By Michael Moore, PWTorch Collectibles specialist

In Brief: Long before WWE was looking to turn pink into green, wrestlers like Bret Hart and Rick Martel made pink a regular part of their ring gear.

Figure 5 Tuesday: Top 5 Figures of Wrestlers Who Wore Pink

It seems like everyone is wearing pink these days.

Each October, athletes, celebrities, and businesses all show their support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month – and bring in a little extra cash along the way. Football players don pink ribbons, socks, and sideline caps. Retail shops fill their windows with t-shirts covered in clever little sayings about ta-tas and second base. Topps puts out BCA Pink football and baseball cards. And this year, John Cena isn’t the only wrestler seeing green because of all that pink; WWE has turned all of its merchandise pink to support its stockholders – sorry, a good cause.

All cynicism aside, wrestlers have been wearing pink for decades. Here’s a look at the figures of five wrestlers who wore pink before pink was cool.

(5) Batista Jakks-Pacific WWE Ruthless Aggression Series 18.5. Jakks made a few different toys of Batista as the sharp-dressed “Animal,” but none stands out quite like this awesomely bad figure. “Pinktista” is one of the most eye-catching wrestling toys ever made, for all the wrong reasons.

With a slender body, pink shirt, pink tie, and hideous clear pink plastic sunglasses, this figure looks sort of like Jakks slapped a Dave Batista head on a body that was intended for a Jeff Jarrett toy. This figure routinely makes collectors’s lists of worst Jakks figures of all-time, but many have been drawn to it because of its so-awful-it’s-cool factor. Packaged figures usually sell for less than $10.




(4) Rick Martel Jakks-Pacific Classic WWE Superstars Series 14 & Hasbro WWF Series 5. “The Model” has the distinction of being the only wrestler to appear in arguably the five most significant wrestling toy lines ever: Remco AWA, LJN WWF Wrestling Superstars, Hasbro WWF, Jakks-Pacific WWE Classic Superstars, and Mattel WWE Legends.

These two particular figures in particular portray Martel as a heel in heat-seeking pink tights. The Jakks figure is especially cool, complete with a pink sweater to tie around Martel’s neck. These can usually be found for less than $20 each.




3. Adrian Adonis LJN WWF Wrestling Superstars Series 4. Once a badass street thug, Adonis was one of the first wrestlers to slip on a pair of pink tights in an attempt to make fans hate him. Adonis’s gay character is one of the most offensive creations ever spawned from the mind of Vince McMahon – and that’s saying something. This figure is tough to find and often sells for around $25-30 loose if it’s in good condition.




(2) C.M. Punk Mattel WWE Battle Packs 14. After the death of the Randy Savage in 2011, WWE’s resident pipe bomb thrower was one of the first to pay tribute to the “Macho Man” on WWE television. He wrestled his match in a pair of pink tights with white stars and yellow pads and boots, an outfit similar to the one Savage so often wore as the WWF’s workhorse Intercontinental Champion in the mid-‘80s.

Mattel captured that moment with a cool two-pack of Punk and Savage in matching gear. A loose Punk figure usually commands about $12-18, while a sealed two-pack usually sells for $30-45.




(1) Bret Hart Mattel WWE Royal Rumble Heritage Series. No wrestler wore pink more often than Bret Hart, and nobody made it cooler. During his early WWF days in the Hart Foundation, Bret and Jim Neidhart often wore dull black tights with a blue stripe. In late 1985, they put on matching pink tights and became the “Pink and Black Attack” – a nickname that would later apply to Bret himself. In 2012 Mattel offered up this figure, which captures Bret before he became a main event superstar.

This wave includes figures of wrestlers who made their marks in the Royal Rumble, which Bret did at the very first Rumble way back in 1988. For a while this rare figure was commanding upwards of $75, but it has since cooled off some, now selling in the $20-30 range.




Other wrestlers whose toys have appeared in pink ring gear include Jim Neidhart, Jimmy Hart, Natalya, Kelly Kelly, Randy Savage, and Rey Mysterio.

PWTorch Collectibles Specialist Michael Moore can be reached at michaelmoorewriter@gmail.com .

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