Do you remember the NBA Action Figures starting lineup? They’re back – with NFTs
by James · September 22, 2022
In short
- Hasbro is rebooting its Starting Lineup sports toy line with new figures that include NFT trading cards.
- The line will be relaunched with NBA stars such as LeBron James and Stephen Curry.
Starting Lineup action figures were a hit in the 1980s and ’90s, delivering collectible toy versions of popular athletes from the worlds of basketball, football and baseball, among others. Now, more than 20 years after they were last mass-produced, Hasbro is reviving the brand with expensive new versions—and they come with NFT exchange card.
Hasbro opened pre-orders today for its first new line-up Starting line-up games focused on the NBA, with stars like LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo in the mix. Each six-inch figure is significantly more poseable than the old toys, but they’re also much more expensive: they sell for $50 a pop.
But that purchase price doesn’t just include the toy and a stand to keep it in the air—the package also comes with a Panini NFT trading card. The trading card brand operates its own private blockchain networkand has previously released digital NFT cards based on the NBA, NFL, Ultimate Fighting Championship and other sports leagues.
Each trading card NFT that comes with a Starting Lineup toy has different rarity levels – so a toy buyer could just get a regular NFT card, but they could also end up with a rarer red, green or blue edition of the card with slightly different artwork. And each player has a gold NFT that is limited to just one card over the entire run.
An NFT is a blockchain token which represents ownership of an item and can apply to things like digital trading cards, other sports collectibles, profile pictures and video game merchandise. The NFT market finally rose during 2021 generating $25 billion in trade volume.
Whether the rarer NFTs end up with higher resale prices on Panini’s own secondary market remains to be seen – but given the demand for rare NBA Top Shot NFTs previously, for example, the NFT hunt could be a compelling aspect of the new Starting Lineup value for some collectors.
The new Starting Lineup games were announced earlier this year in partnership with Fanatics, the sporting goods giant. Fanatics has its own NFT startup i Candy Digitalwhich has Major League Baseball licensehowever, these Panini NFT trading cards are not issued through Candy’s platform.
Hasbro, the 99-year-old toy brand, has played in the NFT space in the past, including bringing brands like Power Rangers and My Little Pony into the space. In addition, Hasbro collaborated with the popular NFT project World of Women to release a specially branded version of the board game, Monopoly.
