A few weeks back, I wrote up my list of Top 5 Most Wanted NWA Wrestlers we need Mattel to eventually get to so we can have a complete wrestling collection. Perhaps not surprisingly, “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair was my #1 choice.
Beyond the fact that Flair was the man in the NWA and a legitimate contender for the “greatest wrestler of all time” title, we’ve gotten a ton of his top rivals, like The Road Warriors and Dusty Rhodes, and we’ve got two of his 4 Horsemen running buddies, Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson, so his absence was starting to become a bit glaring.
But it appears that wait has come to an end.
Kmart.com posted an Elite Ric Flair figure over the weekend. A prototype of this figure popped up a few weeks ago on eBay, but this is our first look at the finished version.
It’s a great take on Flair and thankfully is in the Carolina blue attire, right down to the two-tone kneepads, and isn’t the now overdone red or black attires. Curiously, the figure comes with a black robe and not a blue one to further coordinate the look. While Flair started mixing and matching his robes and tights later in his career, I don’t recall him doing that during his prime.
One question on everyone’s minds was just how this Flair will be released. There was the rumor that with Mattel announcing its SDCC exclusives that Flair would make for an excellent exclusive. And this would all but assure fans that we’d get another Flair variant somewhere down the road in the regular Elite Flashback line. The SDCC Ministry Undertaker was a fantastic figure, but fans still hadn’t completely jumped on the Mattel bandwagon just yet and it didn’t sell all that great. Flair would definitely be the kind of figure to spike interest and increase the viability of more SDCC Elite exclusives.
Another thought was that Flair is just the Flashback for a yet-to-be-announced Elite wave, which, while likely true, is boring and not nearly as intriguing a thought as another possibility. Mattel did a little damage control and confirmed that Flair is not an SDCC figure or slated for a regular Elite line, but is, in fact, the possible return of its Defining Moments line.
The Entrance Greats and Defining Moments lines allowed Mattel to go a bit more intricate with classic superstars from some of their biggest matches. Entrance Greats started off rocky because the extra costs didn’t provide the ultimate figure since they featured basic articulation, but Defining Moments got it right with Elite articulation. Unfortunately, Defining Moments didn’t really provide the most demanded versions of characters and was more glorified variants of the more popular stars like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, and The Undertaker.
But with a refocused approach on actual major iconic appearances for major stars (i.e. Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and the eventual Hulk Hogan and maybe Sting) the format could be revitalized, and who better to kick it off than “The Nature Boy”?
Whichever way we get him, the important thing is we are adding Flair to our collection and not a moment too soon. Now it’s time to start clamoring for Hulk Hogan and Sting figures.
Right now the word is it will be a shared exclusive with at least K-Mart and possibly Amazon, TRU, Target, and Walmart. I know that doesn’t leave a lot of stores left, but maybe Joe’s Figure Store is being left out on this? Mattel confirmed that if Flair does sell well, we could see more Defining Moments figures down the road, so if you want more Flashback/Legends figures (yes, you!), I don’t think I’ve gotta do some hard sell on Ric Flair, but if you see one, grab him.
