Artist's Corner: What If Mattel Originally Announced AEW Action Figures? (Photos)

Artist’s Corner returns with a fun column that makes you wonder, what if Mattel originally announced AEW action figures?

How This Came About

This project, that I worked on for the past six plus months or so, incorporates several very talented artists in the wrestling figure community, which I will highlight throughout this piece. This piece was originally supposed to be a column about what it would be like if AEW action figures existed. Jazwares and Wicked Cool Toys announced back in February that they would be making the AEW toy line, which is by far fantastic news but also caused a minor hiccup on this fun project. Regardless, so many talented artists teamed up with me to show you what a Mattel version of AEW action figures could be like and they did a fantastic job to say the least. Please do realize there was a lot of painting by hand as well as other applications used to create these figures from scratch.

The Featured Figures

As you can see in the gallery below as well as through this column that there are many wrestlers that were made for this. These include:

Young Bucks
Kenny Omega
Jon Moxley
Hangman Page
Christopher Daniels
Kazarian
Chris Jericho x2
Orange Cassidy
Dustin Rhodes
Cody
MJF

I obviously could’ve had many more wrestlers made but I figured this would be a great batch to highlight.

The Head Sculpts & Casts

Several of the heads for these were head cast by TSMWrestlingCustoms over on Instagram. He makes casts of previous figure heads and shrinks them down to Mattel size. He also paints them as well and makes custom figures and the like if you’d like to check out his body of work.

Other heads for this project were sculpted and painted by the very talented BEW_Animations on Instagram, such as the MJF and Moxley sculpts that were sold on the popular Figure Giant action figure parts website, and he did others as well for me like Jericho and Cassidy.

Designing the Figures

The figures were then designed from WWE action figure parts by Curb Stomp Custom City Decals, who makes the logos, tattoos and the like for the figures as well as several listed above assembled properly and painted by the talented JrainsWrestlingCustoms on Instagram.

Finding the proper parts and scaling can be very tough and costly. While these figures may not be one hundred percent accurate to the body build and shape of these wrestlers it is certainly a great placeholder. I still think they turned out well considering the limitations provided by the Mattel line.

The Clothing

To make these figures pop that much more you obviously need some cloth clothing to really make them stand out. For guys like Cassidy his entire outfit needs to look just right. That’s where Thread Head Custom Clothing comes in as they made Cassidy’s outfit as well as several of the shirts, vests, and even Hangman’s noose you see on these figures. Other clothing not seen on the figures includes a Moxley jacket and other alternate t-shirts you can get for your figures. You can see their plethora of clothing options on their website.

The Belt

When you have wrestling figures you obviously need some title belts and that’s where the talented WWE_Figure_Artist on Instagram comes into play. He designed a leather strapped AEW World Heavyweight Championship for me to showcase. He’s since made other AEW belts I believe, which you can get from him on Instagram in interested. The detail in the plates and the gold/silver coloring really looks fantastic. I definitely plan to pick up some more belts from them in the future.

The Ring & Arena

Another key part of this project was getting an authentic scale AEW ring. There is one releasing very soon on RingsideCollectibles.com (you can SAVE 10% with code MBG) but I needed one right here and now for this project. To do that I needed Curb Stomp to help me get AEW as well as TNT logos for the turnbuckle pads, which turned out great. The official AEW toy line will more than likely not have TNT logos on it so being able to have an even more accurate ring is exciting to say the least.

Not to mention you need to have a proper ring skirt for this, which was designed by a longtime, talented friend in the community, RingSkirts, whom you can also find over on Instagram these days. He is well known for being able to design most ring skirts for your rings from any time period.

Overall

An AEW toy line by Mattel could’ve looked a lot like these figures. With Mattel having the WWE license, and very large licenses for that matter, we would most likely never see such a thing but it is always fun to think about! I think everyone on this project did a fantastic job of nailing the accuracy as best as they could to make them look so authentic to the real thing. While I do not know their exact process behind it all, nor want to exploit their abilities, you can certainly see all the work they put into these to make it a reality. Be sure to check out all of their work as they all have a lot of unique things to offer to collectors.

In the meantime, it is almost time for Jazwares and Wicked Cool Toys to release the very first AEW action figures! Stay tuned on here as we will definitely be reviewing them when the time comes!

For more wrestling figure news and coverage be sure to follow Wrestling Figure News Source on Twitter! You can see more of my wrestling figure photography with these figures on my Instagram, too!