Figure Friday: The long-lost Steiner, Crush

Last week, I looked at the figures of Money, Inc. and showed how they were so cohesive a team that they even shared a lower body. This week, I profile another pair of WWF figures from Hasbro, the Steiner Brothers. The Rick and Scott figures really have nothing in common... except that they both borrow heavily from Brian "Crush" Adams. Allow me to explain.

One of the great mysteries growing up with the Rick Steiner figure was why exactly it had ridges. Anyone who played with the Dog-Faced Gremlin's figure noticed that there were bumps on his crotch and backside (Don't look at me like that! If you wanted to use Rick's action clothesline move, you pretty much had to handle his personal space rather invasively). Now, I could understand if it were Scott's figure with the bumps in his intimate regions, given his active lifestyle with the "freaks" as well as the many needle marks that surely pock his rear end. However, this was most definitely the elder Steiner we were dealing with -- why else would he have the earmuffs on his head?
 
Another puzzling feature of the Rick Steiner figure regarded the fine print on the figure giving credit to Hasbro and the WWF. Every figure has this, but Rick's figure had the raised lettering on both his lower and upper body.

 

The reason for these anomalies was that Hasbro, as I have explained in previous articles, had a penchant for reusing parts of action figures whenever convenient. In this case, the toymakers decided to borrow the lower body of the Demolition Crush action figure. The problem, though, was that like the other Demolition members, Crush's trunks had metal studs on them, and his figure replicated them accordingly. Rather than picking a lower body from a different figure, one without studs (which was pretty much every figure besides the Demolition series), the WWF figure department said, "Screw it" and just painted right over those simulated metal studs. Thus, children were for years led to believe that Rick Steiner wore rhinestone underwear.

 
As for the redundant fine print on Rick Steiner, Demolition Crush's upper body recreated the leather straps that that most heterosexual of all tag teams, Demolition, wore, leaving little room for the copyright notice. Thus, it was Crush's bum that was stamped with a message declaring it property of Hasbro and WWF. Pair Crush's lower body with Owen Hart's upper body, and you suddenly have double the fine print and a very rough Rick Steiner.

Owen's figure had the traditional Hasbro tramp-stamp.

Rick's brother Scott got an even bigger assist from Brian Adams. The All-American from Michigan shared an upper and lower body with the Kona Crush figure (as well as Mr. Perfect and the then-unreleased Adam Bomb). 

 
The only other thing noteworthy about these figures is the design of their trunks; in keeping with the early-90s trend of vibrant (i.e. hideous) clothing colors, the Steiners got the pastel treatment both in real-life and in action figure form. It's just a shame that the Rockers had already broken up by the time the Steiners entered the Federation; a battle of the garish wrestling tights could have main-evented any arena in the world.