Category: Retro

Ultraman Cards (Series Three)

October 7, 2025

This is the third series of Ultraman cards from RRParks, which once again I got via Kickstarter. This set covers the third Ultraman series, ‘The Return Of Ultraman’ which these days is called Ultraman Jack. The box has been aging in a closet for over a year now, and it was finally time to open it!

The Kickstarter sold out instantly (almost literally: it reached its funding budget in under a half hour) and I’m still amazed that the best Ultraman card sets ever come from a small independent American company (which may even be a single man)!

As with previous sets about a half of the 300-odd cards in the set are story cards, kaiju (monster) cards and reproductions of the original art cards. These are all done well, and once again I’m impressed by the quality of the summaries on the backs of the story cards (one for each episode).

There are four subsets of art cards by the same artists. Included in each box are full sets of most of the cards, but the special chase cards (like the pearlescent art cards in the lower left) are not guaranteed.

The kaiju cards have puzzles on the back, and there’s six different puzzles in total. There’s also a subset of 3D puzzles which I didn’t complete in my box:

Speaking of 3D, once again the box came with a set of glasses to view the 18 different 3D cards:

These are well done and the 3D effect is very good. This technology may be old these days, but it’s still effective and I think more card sets should use it.

As far as chase cards go, I hit the lottery with this box, getting far more limited cards than in my boxes for series one or two (which I didn’t blog). My metal card is shown above, and shows a nice render of Jack flying in the sky.

I got half of the 12 lenticular cards (compared to only one in my previous box), and one ‘Jumbo lenticular’ was included as a box topper:

I also got two printing plates, which are the actual metal plates used to print the cards. In each case I got black ink plates, one for card 124 of the story set and one for the back of one of the 3D cards. Here they are shown alongside the cards they were used to print:

I find these fascinating, since I assume the cards are printed in large sheets and therefore the printing plates must be cut before being included in packs. Each plate is of course unique, but I wonder how many exist in total?

I was very lucky to get three original art cards. These are blank cards on which artists have drawn or painted an ultra character, and the three I got are shown above.

The one in bottom right is most impressive and seems to have been painted with some sort of textured paint. These are of course all unique, and since none of my three are included in the reduction art cards, I’m sure there’s a lot of them. I wonder how many?

The rarest type of card is the autograph, and once again I’m amazed a tiny independent American card manufacturer was able to get stars from this 60-year-old series to sign cards. They are extremely rare though – I read some are limited to fewer than 5 cards – and I believe they’re only included in cases of multiple boxes, which makes sense.

This is a great card set and I had a lot of fun opening it. As it turns out the impetus to do so was the arrival of my series four box, which will now sit waiting in a closet until next years (presumed) series five 🙂

The Fortress Of Necross

July 21, 2025

Rewind back to a typical day in the life of other me in Japan in 1987. I’d been playing Famicom Dragon Quest all day long and was heading to the game center near the station to play the new game Rastan that I’d read about in the latest issue of Comptiq. On the way I stopped at the konbini to grab a snack and saw this:

It’s called ‘Fortress Of Necross‘ and if the name alone didn’t win me over the art and words ‘Role Playing’ certainly did. I immediately bought it and found a little bag of chocolates inside as well as a smaller inner box containing cards and a plastic toy.

I quickly realized this was a heavily RPG-inspired toy series, and it reminded me of many of my other interests such as the Famicom games I was playing (Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Zelda) or especially my beloved TRPGs including Fighting Fantasy and Sword World. I quickly bought more boxes and built up a collection, learned more about the lore of the evil necromancer Necross and the heroes trying to defeat him, and even played the game utilizing the cards that came with the figures.

I was absolutely hooked! These toys seemed like they were made just for me.

Of course back in 1987 I knew nothing about what was being sold 7500 kilometers away and my snack choices never came with any sort of toy. I didn’t learn of the existence of these toys until almost three decades later.

The figures are about an inch tall, and include the good-aligned hero characters (about 8 per series) and many evil guys including Necross and his generals. The figures were packed randomly, and with 40 different ones available collecting them all would have been quite a challenge! They were massively successful, and over the next decade Lotte released 8 series – 320 figures in total.

As the line continued it began to include characters not restricted to standard sword and sorcery fantasy, including robots and gods, and the last set was even based around the Cthulhu mythos:

These are beautifully designed and sculpted little figures, and had these been available to 15-year-old me I would have gone mad for them. A few years ago I decided to get a few for myself as nostalgia for the other me that never existed.

This turned out to be easier said than done since these little guys are very collectible and prices can be eye-opening. Finally, during this past trip to Japan I found a few for cheap and finally began my ‘collection’:

Let’s look at each of these in order:

First we have Wood King (from the third series) who seems like a strong guy since his stats are high and his bio says he is a Demon King. The game involved drawing enemies randomly from a bag and getting progressively stronger as you defeat them, but I think this guy would be one you wouldn’t want to draw early! Each monster also came with an item that can be used to help defeat other monsters.

The Numelian (second series) is a weak monster that is apparently a ‘friend of the octopus’. He comes with a compass that helps defeat a Tengu monster. His figure is fairly small (about 2cm) and wonderful detailed for its size.

And lastly we have the Worm (third series) which is a giant worm that helps fertilize the magical woods. It seems to be of average strength.

As this toy line continued, various special features were introduced. This included some figures also being available in transparent plastic (such as my Wood King and Worm), to colour-changing plastic and eventually figures with removable plastic ‘gems’. It seems some of these fancier versions are especially rare and collectible, and I’ve seen examples well over $100 (for a single figure) in Japanese shops.

Necross toys are an example of keshi, or miniature plastic/rubber figurines. Many lines exist, and three are shown above: Kinnukiman (‘Ultimate MUSCLE’ in the west), Villgust and Monster In My Pocket. I actually recall one of the latter at Charlestown Square newsagent sometime in the early 1990s. I believe it was a dinosaur and I liked it, but I have no memory of what I did with it.

While these sorts of toys had their heyday in the 1990s, they’re far from dead. These days they have been returning in Japanese gacha machines – I’ve got some Ultraman versions – and there are blind-boxed Godzilla ones as well. Lots of indie creators make and sell them, and there’s even been some revivals in the west. Nostalgia for the old ones seems to be picking up as well, and here’s a (1 inch high) metal anniversary version of a Kinnukiman figure that I also obtained from a gacha machine:

I very much doubt I’ll ever buy any more Necross figures, but I’m happy to now own the three I do. They’re a glimpse into the memories of the other me that paradoxically seems to become closer the further away those years become.

Now excuse me; I’m going back to my other childhood, during summer 1987 in Japan. I’m home from the game center, my pocket full of Necross toys, and it’s time to watch the latest episode of Kamen Rider Black… long, long ago in the 20th Century…

90s-Era Trading Cards

April 20, 2025

Last year I purchased four old packs of trading cards. They’ve been aging for over six months now and it’s time to open them and see what’s inside…

Tools released these The Rocketeer cards in 1992 and they’re typical of most of their series from that era. The plastic wrapper had become brittle and disintegrated a bit upon opening.

The pack contained the eight photo cards shown above, and they’re all a bit dark and muddy to my eye. Interestingly I saw this film for the first time last year, didn’t think it was very good, and I would have had zero interest in these cards upon release even were I still buying cards then.

The backs of the cards are a little difficult to read due to lack of ink. All of them were like this; maybe it was a production error? As I’ve said before I prefer the synopsis extracts on the backs of sets like this, although for this film I wonder how many read them?

There was a single (non die-cut) sticker in the pack as well, and it’s this somewhat boring movie poster style art. The adhesive had completely failed after 33 years, and when I peeled it off it wouldn’t stick to anything.

Overall a by-the-books set for a somewhat mundane film. I don’t think too many were enthusiastic for these cards when they released.

I’ve not heard of ‘Star Pics’, the company who released these Alien 3 cards, also in 1992. This was a famously troubled film production, and the result divides fans to this day.

Much like the previous packs (and admittedly the film), the cards are muddy and quite ugly. They’re also thin and flimsy, which indicate a low budget product. The screenshots are a bit blurry, which is unfortunate considering they would have been the feature cards of the set.

The backs are ugly and hard to read, but they tell a first-person account of the events of the film. An interesting approach that I think works well, but I wish the design had been more suitable for the theme.

Like other early 90s sets there’s no chase cards, and the budget feel of the material is probably indicative of the publisher. But this set is notably worse than the original Topps Alien set from over a decade earlier, which shouldn’t have been the case.

From 1996, this is a pack of Independence Day cards from Topps. We’re in the chase card era now, and the wrappers says I have a 1 in 9 chance of a hologram card!

I didn’t get one. The above were the six cards in the pack, and you can see they’re in a 16:9 aspect ratio which Topps used for their ‘Widevision’ cards for several years back then.

This is a very poor set. The screenshots are all blurry and pixilated, which is unforgivable in a set that is focused around displaying the images at a larger size. Some of the cards even look like they were photographs of a screen, rather than taken from film stock. Awful.

Furthermore, every card in the pack had ‘edge wear’ along the bottoms, which was likely caused by the machines that cut them. This is of no matter to me now since they’re going directly into the recycling bin, but imagine paying a premium for these packs 29 years ago and finding all the cards were damaged?

A very disappointing product, and another example of how Topps had fallen by the mid 90s.

I got this 1990 Classic WWF pack for KLS about a year ago and today is Wrestlemania so it seemed a good day to finally open it. She’s got a large collection of wrestling cards but since Topps sets have become overpriced she no longer buys any new ones.

Every card in her pack was A-rank wrestling royalty, which is amazing considering the size of the set (>130 cards)! How are there no forgotten or C-rank guys here?

The answer was poor collation. In her 15 cards she actually got 1-14 (and 136), and since card sets like this usually put the ‘big guys’ at the front, she got all the biggest stars. This is objectively bad collation, but in this case it ended up giving her a dream pack 🙂

The photos and bios are good, and the cards sturdy and well cut. This is a high quality product, and I imagine was quite popular with wrestling fans 35 years ago. I’m curious about the other 120 cards, but considering the steep price of the individual packs these days (I paid $10) I’m sure we’ll never open another.

I’ve still got a few more packs stashed away aging in a closet, and three unopened boxes of 1980s era cards. Over the summer I’m sure I’ll finally open one of them 🙂

Robot Claw