WCW, Early 1990’s
It may sound weird coming from a guy who has written two books about its demise, but I loved WCW. And over the years, in retrospect, my adoration for the product has done nothing but grown. Rose colored glasses? Perhaps. I mean, don’t misunderstand me – I remember all those horrible Nitros and Thunders, as well as the completely misguided pay-per-views that led to its demise. But recently I’ve been going back through the pages of the company’s history and have just gone ga-ga over the utter absurdity of what the company presented.
And when I say pages of the company’s history, I mean that quite literally – pages.
Thanks to the great folks who run WCW Worldwide, I’ve gained access to oodles of magazines produced solely to promote World Championship Wrestling. I know a lot of folks have been very depressed due to the current state of the world, and the news today of the legendary Howard Finkel passing away, and to a certain degree, I have been as well. Especially about the Fink.
But when I see something like the following and I cannot help but smile and laugh.
Talk about a brain teaser! Who could this be? Norman the Lunatic? Missy Hyatt? Kevin Sullivan?
The mind reels.
This is the kinda stuff I found within the withered pages of these old periodicals. Insanity and absurdity combined and spun in a blender on its highest settings formulating a delightful concoction.
For instance, you ever think you’d live to see the day withSting and Davey Boy Smith sporting giant red clown noses?
WE GOT YA COVERED!
Oh how I LOVE these magazines. It seems every page is a heaping spoonful of new lunacy. But while the photos and the articles are a good time, to this old boy nothing tops what the company was quite literally trying to sell its most hardcore fans.
That’s right kids – time to jump back to the early 1990s and check out…
WCW STUFF!
Really, that was what the company called their merchandise catalog.
Granted, that lacks some creativity, but don’t you fret. For you see, the company saved their ingenuity not for silly things like catalog names, but for more pressing matters: shirts for their top stars! And that’s what we are here to look at this day.
Guessing a lot of you had shirts featuring Sting. After all, he was one of the most popular wrestlers not only in WCW, but the entire world.
But did you ever have THIS Sting shirt?
See, it’s like it’s Sting…but he’s made out of Cootie parts!
I’m not the only one that remembers Cootie, right?
RIGHT?
Watching the commercial, it all makes sense: the target demo WCW was going after was crazy old women who bought the cheapest toys they could find for their kids then told folks how smart they were for doing it. All I hope is she used some of her leftover pennies and nickels to get her kid this Sting Face Paint kit:
Just me, or does poor Sting look totally constipated there? Maybe that’s why he did that YOWWWWW scream all the time.
And wait a minute…just what was in that paint they were trying to pawn off on children?
While the Stinger was the lead babyface, the appeal of the legendary Four Horsemen was not far behind. Here, Sid sports a Roman numeral shirt and Barry has one that looks like it has a pegasus on it. Maybe a unicorn, I’m not sure. And Arn has a shirt that is…uhhhh…I’m not seeing that right, am I?
Please tell me someone didn’t make a Four Horsemen logo that looked nearly identical to a NAZI logo.
It’s WCW – OF COURSE THEY DID!
In comparison, them having a VERY effeminate Little Richard wrestler (who naturally debuted as a heel) and celebrating him with a confetti laden atrocity such as this was almost expected, right? And to be fair, Johnny B. Badd wound up being a pretty decent worker who had a respectable following.
I mean, I can’t imagine even the world’s biggest JBB mark to wear that thing, but who knows. Maybe someone looking at this right now has it in their closet.
Anybody remember Scott Steiner before he morphed into Big Poppa Pump and he just hung out being one of the all-time great tag teams with his brother Rick?
His apparently SIAMESE TWIN brother Rick?
It seemed as though EVERYONE in the company got a shirt at some point. While Flyin’ Brian Pillman made sense, exactly how many PN News tees were ever sold ya think? Or a BIG JOSH shirt? No joke, when I started WrestleCrap over twenty years ago, I thought I was the only person on the planet who even remembered Big Josh.
BUT WCW MADE SURE HE HAD A SHIRT!!!!!!
And there was of course the legendary CAPTAIN MIKE SHIRT. I have searched for this for YEARS. You have no idea how I reacted when I FINALLY found a decent enough scan to make my own shirt with him on it.
Backstory! See, Mike Rotunda was in a heel group known as the Varsity Club, and he was one of the leaders – hence, he was a team Captain. Fast forward a few months, and the Varsity Club disbanded…but Mike remained a Captain. TLDR, he suddenly loved BOATS for whatever reason that was never, ever explained.
Also never explained: why his shirt featured his giant head squeezed into a boat.
Or why the boat was named the USS Norman.
Or honestly, anything else about it at all.
I LOVE THIS SHIRT WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL. I AM SO HAPPY NOW.
And how about this? We got a shirt for the YORK FOUNDATION! Ok, Cap’n Mike, PN News and Big Josh were a stretch, but at least they were good guys. The York Foundation were HEELS! How many kids watching were like, “Man, finally I can walk around with Terrence Taylor proudly displayed on my chest!”
And what on earth is the deal with the logo? THE YORK FOUNdATION? At first I thought maybe they were trying to spell it out like you used to do by turning a calculator upside down, but that can’t be the case. How did you make the K by turning the thing 180 degrees?
Like so many things here, THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
THAT is why I LOVES ME SOME WCW!
And now…you can too.
TIME TO SHILL!
I’ve opened an Etsy store where I make and sell wacky drink coasters. And what could possibly be wackier than drink coasters celebrating the most absurd WCW merch?
No joke – I have them now, and you can get them by going to my shop rightchere. They are made of hard plastic and look pretty spectacular given the source material. And just so I can channel my inner Don West, I am even throwing in a super secret extra coaster which showcases even more lunacy that is not pictured here! A bargain for a measly $15 with free shipping in the US of A. Picking up these coasters won’t only make you look cool, but will also help support this here goofy website. So yeah, I does appreciate it.
And who knows? Maybe I’ll do another set down the line.
After all, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of material!
Thanks for checking out another WrestleCrap induction! This is where I usually beg for money on our Patreon, but not this time. Instead, I want to ask you to support the very awesome WCW Worldwide! Check him out on Twitter by clicking here, and go to HIS Patreon page by heading here!
I already have more coasters than I need, but maaaaan….
You definitely need more.
RD shillin’ stuff that might be good enough for WC’s Somebody Bought This
Risky opinion: A Modern Version of York Foundation Could Work
Think about it, the vague concept of the York Foundation: a team that computers and (not known at the time) analytics to win matches. Now in the era of Moneyball, analytics is widely used in sports so a wrestling faction using analytics would be not be ridiculous. You could do a story arc where a manager can take some underdog wrestlers and turn into winner, but then this team turns fully heel (ala Houston Astros, a really analytically inclined team than use tech to have baseball greatest Heel Turn since the Black Sox Scandal). Bonus points if this faction manager can play a pompous sabermetrican like Brian Kenny, Rob Neyer, or Keith Law.
It’s an interesting idea. To be fair, it would have probably worked at the time if the members actually won matches most of the time (and having the former Red Rooster as a founding member didn’t help their credibility much).
Mike Rotunda came up with the ship captain gimmick himself in hopes of getting a discount from a boat dealer. It didn’t work.
Who would have ever thought that Mike Rotunda’s (I know him as IRS from the WWF) son would become the most famous and creepiest wrestler in the WWE today…
Come on! Bo Dallas is that creepy… or famous… 😉
I was talking about his other son, Windham Lawrence Rotunda (aka Bray Wyatt, aka The Fiend, and the host of Firefly Fun House, which Rotunda came up with on his own, with no input (or interference) from Vince, according to Braun Strowman (1)), of course :D…
Really, I consider The Fiend the first example of a wrestling creepypasta–just look at his mask…
(1) And, if you know how much of a control freak Vince is, that says something…
Was it Lex Luger?
Otm Shank
He is India’s answer to Brian Dennehy.
Otm Shank.
Wait, so they made merch for freakin’ El Gigante???
Hmmmm…
Makes one wonder if there’s a WWF catalog floating around featuring a child-size version of a particular bodysuit with airbrushed muscles… (SHUDDER)
Great induction. The Captain Mike shirt…honestly, what were they thinking? Who thought that was a good gimmick? Was this on Jim Herd? Man oh man. And the Big Josh shirt. How many of those could have possible ever have been sold? I’m guessing 37 ever. I wish we had a way to look at the sales of these gems. I always miss WCW.
The makers of that Sting t-shirt predicted the Rock’s turn as the Scorpion King … Decades ahead of their time, I tells ya!
All of those shirts…good lord…
That EL Gigante one though, to be fair, isn’t a bad design.
Trying to figure out what’s worse.
WCW selling a 4 Horsemen Nazi logo or RD trying to make money off that same logo with the coaster.
Shameful.
I know why Mke’s boat was called the USS Norman! God save me, I know exactly why.
You see, when Mike turned face, he decided to make a difference in the lives of others, so he took Norman the Lunatic under his wing and that psychotic (lower midcard) monster immediately transformed into Trucker Norm. Which is to say that his personality immediately shifted from deranged madman to Dave Sullivan on one of his more Evad-slow days. I have a friend who works in psychology and I have to admit he must suck at his job because he never gets these overnight transformations from damaged soul to lovable oaf like Cap’n Mike did!
Anyway, I’m pretty sure the Norman on the boat is the same as the Norman that wrestled. I say “pretty sure” because that’s one of those things which I’ve been successful in at least partially blocking from my head. Might have been fully successful if I didn’t click on this and give myself a reminder, but that’s life.
What Captain Mike needed to do was let him in, of course…
My question is how can I get my hands on some of those magazines. I absolutely LOVED WCW Magazine!
El Gigante…..or as Tony Schiavone called him El egante. “Elegant”.
I don’t know WHY that makes me laugh almost 30 years later.
I guess R.D. did Nazi Arn’s shirt coming…. B)
Aren’t you blatantly using WWE intellectual property for your own profit? Aren’t those renderings on your coasters protected by their rights owner? We adore you and your talents, please be careful. If I’m mis-informed, then I do apologize for this comment ahead of time.
So that’s where they got the idea for the Scorpion King!
Of course WCW called their merchandise magazine “WCW Stuff.” Of course they made a York Foundation shirt. Of course they made a Four Horsemen logo that looks like a swastika. Nothing surprises me about WCW anymore.
They also had the DOA with Paul Ellering whose gimmick was that Paul was to use his computer and internet saavy to take over the world, or the WWF tag team division. This was back in 1998, in the early days of the world wide web. It failed miserably.
The boat is clearly named after Cap’n Mike’s “crew member” Normal the Lunatic, making that shirt a Wrestlecrap twofer.
I thought The Horsemen reminded me more of The Glaive, the awesome weapon from Krull. I wonder if Captain Mike ever brought his boat to Full Sail University. Did The York Foundation rent out full conference rooms in hotels to hold meetings before a show to go over strategies or just use their regular rooms with somebody sitting at the desk, or on the couch and the other having to do the uncomfortable sit on the bed? How did this Steiner genetic mutation decide on how they were going to dress for the day, did they just rotate on a daily basis or maybe if one just had a better fashion sense it was always left up to him.
I feel ripped off.. this was less an induction and more an infomercial for cheezy coasters.
Norman (of Lunatic fame) became Rotunda’s first mate for a bit and was dubbed “Sailor Norman”. Soon afterwards he became “Trucker Norman” hailing from from the “Highways and byways of America”. Which I guess put him a few years ahead of Big Sexy Diesel. The again, he also became Bastion Booger. Mike Shaw, we miss ya.
And Big Jerk, er, Josh had the patented log roll maneuver to dominate his opponents. Hurray.
That I remember all of these facts is a testament of a great memory (I think) and a sore lack of prioritization in my life circa 1990.
I can’t tell if that Johnny B. Badd shirt says “I’m a Baaaaaad Man!” or “I’m a Bisexual Man!”
Here’s a question – was there a Stunning Steve Austin shirt and how well did it sell?
Maybe I’m picking a nit (or two). But in the in Sting face paint kit his face colors are (l to r) white, black, blue, and the paints are RED, black and blue.
Or maybe the red is there to foreshadow Sting’s nWo run as “Tomato Sting”??
Jyri
At Wrestlecon last year I believe Terri Runnels was selling those York Foundation shirts. I didn’t ask, but I’m sure she would have wanted a lot.
I actually had an ugly turquoise blue Z-Man (AKA Tom Zenk) shirt I used to wear with pride when I was a junior in high school back in 1991 or so. It was so awesome (at the time, anyway). I think I was the only person in the world who actually ordered it from the WCW catalog.