Punching Day: The Official WWF Merchandise Catalog 🌭

Are you ready for the most Official wrestling products from 30 years ago, brother!?

Ok, so I should probably preface this by saying I'm not the world's biggest wrestling fan. My experience with professional wrestling is that I, along with all midwestern women, have dated a guy who owned these pants (left):

Dating a guy who owns these pants was a right of passage for teenage girls in the '90s. It was a bad idea to do it, but coming out the other side made you think about the choices you'd made up until that point, and in the end, you are spiritually cleansed by the WWF pants boy.

Isn't it kind of insane that in the '90s, if you wanted these hideous pants, you had to write a letter to a man in Stamford, Connecticut, and beg him to give them to you? He could say no. Honestly, he should say no if he has any respect for pants. You just mailed off your credit card number to a stranger and hoped that in several weeks or months on an unnamed day, there would be ugly pants in the mail.

In addition to ugly pants, the WWF merchandise catalog also sold Hulk Hogan's patented flimsy shirts. Hulk Hogan is the last guy you should be taking shirt buying advice from if you ask me. He's constantly proving that the shirts he chooses to purchase are inadequate, and now he's selling them to you?

Plus, he's just a lousy shirt model in general. It's hard to tell if that shirt is cute or not when he's actively ripping it off of his body. Some poor photographer was probably behind the scenes begging him, "no, Hulk; you're modeling the shirt, please don't rip it up...NO, aw man. We've done this thirty-six times, my dude! Mike, can we bring in the sex gorilla again to calm this fucking guy down?"

It's not just The Hulkster who isn't the best merch model the WWF has to offer. There's this thing that a bunch of them do I've come to call Disassociated Wrestling Face. It's where their eyes are wide open, and their mouths are sort of smiling, but they also look like they're trying to forget a nightmare where their mother was a nude bird person who ate their face.

Not all wrestlers had to leave their bodies and see the terror dimension in order to get their pictures taken. Someone gave Hacksaw Jim Duggan a two-by-four and told him to look like a sassy little princess who just lost a pog tournament, and damn he took the note.

You have to admire that not only is he killing that pose, but he's wearing a shirt with a caricature of himself in the exact same pose, but in that picture, he's not wearing a shirt. Probably because if he was, it would have to have a tinier picture of him in that same pose on it, and so on, and so forth, creating a Jim Duggan fractal that goes on until infinity. This seemingly absurd choice by The Official WWF Merchandise Catalog may have prevented all of reality from spiraling into the chests of endless Hacksaw Jim Duggans.

I freely admit that I might enjoy some of these shirts more if I knew a single thing about wrestling, but since I don't, I've inferred some stuff on my own while looking through the magazine. There's a guy whose whole thing is that he has a parrot, and frankly, I think he fucking rules, but then there's a guy whose whole deal is that he has a snake, but he doesn't always have the snake, and that makes me think him and the snake aren't really that good of friends, so I don't like him.

What the hell is this? Was the snake sick that day? You can't call yourself Jake The Snake Roberts and then show up without a snake. You're just Jake Awake Roberts, a normal guy who's happy to have woken up today in this sweet, beautiful world, and that's a terrible wrestling gimmick.

Here he is, holding his arms wide, ready for a snake to be photoshopped in, but no! Someone felt Jake could hang without the snake. Well, guess what? He can't. I usually don't like seeing snakes, but now I've never been so angry to not see a snake in my entire life.

Even though using the wrestlers as models wasn't always ideal, it was somehow more normal than the earlier WWF merchandise catalogs, which tried to use regular JCPenney photo studio models for their merch, and you could hardcore tell that these people had no idea what Hulkamania was, but they would gladly donate to finding a cure if they didn't have to wear such an ugly hat. Look at this goddamn fucking hat:

Shirts weren't the only thing on offer in the WWF merchandise catalog. They also sold everything you've ever seen at a garage sale and thought, aw, I'm sad that exists. For example, these chairs that teach children to sit in strange men's laps...

... or this clearly haunted Hulk Hogan painting that's eyes will follow you no matter where you are in your Victorian mansion covered in WWF artwork:

Can you imagine the origin of this monstrosity-- that someone looked at Hulk Hogan and thought, good, but we need to make his eyes crazier? It's important to note that high as shit Hulk Hogan Fabric Art is not a poster. They sell tons of posters. This is art.

"This tapestry, fabric art if you will, should look like Hulk is on a drug so strong it hasn't been invented yet. Like, someone traveled from the year 2243, and all they brought with them was super LSD, and that is what the Hulk is on. Yes. Yes, PERFECT."

Among the other finer things the WWF catalog has to offer, there's also jewelry. Imagine it's Valentine's day; a man pulls out a little black velvet box and slides it across the restaurant table to his wife. She opens it, sheds a single tear and yells, "The family that I live for only breathes the air that smells of combat!" Then uses her new Ultimate Warrior necklace to strangle the hostess. I know what you're thinking-- that can't be a legal move! But anything is legal with a 14K gold plated Ultimate Warrior necklace.

There should really be a cap on who is allowed to wear Ultimate Warrior merchandise. This baby is out here calling himself The Ultimate Warrior, and I can tell the family this little shit lives for barely breathes the air that smells of combat at all.

I highly doubt anyone who wears a lime green fanny pack is The Ultimate Warrior. If you're so strong, why can't you leave your chapstick and wallet at home and purchase goods through battle trials alone? More like ULTIMATE ASSHOLE.

I had no idea what a huge celebrity Hulk Hogan was in the WWF world until I started going through this catalog. Sure, every few pages you might see an Ultimate Warrior fitted sheet or pregnancy test, but you can tell they knew these were a harder sell than the Hulk Hogan products being torn from Hulk Hogan's torso on every page. For instance, look how they talk up this Ultimate Warrior Pillow:

"The Ultimate Warrior will brighten any room" is a pretty good pitch. The Hulk Hogan throw pillow just says, "decorate your room in the spirit of Hulk Hogan's python power with this pillow." It has Hulk Hogan on it, you idiot. That's the entire pitch.

Also, he has python power now? What does that mean? Did he beat up Jake The Snake and take his one thing?

You know what, don't tell me. I'm calling it a night. If you need me I’ll be resting peacefully underneath this picture of a man demonstrating how flimsy his shirt is.

Liddy tweets from a Hulkamania WWF Slumber Tent on Twitter.