By Michael Moore, PWTorch Collectibles specialist

In Brief: There are plenty of ECW-related action figures out there, but which five are the best?




After two years of shining a spotlight on wrestling action figures and watching them evolve, it’s time to put those toys in order.

Each Tuesday, PWTorch.com’s Collectibles Column will feature a themed Top 5 list of wrestling action figures. This week’s column presents a list of the Top 5 action figures of ECW alumni.

The Original San Francisco Toy Maker (OSFTM) made ECW toys from 1999 to 2000, but they weren’t great. Jakks-Pacific capitalized on the connection between toy collectors and hardcore wrestling fans and made much better toys of ECW alumni in its Classic WWE Superstars line, and again when WWE re-launched the ECW brand in 2005 and 2006.

Almost two decades after the Shane Douglas-Sabu-Terry Funk three-way match that got readers of wrestling newsletters and magazines talking, ECW is still a hot topic – though not in the same way. There are those fiercely loyal to all things ECW and those who understand the damage the ECW style did to the wrestling business and individual human beings, as evidenced by all talk about the new ECW documentary “Barbed Wire City,” even before most fans have seen it.

Many collectors of wrestling figures have a special place on their shelves for the old ECW guys. What really made ECW exciting, especially in its earliest years, was the cast of characters. Raven and Cactus Jack in particular were multidimensional characters, the likes of which just aren’t seen in wrestling today. And toy companies – particularly Jakks-Pacific – have done a great job of creating likenesses of those characters.

Top 5 Figures of ECW Alumni

(5) Tommy Dreamer Jakks-Pacific ECW Series 1. Few wrestlers were linked to the original ECW quite like Tommy Dreamer. He was there from beginning to end, from Eastern to Extreme. This figure was released in late 2006 after WWE attempted to re-launch the ECW brand as something different. Dreamer is captured in a “black and white and red all over” ECW Originals t-shirt.




(4) Stevie Richards Jakks-Pacific Best of ECW. For one brief moment in 1997, the Blue World Order was the hottest thing in ECW. Stevie Richards, who had been Raven’s flunky since 1994, suddenly went from comedy figure to main eventer. This figure has Big Stevie Cool in his best bWo attire, and was released in 2005 after the success of the first One Night Stand pay-per-view.




(3) Rob Van Dam Classic Jakks-Pacific WWE Superstars Series 23. At the height of wrestling boom in 1998, Rob Van Dam was the closest thing ECW had to a big time star. At the time, his moves and look were extremely different from anything fans were seeing anywhere in the U.S. OSFTM made a few ECW toys of “Mr. Monday Night,” but his best figures were produced during his WWE run. This particular figure is a flashback to RVD’s ECW days, and is one of his best.




(2) Terry Funk, Cactus Jack, and Sabu Jakks-Pacific Classic WWE Superstars three-pack. In 2006, Jakks unveiled an action figure three-pack of three of ECW’s pillars from 1994 and 1995. Terry Funk was the hardcore legend who helped give ECW credibility. Cactus Jack was the wrestling star who had recently been seen by fans in WCW and the GWF. And Sabu was the X-factor, a star in the making thanks to the buzz generated by wrestling newsletters and newsstand magazines.




(1) Raven Jakks-Pacific TNA Deluxe Impact Legends of the Ring. No one captured what made ECW cool more than Scott Levy, who completely understood and embraced the Raven character. Raven’s brooding promos, sulking body language, and dark charisma appealed to Gen-Xers when WCW was still trying to convince fans that Hulkamania was running wild, and the WWF was delivering Mabel in pay-per-view main events.




Toy companies have been making action figures of Raven since 1997. The Original San Francisco Toy Maker (WCW, ECW), Jakks-Pacific (WWF) and Toy Biz (WCW, TNA) all made figures of Raven, some during his peak years. But, nobody got it quite right until Jakks produced a new Raven figure as part of the Legends of the Ring subset of its TNA Deluxe Impact series in 2011.

This Raven figure was dressed in a black t-shirt, jean shorts, boots, and a removable faux leather jacket. It looks a lot more like the Raven of 1995 than the one who took part in TNA’s Hardcore Justice ECW tribute show in 2010.

What are your top 5 ECW alumni action figures? Do you have a suggestion for an action figure Top 5? Send your comments to michaelmoorewriter@gmail.com. Selected Top 5 lists will be published in Friday’s Collectibles Column at pwtorch.com .

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