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!