Posted in: Collectibles, Toys | Tagged: Jakks Classic Superstars, Kyle Peterson, wwe

Jakks Classic Superstars WWE Line Book: A Kyle Peterson Interview

Jakks Classic Superstars fans and WWE collectors have a new, massive book to buy, and we had a chat with author Kyle Peterson about it.

Jakks Classic Superstars are, for many people, still the ultimate collection of WWE action figures, but the history of the line and just how special it was had mostly been lost to time. Not so anymore, as action figure aficionado and popular YouTuber Kyle Peterson took it upon himself to create The Complete Guide To Jakks Classic Superstars. A mammoth tome at around 700 pages, the book features pictures and tidbits about one of the most popular lines in the history of action figures. It even includes a forward and Q&A with the man behind the line, Jeremy Padawer. Why is Kyle qualified for this? Well, he may just be the only person alive with both a mint on card and loose set of the entire line. He was kind enough to chat with us about the creation of the book and more. you can buy the book here or here right now.

Jakks Classic Superstars Gets A Moment In The Spotlight

BC: Kyle, why did you decide to do a book on the Classic Superstars line?

Kyle Peterson: I'm a huge fan of the line going back to the start in 2004. I was at that time in my life when I was kind of on my way out of action figure collecting, and I was just going into college, finances are tighter than they are when you're a full-on adult. So your money only goes so far. Jakks Classic Superstars was just something that just dropped me to my knees the first time I saw them at Toys R Us back in 2004. Many years later, I started a YouTube channel, and I've done a video on Classic Superstars every single Tuesday. By the time it's all said and done, it'll be at five years of content on Jakks Classic Superstars. And I said to myself, this is my favorite line. I had a lot of fun collecting this line. I would like a loose set to go along with my mint-on-card set. I started looking around and found a guy in Chicago, bought his collection, and I said, you know what? I think you could easily make a book out of this. I don't know if there's anybody else in the world that has a mint on card and a loose set. So from there, I said I'm going to do this. I made a test page, basically, a first page, and I wanted to get Jeremy Padawer's approval. And really, the rest was history.

BC: When you approached Jeremy about this and, full disclosure, I was standing there when you pitched it, What did he think of the idea where he saw it? Was he excited?

Kyle Peterson: Yeah, that was one of my main goals. I've been a fan of Jeremy for years since I first knew who Jeremy was. It's always strange that I've never really been one that wants to meet a celebrity. But Jeremy was always, I guess, a celebrity to me. I knew in my heart that Jeremy would be interested, that he'd sign off on something like this, but I just wanted to have his blessings on it because it's such a big project. He's such an important part. He had to be a little bit of a part of this, and Jeremy couldn't have been cooler. Couldn't have been better. He was all in from the get-go. I showed him the sample page of what I was going to do. He agreed to write the forward for the book immediately and that I'd like to do a Q&A for the book as well. He was all on board for that as well, all he said was just tell me what you need. He sent a lot of great pictures for me use in the book that was stuff he would only have, like the original concept art and things like that. I couldn't ask for a better partner.

BC: Just to be clear, every picture in the book is from your collection? How long did that process take?

Kyle Peterson: Yeah. I think there are maybe 2 or 3 pictures that are not mine. And then, in the Jeremy interview, there's a bunch of different pictures. But yeah, there were a couple of figures that I do not own. For instance, there's a rare Argentina El Egante or Giant Gonzalez technically. So, there are a few pictures that I had help to help with from some other collectors. But yeah, 99.9% is all my stuff. How long did it take? It took it took a while. Maybe not as long as people think. I mean, you know, it's roughly about a 700-page book. And there's a lot of pictures in said book. So everything has been on card, everything loose. But I spent pretty much all good seven or eight months, every single night, basically taking pictures in the middle of the night around my day job and everything else. That was kind of my Jack Classic Superstars time. So, all in all, it took me about a year to get everything done.

BC: Where do you display the collection? Like, does the mint on card stuff live in a special place in your collection? Are the loose ones by the mint on card? Does it take up a whole room? What's the situation for the setup there?

Kyle Peterson: Yup. I have always called the Jakks Classic Superstars room. It's a secret room in my house, and it has a bookshelf secret door. I have the whole line, the mint on card set, and then right off the side from that, I have two Billy bookcases, and basically the entire run of classic superstars loose fits in two Billy bookcases.

BC: What are some of the figures that you think people are rediscovering by reading and flipping through the book? Obviously, there's a lot of guys in that set that a company like Mattel hasn't done. Are people like oh, I forgot about this figure?

Kyle Peterson: You know, it's funny is I think a lot of people forget. One thing people forget about, and I think, is going for a lot of things, not just this book, but people are looking at things through a 2024 lens. But if you go back to 2004, how amazing the toy line was for the time, I mean, it was cutting edge. It was like nothing we'd ever seen before. It was really something special because we never received legends figures in the past. This was the first time we ever got legends figures on a consistent basis, and for the first time, they ever got figures for many of them. The one thing I think a lot of people looking at the book and looking back on the line, they forget how deep the line went and how many deep-cut wrestlers there are. Guys like Abdula the Butcher, that you don't get from Mattel, and even kind of a name jobber in Johnny Rod. Like that's a deep cut. That's a deep, you know, taking a chance on a figure. Because let's be honest, Johnny Rodz is not going to sell like a Hulk Hogan or an Ultimate Warrior. But just the different variants and things. The exclusives,  just how deep the line went and how many variants and things there were along the way. I think a lot of people who are casual fans never understood that, and now they can see that all as a one-stop shop.

BC: What do you say to the people who can say that they have a whole Jax Classic Superstar collection because they have your book?

Kyle Peterson: Yeah. And that's kind of the beauty of the book and one of the reasons I wanted to do it. There are a lot of toy lines like… the first one that comes to me is the 80s run of GI Joe figures that is so near and dear to my heart. I would love to have that entire run, but it's just not financially possible. I don't have the space for all that with the vehicles and everything, and that's where those guidebooks come in handy. It feels like I have the collection in my hands, even though I don't. It is a way to have the collection without having the collection. I think a lot of wrestling fans are the same way. They love the history of the lines. This is a way to have the collection without having to spend the money because it's tough to track down a lot of these figures and get them.

BC: You've become a pretty big deal on YouTube now as a toy reviewer and, dare I say, toy influencer. What advice do you have for people who want to start a YouTube channel? And four years ago, happy anniversary, by the way, what would you have told four years ago, Kyle, about your YouTube channel that you know now?

Kyle Peterson: You know, not a whole lot different. I've always been really true to myself. I'm very authentic in my videos. There's no playing a character or anything. That's just me, that's just how I am. That's the only way I could do it. So I think a lot of the stuff I told myself at the beginning would ring true. In the beginning, I didn't think anybody would really be interested. I was just doing it for fun, you know, around Covid times. A friend of mine, David Anderson, kind of talked me into doing the channel. I said, oh, what the heck, I'll do it, see what happens. And it really snowballed into this. But you know, the number one thing, basically, just got to do it. Everybody's got to start somewhere, and your first video is never going to be your best video ever. So you just have to start somewhere. And the other thing is, you know, people say they don't have time for things, and that goes for anything in life. Time's my biggest enemy. There's never enough of it every single day. And I always do say to people, if you want to do something bad enough, you will find the time. Something else can be cut out. But if you wanted to do something, you could find the time. Like with the book, I could only really take these pictures late at night. So I found the time. I made the time for it. You gotta find the time. You gotta put the hustle in, put the work in, and good things will happen.

You can order a copy of the book for yourself here or here.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!