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Whatever their other relative merits, there's one area in which wrestling figures outshine the competition: accessories. Superhero fans get excited when a Punisher figure has more than two guns, and wrestling toys are out here coming with full-size dumpsters to throw each other into. The current pinnacle of this trend has to be the WWE Wrekkin' Slam Mobile.
Retailing for about $30 US (though with sales pretty regularly bringing that price down a bit), the Slam Mobile is a full and complete 6-7" scale sports car, with opening doors and trunk, rolling wheels, and seating for two. Plus, it's fully destructible.
Putting a vehicle on a wrestling show is like putting a gun on Checkhov's mantlepiece: eventually, something bad is going to happen. Someone is going to get thrown into it, chased down by it, have the door
repeatedly slammed on their arm, have something offensive to them spraypainted on the hood, it's going to get flipped over, stolen, smashed with a sledgehammer, have concrete poured into it... or maybe someone will get into it and then, after enough time to scramble out the other side off-camera, it will explode, scaring and confusing the monstrously dimwitted. The point is, wrestlers and machines just don't mix.
The Slam Mobile can definitely take some heavy abuse. Starting from the front, the bumper can be removed, the hood crumples in the center and the halves pulled off, the windshield comes off in two pieces,
the doors are removable, the steering wheel can be ripped out of place, both seats can be dislodged and tossed aside, and the trunk lid comes off. The result is a pile of parts and a rather sparse-looking ride.
The set comes with a figure of Braun Strowman, which is fine (he has a running gag of flipping things over, including an ambulance, a limousine, and a semi-truck), but it's just a Basic figure, not Elite, and we'd have been fine to see this set sold five bucks cheaper without him in it. But that said, we totally get the reasoning behind his inclusion: the WWE Wrekkin' subline is about pairing characters with weaponized accessories, and it would probably be a hard sell to get parents to buy a car in a box by itself with no wrestler in there. It's just marketing, and no other wrestler working right now is a better pair for a breakable car than Strowman.
Even if you don't want to utilize the destroyable portions, this is a good toy car. It's a STBLDF Camaro, bright red with a black hood. The jagged WW logo is molded on the hood; in the promo pictures,
it's painted white, but on the final product it's left the same color as the rest of the bonnet, making it less obtrusive. The lights are just done as stickers, rather than being molded and painted, and there's a license plate reading "THZHNDS," clearly referencing Braun's familiar catchphrase, "the zounds?!" (He shouts it at the end of promos when he's surprised by something said to him or something happening nearby.) (We assume.)
Basically, the WWE Wrekkin' Slam Mobile is a fun accessory for lots of figures. Yes, it's great if you like the current WWE, but if you don't? Have Hulk smash Abomination with it. Grab some Street Fighter toys and play "Bonus Stage." Me, I just wanted to give The Stig something to drive. This is a fun piece for lots of collections!
-- 01/22/20
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