The Royal King

It's been a full month of Mattel here in May on the blog. We've already seen some royalty, but it's time to end it all with The Kingdom of the Madness. In fact, this is no ordinary Macho King, this is how he appeared at a truly royal event nearly thirty years ago. It's an attire that has never before been produced in action figure form and will hopefully open the doors for similarly designed Randy Savage figures in the future.

Earlier this year Mattel released yet another retailer exclusive series with distribution issues. This time it was a Royal Rumble series distributed (yeah...) to Target stores. While Bobby Lashley, Lita, and The Rock were solid entries for many, the only one that interested me was Macho King Randy Savage. Long a fan of this brief era in the career of the Macho Man, this "King" is different. Most of the figures reflecting his "regal" splendor have included the crown. The only one that hadn't was the  first Mattel figure of Randy Savage, reviewed here nearly a decade ago. That one came from the final bout of the Macho King and was in one of his colorful "cowboy" outfits that continued as part of his attire when he returned to being the more common Macho Man.

This design is from the 1991 Royal Rumble. Savage ended up not even competing at the event, though he did play a big part in it. After shenanigans involving Sensational Queen Sherri earlier in the evening, Savage would go on to smash both a production light and his scepter over the head of the Ultimate Warrior during his title match with Sgt. Slaughter thus causing the former to lose the WWF Championship. Both of those foreign objects are included here, as are a "Macho King" bandana, sunglasses, and an extra pair of hands which we'll revisit here shortly. While Savage was slated to be a participant in the Royal Rumble match itself, he was "ultimately" kept from the bout.

Honestly, the packaging for this Royal Rumble series is fairly drab. While it may work for the other three in the set, Macho King would've looked far better in a box similar to that of the Elite Flashback figures. Can you imagine how great it would've looked in the box next to the Rumble '91 Warrior figure from one of the Flashback sets? The figures are from the same match, but sadly that isn't how these releases work.

The figure itself is superb and probably should've been part of the main line. There hasn't been an Elite Macho King figure in years, and Savage appeals to all, as he always has. Why shove him into an exclusive set? The face sculpt seems to be new and features a toothy grimace very reminiscent of Savage. The paint apps are striking, though a bit sloppy on mine as has been an issue as of late with other figures. I'm hoping that this Savage design with the shirt is reused again down the line in different colors. While we have had a ton of figures of the Macho Man, what could a few more colorful variations hurt? I guarantee they would sell better than the endless Seth Rollins clogging up pegs.

The aforementioned accessories are a big part of the appeal. The scepter was also released with the Rumble '91 Warrior though it has more detailed paint apps this time around. It "breaks" just as it did in the original release and to my recollection was only used at the '91 Rumble for that sole purpose. The real one seemed to be made of plastic in order to break and is not the more common scepter presented by Ted DiBiase to Savage at his coronation. The lamp is bigger than the actual one at the event and has been included in sets before, but it's a fun touch. The gem here is that we finally have pointing hands to alternate on a Randy Savage figure. Who pointed more? I can't think of anyone.

This is a winner. Again, it's a shame that it was in a poorly distributed retailer exclusive series, but I'm not taking anything away from the figure for that. If there's a 2020 Figure of the Year candidate, this would be it so far. With the upcoming new Legends series being available for online pre-order, perhaps the days of these hard-to-get exclusives are slowly coming to an end. We can hope. While I just championed the Mattel product with a month's worth of blog entries, my frustrations were made clear. Perhaps for the 2021 installment of "Mattel May" we'll be celebrating the ease of obtaining these great figures upon release.

We can hope.