm not going to go crazy with them. My wife is the "Funko Fanatic" though in the house, so technically, these are her figures.

Here are John Cena, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and CM Punk. We took these out of the boxes just to make room on the shelf for everything. Don't worry, we kept the boxes. This is not the only Cena figure we have either

This figure was just procured during a visit to the local Gamestop over my wife's birthday weekend. I think I like this one a little better that the blue one above, just because the orange helps it stand out more.

This Roddy Piper figure is a Target exclusive figure that was hanging out with a bunch of other Funkos from Frozen, Star Wars, and a bunch of other ones. This, along with the Ric Flair figure are pretty hard to get. The Ric Flair one I haven't been able to find anywhere. Sadly, Piper passed away last summer.

The man defending the title this weekend against Roman Reigns in the main event of WrestleMania, Triple H. This one strikes me as pretty plain as if it was out of the box, I probably couldn't even tell you who it was.

Who's that jumping' out the sky? It's Rey Mysterio! I really like the detail on this figure with the mask and even the tattoos and the necklace. Even though Rey doesn't wrestle for WWE anymore, this is still a pretty awesome figure.

The Beast, Brock Lesnar! We stopped at numerous Wal-Mart stores last summer in search of this figure but no luck. We were about ready to give up when we randomly found this one on the back of the shelf. Lesnar is an absolute beast and his matches are just wars with whoever he is in there with. I'm looking forward to his match against Dean Ambrose this weekend.

Last one is this bearded Daniel Bryan figure that is a Hot Topic exclusive. I'm not much of a Hot Topic person and I forget exactly how we got this one, but since neither of us get to the mall much I'd venture a guess and say we got it at the flea market last summer. Daniel Bryan just recently retired last month due to injuries and while it was really sad to see him go, this is still a cool figure to remember him by.

Thanks for stopping by today! WrestleMania Week continues tomorrow with a look at the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2016!

WrestleMania Week: WWF Wrestling Figure Commercials From YouTube!

Image found via Google Search

If you grew up watching WWF Coliseum Video tapes in the late 80s and early 90s, you might remember before the feature started. On seemingly every tape, there was a small block of ads for wrestling figures featuring either Jesse Ventura or Roddy Piper. So, I thought as a fun feature for WrestleMania week, I'd show some of the old wrestling figure commercials I found on YouTube.

This ad is probably one of the first ads that ran on TV for WWF figures. You've got Jimmy Snuka diving off the landing of the stairs, Iron Sheik coming out from behind the living room curtains, and Hulk Hogan barging in from the kitchen, presumably after downing some sort of protein induced madness. The voiceover guy also mentions Big John Studd, but he is nowhere to be found in this house of mayhem. Perhaps he was upstairs napping or outside mowing the lawn.

Judging by the roster of wrestlers in this commercial, it appears to be from 1987. Here we have two kids talking about a "big match at my house" and to be honest, it sounds like a pretty good match with Junkyard Dog, Ricky Steamboat, and George Steele against Brutus Beefcake, Greg Valentine, and Roddy Piper. Yeah, it's cheesy but it's fun and brings back memories from being a kid again.

The other commercials I was going to feature here ended up getting pulled from YouTube but I did manage to find a compilation of all of them. Hopefully this video doesn't get pulled by the time you see this post and starts at the right spot I linked up to as well, if not, just fast forward to 1:18. Anyway, there are three commercials here, the first is for the regular line of figures with Ted DiBiase and Randy Savage showing up, next is for the tag team figures and be sure to watch Roddy Piper's reaction to getting licked by the Bushwhackers. Finally, there's a commercial for talking Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior figures.

These are the ads I have strong memories of as they're on every Coliseum Video tape from the early 90s and they're just so ridiculous, especially with Piper screaming over the top of kids playing with the figures. To be honest, I always preferred the one's with Piper over the ones with Jesse Ventura. Nothing against Ventura, but Piper selling these really made me want to go out and buy them. It didn't hurt either that he talked at the speed of the Micro Machines guy from the early 90s as well.

Hope you enjoyed these old wrestling figure commercials. More stuff tomorrow as WrestleMania week continues!

Wacky Wrestling VHS Boxes #2!

Before jumping to this, a quick announcement ... I've launched an official Facebook page for the blog! I'll be doing some mini-posts and sharing random things on there along with new blog posts when they go up. So, if you are on Facebook, I'd appreciate the like and a follow. Here's the link:

www.facebook.com/cardboardclubhouse

Shameless plug over.

Now, if you remember back in November, I launched an ongoing series called "Wacky Wrestling VHS Tapes" which will look at and feature random wrestling VHS tapes in my collections. Every time one of the tentpole WWE events airs (Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series), one of these posts will be up.

The January tradition known as the Royal Rumble is upon us. It's one of those events that just seems to spark nostalgia upon past and present wrestling fans who can't help but talk about their memories of the event as a youth. This year, the nostalgia is really coming hard as the 1992 Royal Rumble keeps getting brought up as it was the only previous time where the WWE (then WWF) World Title was on the line in the match.

Unfortunately, I don't own any Royal Rumble tapes in my collection. However, since the Rumble match is all about the random draw, here are four random tapes from my collection for your enjoyment.

Crunch Classic (1992)

Here's a tape that sort of has a tie-in to the Royal Rumble as it features Roddy Piper hosting the tape and conveniently the match from the 1992 Royal Rumble where he won the Intercontinental Title from the Mountie. As you can tell, this box has seen better days as the front of it is all beat up and the back sports some handwritten branding informing me where it came from ... in the case, apparently it came from someplace called Food Country

In the late 80's and up through the mid 90's, the WWF issued tapes like this that were nothing but compilations of random matches that were filmed at house shows around the country or filmed before the marathon TV taping sessions they used to do. Case in point, this tape. Just look at the line-up of random stuff ... Jim Neidhart vs. Skinner, Jim Duggan & Sgt. Slaughter vs. The Natural Disasters, and a bunch of other randomness.

Free For All (1997)

This is one of a handful of tapes that were released over the years by independent video companies but still carried the Coliseum Video name but were not included in the Coliseum Video lineage. This particular tape chronicles the first year of the Free For All, which was the live pre-show that the WWF used to do before the pay-per-view on the preview channel.

There's a lot of stuff crammed into this 60-minute tape from the Body Donnas vs. Godwinns match on the WrestleMania 12 pre-show to a minis tag team match from the 1997 Royal Rumble pre-show (hey look, another Rumble tie-in!). Probably the most famous match here is the Steve Austin vs. Yokozuna match that ended in about 90 seconds after Yokozuna fell off the ropes, as you can see on the front cover.

Rampage '92 (1992)

Continuing with the Royal Rumble/battle royal theme, this tape has a big 40-man battle royal on it that featured a bunch of stars thrown in with a bunch of no-name guys. For me, that was the main reason I picked this tape up on Ebay a few years ago. Not only that, but it was sealed!! Less than 10 bucks for an old Coliseum tape that's still factory sealed? Yes, please!

As I mentioned with Crunch Classic, these types of tapes were issued on occasion in between releases of pay-per-view tapes. Looking at the back of the box, it lists perhaps one of the strangest tag team matches I think I've ever heard of ... Ultimate Warrior and Undertaker against Papa Shango and Berzerker. That for me is just enough to fire up the VCR and pop this in.

Slamfest (1995)

I have to admit, this is the second copy of this tape I've gotten. In the late 90s, I was at the CD store in the local mall and was looking over their VHS and DVD section. Mixed in with a but of current tapes, was this. It was sitting all alone on a shelf near the bottom and looked forlorn and forgotten about. Luckily, I was able to convince my mom to buy it for me and I brought it home and watched it all the way through. Eventually, I watched this tape so much that I wore it out and I eventually had to throw it out as it wouldn't play anymore. 

I'd been searching for a copy of it ever since and was shocked to find it thrown in with a bunch of tapes that a friend of mine gave me that a friend of his didn't want. I've watched it since and it still holds up today. The tag match with Bret Hart and British Bulldog against Owen Hart and Jim Neidhart is great but the true gem of this tape is the Shawn Michaels and Diesel vs. Razor Ramon and 1-2-3 Kid tag team match which is one of the best tag team matches that you will ever see ... period. I encourage you to look it up on YouTube if you haven't seen it before. Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Hope you enjoyed this entry in the Wacky Wrestling VHS Tapes series. The next entry in this series will be coming up on WrestleMania Sunday and should be fun!