Heels and Faces Matt Cardona Zombie Sailor Toys Review

Matt Cardona has made himself one of the biggest figures in the world of pro wrestling…figures. Along with Brian Myers, the former Zack Ryder are the stars of the Major Wrestling Figure Podcast.

It was only natural that after Cardona was no longer part of the WWE he be one of the first to be in a new line of indie Hasbro style retros.

As I’ll have covered in the other reviews of the Zombie Sailor Toys figures in the Heels and Faces line, the detail on this is great. The likeness of Matt Cardona is spot on compared to the Mattel Retro Zack Ryder figure that came out a few years ago. It’s the same man, and both lines of figures are designed to be in the retro Hasbro WWF style, but only this new figure really looks like him.

This isn’t to be negative about the official WWE Retros, but they always struck me as being a step down from what the original Hasbro figures were.

This Matt Cardona is designed with the classic slam pose which was used for the original Hulk Hogan, and was also used for other figures including Lex Luger, Warlord, British Bulldog and Ultimate Warrior. You may note that these are all power wrestlers and although Matt has got into the best shape of his career since leaving WWE, he isn’t instantly who you’d think would be in the same power category as the other guys.

And this is just an observation. I also noted that the Major Bendies figures I reviewed were all overly jakked compared to the other WWF Bend ‘Ems figures from back in the day. I chalk this one down to indie wrestlers probably wanting to look as good as possible in their figs. And this isn’t a criticism, just fun to see the larger than life modern persona of Cardona getting a larger than life build. The arms, back and shoulders are huge, but doesn’t cross into being silly, but are more noticeable as it’s always been a quirk of the retro figures to have shorter than normal legs.

The design of the wrestling gear is spot on and there’s a lot of extra little logos and symbols exactly as Cardona wears these days. With Matt being Mr Wrestling Figure, we should expect more and more figures and variants to release in time. There’s already been at least one or maybe two new figures shown off from Zombie Sailor Toys of Matt, and with the Major Bendies, and a couple others from other toy makers, it looks to be Matt Mania for quite some time.

The packaging is exactly what you’d hope for from a retro figure, with the same size and shape card, and lots of familiar elements to the layout. It’s great that they include the original design drawing on the back of the Heels and Faces cards as they show you how the figures have gone from initial concept through to the final production.

Conclusion

This is another excellent figure from Zombie Sailor Toys and something of a redemption for Matt Cardona/Zack Ryder whose WWE Retro was fine, but not perfect. It’s great to see that someone who does so much in building the pro wrestling figures community gets a worthy retro figure, which ironically he wouldn’t have got if he’d still been in WWE.

You can get loads more wrestling articles in the wrestling section of the site, and loads more action figure articles in the Toys and Collectibles section. Don’t forget to check out the Slam Jam Wrestling comedy panel show on the Extreme Improv XStreamed YouTube Channel