Former Product Design Manager for LJN Toys Bill Stanhope shares his experiences dealing with both the WWF and Vince McMahon regarding LJN WWF action figures.
In an interview with Fightful owner Jimmy Van, Stanhope spoke of the interactions he had with both McMahon and the wrestlers throughout the years LJN and WWF worked together. Stanhope noted that the company has been largely happy with a lot of the designs made for the WWF action figures with only a few of them needing to be re-worked. Stanhope spoke about how wrestlers would not only come to the New York Toy Fair as well as Christmas parties hosted by LJN.
“Anytime we were doing the characters, we would go over to Stamford, Connecticut to the WWF and he would look at the wrestlers and only a couple of times did we have to re-do the characters. Every so often, they didn’t like the sculpting or the post and we had to re-do somebody, but yeah we would meet with [McMahon] at TV commercials. I met a bunch of the wrestlers. We went to some of the wrestling events. We had them come at our Christmas parties that LJN would have and at the New York Toy Fair. We would have a different wrestler each day,” Stanhope said.
Although Stanhope didn’t have a crazy personal story about McMahon, Stanhope did say working with the wrestlers was a good experience and none of the people he worked with gave him a hard time.
Stanhope said he had met with McMahon multiple times and even admitted that he was a little intimidated by him. Stanhope added that he was able to notice WWF's growth through the years by the company’s offices growing larger in size.
“He seemed very professional to me. He was a little intimidating, he’s a big guy. I was a guy in my 20s and all of this was pretty intimidating. I would meet him in his office and they went from a small office in Stamford to a much larger building in Stamford so you can see how well they were doing,” Stanhope said.
You can check out the full interview in the video at the top of the page. If you use any of the quotes above, please give a H/T to Fightful and credit Fightful for the transcription.
