Robot Claw

Amongst many other wonderful things, SMC sent me two old packs of trading cards for Christmas. I opened them today!

These Jaws cards have been on the blog before, but they’re great so let’s feature them again. Released in 1983 these were 3D cards where every pack came with a tiny pair of red/blue 3D ‘glasses’!

Interestingly the gum stick was packaged between cards, but amazingly it didn’t adhere to any of them and slid right out without causing any damage. It was of course inedible and had the consistency of hard plastic.

The cards themselves have a remarkable good level of 3D when viewed through the glasses, and I imagine were a genuine treat for kids when they bought them back then. We all know the film is trash, but since Topps chose to use illustrations rather than movie stills they could have applied this 3D method to any other card set. 3D Star Wars cards in 1983 would have blown my mind!

The second pack she sent was quite special since I’d been looking for a pack of these for years. It’s another video game themed set from 1982, and as you can see is based on everyone’s favorite Puck Man!

The gum looked like this, and was absolutely caked in fine flour! This made the interior dusty, but at least meant it hadn’t stuck to a card. Obviously I didn’t eat it!

Each pack contains 3 sticker cards and three game cards. The above shows the front and back of a sticker card, and the art here is typical of the others: dreadful. But do they still stick? No they don’t, which is a shame since they would have been great on postcards 🙂

The scratch off cards are impressively designed, but no longer work. The scratchable material has concretized over the years and is irremovable without also removing the underlying card. No high score for me!

Back in 1982 I would have loved these. Scratch-offs were almost unknown in Australia in those days, and stickers are always fun. Did I ever see or buy a pack back then? I can’t recall.

Thanks Sue; these were great 🙂

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 27th, 2021 at 8:38 am and is filed under Blog, Collecting, Games, History, Otaku, Trading Cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.