They first arrived in the late ‘80s. They went away for a long time. And now they’re coming back.
Hasbro has announced that, starting in 2023, the Starting Lineup collection of NFL figures will return, thanks to deals with the league, the NFL Players Association, and Fanatics.
The Starting Lineup figures were produced from 1988 through 2000. Here’s the full list collection.
The series eventually yielded to the McFarlane brand of highly detailed figures (in the earliest years, they had a hard time getting the facemasks to look, you know, not melted). But the McFarlane line quietly expired in 2019, or thereabouts.
There’s definitely a market for this kind of thing, and it’s amazing that so many years have passed with no such products on the market. Maybe the league wanted too much. Maybe the union wanted too much. Regardless, they managed to do a deal and, come next year, the Starting Lineup figures will be back.