eBay Today: Is Bigger Always Better? Posted by Rich on May 17, 2007 at 12:24 AM CST: If you're a fan of McFarlane's Sports Picks, you've probably seen or even collected items from its predecessor line, Starting Lineup. Starting Lineup was released in 1988 and was the first toy line to offer action figures of prominent athletes. Though its bread-and-butter revolved around the big 4 -- baseball, basketball, football and hockey -– it wasn't uncommon to see an occasional prize-fighter, decathelete or golfer in the SLU mix. Sometimes this gamble payed off and other times it didn't. Don't say we didn't tell you we wouldn't be surprised to get a store report finding speed-skater Dan Jansen's figure still warming the pegs of your local Toys R Us, albeit over a decade since its release. But as common as some figures were, others weren't so easy to come by. In it's debut year, Staring Lineup was more of a toy-isle legend then a reality since finding figures at retail was nearly impossible. This included the figure of Pittsburgh Pirates wire-framed, 5-tool, phenom Barry Bonds, who made his major league debut as the rookie-of-the-year two years prior. Ironically, like the evolution from Starting Lineup to its modern day equivalents, such as Sports Picks, Bonds himself has become larger, bulkier and better defined. For the record, we're not accusing anyone at McFarlane of pumping anything illegal into their toys, we're just wondering how they get them so incredibly detailed. Starting Lineup was finally benched in 2001, while Bonds still battles controversy in slugging away at Hank Aaron's career home-run record. To purists the essence of the original maybe a difficult thing to replace, but just as records are meant to be broken, change - though seemingly improbable at times - is inevitable. 1988 SLU Starting Lineup Barry Bonds Rc AFA 80 010