We drove back to Newcastle yesterday, and I’m now at mum’s. I won’t blog as frequently here, but right now I’m going to showcase some exclusively Australian trading cards games I obtained from reputable sellers at a location in Sydney. I won’t tell to exactly where this market is, but it rhymes with ‘Paddy’s Markets’ 😉
Let’s begin with Lilo & Stitch. This trading card game – which isn’t a real product and only the product of smugglers – labels itself as ‘new’ and seems to be based around a larger Lilo universe that I have no knowledge or indeed interest of.
The pack – which cost me $3 – contained 8 cards, each featuring a loveable character from the franchise. All cards have attack and defense values and a rock/paper/scissors mark so this can be played multiple ways by even imbeciles. Amusingly the statistics are ludicrously inflated: with most in the high hundreds of thousands.
The front of each card is foiled with a nifty starburst effect, but the backs (see the first pic) are matte and uncoated and I imagine if you got these wet they’d ruin quickly. Quite a risky feature considering these would have been shipped to Australia on galleons from the far east!
This is of course a worthless product as a game, but intriguing for hardcore Stitch fans. My analytical brain tells me this is probably influenced by Lorcana, but I think that may be giving the bootleggers too much credit.
I’m not a fan of Demon Slayer – I found the characters insipid – but in the interests of research I had to buy this illicit card pack. Much like the above, this cost $3 at the blackest of markets.
Were I a betting man I’d suggest these were produced at the very same factory the previous cards were (and these in fact) since the size, card stock, print quality and foil effect are identical. That is except for one card – top left in the above photo – which mysteriously has a different foiling from all the others.
The pack contained seven cards, and as a game this seems even simpler than Stitch since each card only has attack and defense values. There’s some flavour text in the form of attack names (“Breath of Rain in Love with Cats“?) but this has no bearing on play. A worthless game therefore, albeit about a very popular series.
It’s worth noting these are in English – not Japanese – and I do wonder if the audience for this game is as large in occidental ports? Maybe the bootleggers miscalculated spending their valuable production time on this one?
Now this is a more marketable illegal product! Everyone loves Spider-Man, and who wouldn’t want a pack of game cards for a film the sequel of which seems like it’s been delayed forever?
Once again we have the same type of cards produced at the same factory using the same materials. However these ones are all slightly bent, and some of them were dirty! This suggests the factory was in somewhere like Tortuga, and indeed I can almost smell the rum on the cards.
Gamewise (I know, I know…) these adhere closely to the system introduced by Stitch and I think I can confidently say they have the same game system and can therefore be played together as one weird multiversal TCG.
Players that attempt this should be careful: with the exception of Ultimate Spider-Man all the cards in this pack had much lower atk/def values and would be effortlessly defeated by any of the Stitch cards!
While this is another worthless product, it’s also Spider-Man which means of interest to collectors. I don’t doubt they would like a pack or two for amusement value.
One of the hottest brands out there right now is undoubtedly K-Pop Demon Hunters and in a shocking upset the first to market with a TCG are the same pirates that produced everything else I’ve shown today!
It’s all the same again as Stitch and Spider-Man, only the statistics on these cards have a wider variance, with some weaker than any in Spider-Man and others so strong to be able to defeat anything from any previous pack.
I know you’ll be shocked to hear that (unlike all the others I’ve opened so far) the QC on these cards is atrocious! Not only is the foil layer lifting on a couple of them, but three had serious damage to the edges. Not only would this make them illegal in a sanctioned tournament, but it would greatly reduce their value if sent for grading. Shame on you, pirate TCG bootleggers!
And that’s all I’ve found (so far) in the category of bootleg trading card games… but I do have this other mysterious box:
This was found in a cavernous dollar store in Orange and purchased from a lady whose face had never known a smile. It’s about as big as a box of cigarettes, and this is what was inside:
The box label was correct: it contained exactly 60 cards and 36 stickers. This isn’t a game, so the cards are just pictures, but they’re all different and the print quality is excellent:
There’s no foil effect and the backs (the top left card above) are matte, but if you’re a fan I think these would be a good buy for the price.
However if you’re a Saja Boys stan, step back! These are the Huntrix girls only, which makes me wonder if there was another pack with the boys in it?
And as for the stickers… watch your postcards 🙂
