Wrestling companies make merchandise. It’s usually pretty bad, but sometimes, it’s terrible. Welcome to The Merch Table.
Every week, @TomBlargh will look at some of the awful merch that someone expects you to buy. Up this week: FOAM FINGER SPECIAL.
There’s no item of wrestling merchandise that’s rendered so immediately useless once you leave the arena quite like a foam finger. Think about it; while you might not be waving your Joseph Park rally towel once you leave a show, it can still become a serviceable face towel or dish cloth when you get home. DX glow sticks come close to being as worthless, but at least they might come in handy if you’ve got plans to go to a rave later that evening.
A foam finger though? Well, short of being used by Miley Cyrus for entirely unseemly purposes (OH SNAP, TOPICAL REFERENCE), there’s really not much you can do with it unless you’re actually at the show.
However, that gives foam fingers a certain pointless purity that I admire as a professional merchologist, so I think it’s worth looking back at some of the best (but mostly worst) foam fingers in wrestling history. LET’S GET STARTED.
Hulk Hogan foam finger, torso and ear
This is almost a fun little microcosm of the differences between WWF and WCW way back when. Above, you see the Hulk Hogan foam finger that WWF sold. Pretty much what you’d expect, right? Yellow and red, ‘#1’ on the finger, Hulkamania on the palm. Simple but classic
However, once Hulk jumped ship to WCW, they started producing their own foam novelties for the Hulkster and… well, this is what happened:
Your first option was a foam representation of Hulk’s torso, so you could stick your hand up inside him and pretend you’re a twisted giant who likes to tear professional wrestlers in two and use the top half for puppet shows. It’s nothing on the second option though:
That’s right, it’s a giant disembodied ear and hand that looks COMPLETELY UNSETTLING. Whenever there was an option to mess with a working formula to make things terrible, WCW took it, and that’s why we miss them. Continue reading