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Retro Wax Packs (Part 3)

Saturday, May 7th, 2022

It’s time to open the last five retro card packs that I got for my birthday. Once again, this set includes some I would have bought myself as a kid.

Superman 2 (Topps, 1980)

This is a good set. For starters each pack is stuffed with cards – 12 in total including the sticker:

The cards depict a high amount of action scenes are included (always a positive to a young buyer) and I love the character and die-cut sticker cards:

The backs however are a little disappointing. The plot is relegated to a summary on 15 cards, a few others had random info about the film, and the rest were puzzle cards from at least four puzzles. I prefer detailed plot summaries describing the scene on the front of the card, which Topps was still doing in 1980 although obviously not for this set:

Of note is the gum: It’s easily the biggest I’ve seen in any pack I’ve opened so far, and is almost as big as a card!

I definitely bought a few packs of Superman 2 cards back in 1980. I bet I loved them 🙂

Trivia Battle Game (Topps, 1984)

This came out in the middle of Trivial Pursuit mania and is an obvious cash-in, but I think works as a card set. Each pack includes 7 question cards containing 70 trivia questions and answers:

Two of the cards contain rules and a ‘board’ on which to play:

The questions are very dated now and probably harder than they were in 1984, and to my shame it took me 47 questions to beat the one-player game. I guess therefore I’m ‘fair’ at US-centric trivia from 38 years ago!

I think this would have been a fantastic product in 1984, and an inexpensive way to scratch the trivia itch for kids.

ALF (Topps, 1987)

Alf was a short-lived phenomenon in the late 1980s. He was a sitcom alien puppet that told bad jokes to adults. Inexplicably he became very popular and highly merchandised, and this is the second card set based on him and his show.

The cards are well designed and manufactured, and I’m particularly impressed with the quality of the images considering this was a tv show (was it recorded on film?)! But the jokes – as they were at the time – aren’t funny and the appeal is lost on me.

The cardbacks contain absurdist ‘humour’ that seems like it was aimed at kids but probably missed its target.

The pack also contained a die-cut sticker and a fake baseball card obviously inspired by Topps’ successful Garbage Pail Kids cards (which I despise).

Overall this is a decently produced set, if a bit short on cards in the pack, but I wonder who bought it?

Michael Jackson (Topps, 1984)

Similar to the Cyndi Lauper and Duran Duran cards I’ve shown previously, here’s another set based around a pop star, although in this case the biggest star in the world!

The cards are as you would expect: standard press photos of ‘Wacko’ with empty blurbs on the back:

The gum stick is incredible though, and I reckon would be of interest to a collector today:

Overall a predictable but acceptable set, and had I been a fan of Jacko (or Bubbles) back in the day I would have been happy with these.

Gremlins 2 (Topps, 1990)

Nine years ago I posted a few snaps of some Gremlins cards from the first film, and now it’s time for the set from the sequel. KLS and I watched both of these recently and the first one holds up quite well, but the second is a very strange film…

The cards are nice enough, although the white borders look unfinished. The images on the ones I got are heavy on character photos rather than scenes from the film, but each card has a plot summary on the back:

The stickers aren’t die-cut (once again this is in the final days of Topps’ wax packs) and while the back refers to a puzzle, I didn’t get a single card with a puzzle back in the entire pack!

As I said Gremlins 2 is a weird and difficult to watch film (Phoebe aside…) and I doubt anyone was enthusiastic about this card set when it came out.

So that’s it. Are there any other retro wax packs I haven’t yet opened on this blog? Well yes, but these days the packs are prohibitively expensive (original Star Wars, Raiders of The Lost Ark, Moonraker etc) so it’s unlikely you’ll see them here. Never say never though!

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Retro, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Retro Wax Packs (Part 2)

Saturday, April 23rd, 2022

It’s time for the second entry about opening old trading card wax packs!

Jaws 2 (Topps, 1978)

In 2020 the pandemic delayed most new release films and as a result our drive in played mostly older movies. We got to see the original Jaws on the big screen and it was incredibly good. At the time I felt I’d never actually seen the sequel and looking at these cards I’m now sure of this.

As far as trading cards go this is a competent set, but it’s an early one from Topps and they had yet to learn the lessons from the success of their Star Wars cards. This means no plot summaries, no die-cut stickers, and a poor puzzle on the backs of select cards.

As kids it was always fun to read the ‘movie facts’ on the backs of cards, since it wasn’t like we’d get that info elsewhere. But based on the imagery on the cards Jaws 2 was a film that perhaps didn’t need a trading card set 🙂

Here’s Bo (Fleer, 1981)

This is just a perplexing set. It purports to be a set of Bo Derek photocards, but the photos are all taken by her husband on what seems to be the set of the Tarzan film they made in the early 1980s.

It’s a bizarre selection of photos, especially since at the time she was a famous sex symbol selling lots of pinup posters. Surely they could/should have included a few of those images in this set?

The included poster is folded up many times and in this case had a sticker of flour-coated gum absolutely adhered to it. When unfolded it’s biggish considering the delivery system, but who would ever want to hang this on a wall?

Oh and the text on the back of the cards is very abbreviated and – to be blunt – creepy:

I can’t see who the audience for this set was!

Ghostbusters II (Topps, 1989)

I’m not a big fan of Ghostbusters, and don’t see the film as iconic as some people do. It was fun enough at the time, but I don’t recall ever being enthusiastic about a sequel, and when one finally arrived several years later I recall seeing it but remember nothing of the experience.

This card set is one of the latter ones that Topps released in wax pack form, and much like Robocop 2 (see the last wax pack post) is a by-the-books set with decent design and good print quality. The choice of a ‘wide screen SFX shot’ card is novel, but is the aspect ratio even different from the others?! The sticker card is shown in the middle, but there’s no explanation what the image is. As with other latter sets, by this time they’d stopped die-cutting the stickers which is a shame.

The film plot is summarized on the backs of the cards, which reminds me this was a baby-intensive film. Here’s a message to Hollywood: if you’re making a film in a franchise aimed at teenage boys, perhaps think twice about basing the plot around a baby 🙂

Howard The Duck (Topps, 1986)

A George Lucas film using a Marvel character?!? When this one came out in 1986 we went to see it with our cousins (Troy and Ryan) and I daresay we left the film even more confused than when we’d seen Caravan of Courage a year prior. This is a strange film for many reasons.

The card set is quite good, with a lot of nice shots of Howard and a well written plot summary on the reverse. But did anyone enjoy the film enough to actually buy these cards?

What stands out from this set is the quality of the stickers! These packs were very cheap so I bought two and both stickers are amazing:

I’m tempted to even try to stick these on something! Overall this is a fairly good set for a distinctly weird film that is worth a watch if you haven’t yet seen it.

Black Hole (Topps, 1979)

From one weird film to another! I believe we saw Black Hole at the Gateshead drive in when we were grasshoppers, and I’m sure we enjoyed the robot scenes but were bored mindless by the lengthy exposition and insane ending. This is a relic of the era of rushing out anything with science fiction content to cash in on Star Wars mania!

Faults aside, the film is visually strong, and lends itself well to trading cards. I recall buying a few packs of these as a kid, and tossing all but the cards showing Vincent and Maximillian!

There’s a well written summary on the backs of some cards, and as usual with Topps in those days we get a subset of die-cut stickers:

Oh and I almost got enough cards in the pack to make a jigsaw puzzle:

Overall this is one of the better sets I’ve opened recently, and I think would have been worth collecting had I had they been available to me as a kid. And as a bonus – since I haven’t shown any this post – here’s a shot of the 43-year-old gum I found in this pack:

There’s one more installment of this mini-blog-series forthcoming, with six more weird and wonderful wax packs from the 1980s. Watch for it in a couple of weeks!

Posted in Blog, Collecting, History, Miscellaneous, Movies, Otaku, Retro, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Retro Wax Packs (Part 1)

Sunday, April 10th, 2022

In the 1970s and 80s, trading cards were packaged in waxed paper that was folded and heat-sealed. The term for such packaging is ‘wax packs’ and generally refers these days to any package of trading cards sold before 1991 (when the last wax pack was used). Importantly to me, all the cards of my youth were sold in wax packs, so these are very nostalgic for me.

Recently I bought a bunch of unopened wax packs from the 1980s, and over the next month or so I’m going to open and blog them all. Let’s start!

Robot Wars (Fleer, 1985)

This is a set of game cards, cashing in on transformers and scratch-off lottery tickets, and conceptually similar to the Super Mario and Zelda cards I have previously blogged.

The pack contains three game cards that no longer work since the scratch-off material has solidified (and I mean solidified; it’s like obsidian)! I expect children would have enjoyed these back in the day though. There’s also a sticker in the pack, but it’s in less-than-perfect condition due to a quirk of wax packs – the gum:

Almost every wax pack – and certainly all of them targeted at kids – contained a stick of gum. Over the 35+ years the gum has at worst become brittle and cracked to pieces or at worst become greasy and moldy. In most cases it’s just a solid inedible stick that has cemented itself to the card it was adjacent to. Removing it usually causes damage, as you can see above.

Incidentally there’s an internet rumour that this ancient gum has become poisonous and dangerous to eat. This is nonsense: it’s mostly just distasteful or extremely bitter. I’ve eaten some before, and I learned then never to eat it again 🙂

What about the ‘win a robot’ contest? Well it was a write-in, as detailed above. I wonder if anyone actually did this and won, and if so what happened to the robot?

Superman III (Topps, 1983)

This is the one with Richard Prior, and definitely not one of the better Superman flicks. But Topps, which had enjoyed in the years before massive success with the Star Wars cards, followed their formula and made a great set here.

The cards are nicely designed with good printing and a lot of action scene for the kids (from a film with a lot of ‘boring’ comedy scenes). The backs are nicely written too:

In addition the pack includes the usual sticker, and these were the days when Topps die-cut their stickers, which from a kid point of view made them just that bit better:

The gum in this pack hadn’t stuck as much to the card, and the pack itself was very easy to open, so I can show just what one of these wrappers looked like unsealed:

Unsurprisingly the wrappers themselves are collectible, and some of the rarer ones are worth big bucks these days in good condition.

Robocop 2 (Topps 1990)

We’re close to the end of the wax pack era, since 1990 was when Topps both moved to plastic and abandoned the gum. We’re also more than ten years after the first Star Wars set, but Topps was still following their standard formula here with Robocop 2:

The eagle-eyed amongst you will note scenes from the first film amongst these cards, and this is explained on the back with a little comment that the set ‘Includes highlights from Robocop’s first adventure‘.

Ah, the 1980’s, where companies didn’t think twice about releasing trading cards for kids based on ultra-violent R-rated films 🙂

Cyndi Lauper (Topps, 1985)

In 1985 Cynthia Lauper was 32 years old and at the peak of her fame. I wonder what it was like for her to open a pack of trading cards all about herself?

The cards themselves are just ok, with underwhelming photos and the usual Smash Hits level factoids on the back. For fans though, I expect these were a real treat.

The stickers are die-cut but a bit ugly (or maybe just very 1980s). That said I’d still love to stick one on a postcard now, but I know from experience that if you peel a 35+ year old Topps sticker off the backing it’ll never restick! As with most sets of that era the backs of the stickers can be used to form a large picture: a nice use for the card even if you remove the sticker.

The gum in here was very unusual. This is the first time I’ve seen a wrapped piece of gum in a wax pack, and it was branded as well! I’ve included the joke from the wrapper to give you a belly laugh…

Indiana Jones (Topps, 1984)

While generically named, these cards are based on Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom, the second film in the series. This is the only pack I’m showing here today that I remember buying as a kid. And just as I’m sure I did then, I’m very impressed with these now.

The cards are wonderfully designed with great stills and the adventure style font compliments the pictures well. The backs all describe the action and preview the name of the next card (once again following the formula they perfected with the Star Wars sets):

Back in our Australian youth we often got the cards before the films, so almost everything in the movie was ‘spoiled’ for us. But it didn’t matter, and in some ways made the films even better since we were seeing the pics from the cards in motion. And afterwards, in an era without internet or video, our cards were a convenient way to relive the movies.

I bought two packs of these cards (and they weren’t cheap at $8 each, but unopened packs from Raiders are much harder to find and often more expensive) and in my second pack got the title card shown above.

The stickers from this set are amazing and once again I wish they still worked. I wonder what I did with the ones I got as a kid? The picture you can assemble from the sticker backs is shown at the right: and as a child if I collected the cards I would have made this and glued (yes glued) the cards onto cardboard to turn them into a sort of mini-poster!

What do you think of these sets? As I said there’ll be more in future weeks. I wonder what other treasures I managed to get my hands on…?

Posted in Blog, Celebrity, Collecting, History, Miscellaneous, Movies, Music, Otaku, Retro, Time, Trading Cards | 3 Comments »

The Land Collection

Sunday, March 13th, 2022

In the card game Magic: The Gathering (MTG) land cards provide the resources to play other cards. They’re ubiquitous and in the eyes of many players, boring. They are like the batteries in the toy: essential but often taken for granted.

The simplest type of land is called ‘basic land’. There are five of them – one for each colour – and they’ve been around since MTG launched back in 1993. And since I got back into Magic about 15 years ago I’ve collected them!

Its always been an informal collection: I just liked the art on them and made a point to keep one of each aside. In time I put them in a binder, and started seeking one ones I didn’t yet have. Over the years the binder grew and grew until it got almost too heavy to pick up, and a change was needed. These past few weeks I’ve sorted all my lands, sleeved and boxed them and had a good look at them all. This post shows off some of the collection.

The above are examples of some of the oldest and newest land cards I have. On the left we have a ‘beta’ card from 1993 and on the right an example from the latest set Kamigawa: Neon Destiny. It’s obvious how the design has updated on the nearly 30 years between them, but it’s notable that these two cards are identical as far as gameplay is concerned.

The above shows the progression of design of a Forest land from 1993 until 2020. You can see the various phases the basic design transitioned through, including the removal of the text describing how to use the card, which occurred relatively early on in the history of the game.

Here we have an assortment of promotional cards, most of which are foiled so they shine with a rainbow effect. These cards are obtained via in-store promotions or by attending events or – as with most of these – by buying them on the secondary market. None of these cost me more than a dollar or so, but some are worth five or ten times that now.

The above shows examples of non-English lands. MTG has been printed in 11 languages and I have lands in most of them (I think). The middle top card is an unusual exception: this is swamp printed in ‘phyrexian’ which is a (fake) language in the MTG universe.

Speaking of events, the above were all given to me by Adam, and are signed cards that he obtained from the artists at various events he attended. The middle one is heavily ‘altered’, which means the artist drew over the art with paint pens, leaving only the name of the card visible. For most of these artists, I have several different signed lands.

Here’s a unique inclusion: the ‘Florence lands‘! She decorated five lands with stickers many years ago and gave them to me as a gift. For all this time they had been the first page in the binder introducing the collection, and they remain an important and unique part of it. I wonder if she remembers making them?

In 1998, when MTG was five years old, an important and notable thing happened with land cards. In the set Unglued the first ‘full art’ land cards were printed. They dispensed with the text box at the bottom to fill the card with art and were very popular. Subsequent sets would rarely include new full art lands. The above shows examples from Unglued to Amonkhet (in 2017).

Full art lands have become more common in recent years, and the above five examples span less than three years of sets. Some think the island shown above (from Unstable) is the prettiest land card ever printed.

Some more basic lands. I’m a big fan of the black and white versions from the recent Innistrad sets, but many weren’t.

The above are five of the ten full art lands from the recent Kamigawa set. These are done in the Japanese ukiyo-e style and are some of the more unusual (and pretty!) lands MTG has ever printed.

Following on from the above is an unusual addition: these are unofficial ‘proxy’ cards made by fans. I got these on Etsy and they are another ukiyo-e inspired set done by a Japanese artist. The quality of these cards is incredibly high, and they’re almost indistinguishable from a real Magic card. (I’m amazed Hasbro hasn’t shut down people selling high quality proxies…)

The above show some of the more unusual and ‘rare’ lands I currently own. These are all from a type of release called ‘secret lairs’, which are very limited cards sold exclusively online. Unfortunately some of the lairs have contained lands, and since I believe they’re overpriced I’ll likely never obtain most of them. However I couldn’t resist buying a few examples on the secondary market. The top left is a ‘godzilla plains’ and the bottom right from a release that went overboard reverse-parodying the full art design motif.

Speaking of rare, a number of my lands have become very collectible. I have many ‘beta’ land cards, and those are worth $10 or more each today, and as I mentioned above some of my promo lands have appreciated a lot in recent years. But the biggest surprise as I was going through my collection was the current value of the so-called ‘APAC lands’.

These were a set of 15 land cards given to customers by game stores in the Asia-pacific region in 1998. I bought a full set many years ago for not much money (I think about $30) and they’ve massively appreciated since. The two above are worth about $150 each, and may be my most valuable magic cards! (I didn’t know this until a few days ago.)

There’s the whole collection. I don’t know exactly how many I have, but it’s more than 1500. I read recently that there’s been over 2200 unique land cards, so I’m missing a great deal, but I suspect most of them are promos or otherwise-unattainable releases like the European equivalents to the APAC lands.

In all these cards you’re probably wondering, which is my favourite? That’s an easy question, and the answer never changes. It’s this APAC plains, which shows Australia:

MTG is more successful than ever, and the set frequency seems to have increased, with each set bringing more basic lands. It’s a cheap card type to collect, since most players don’t care about the lands at all, so I’m not stopping any time soon. I’ll end this post with some examples of lands releasing in the remainder of 2022. If I ever update this post, you can assume I’ve got (some of) these as well:

Posted in Art, Blog, Collecting, Games, Miscellaneous, MTG, Otaku, Retro, Time, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Ultraman Cards!

Sunday, February 6th, 2022

Just before Christmas this arrived:

It’s a box of Ultraman trading cards! This is the first item I have ever Kickstarted, and was released by a boutique trading card company here in the USA of all places. It contains cards based on Ultra Q and the first Ultraman series.

The 36 packs were hand-collated and packed, but had security and tamper-proof seals. I opened one pack a day for about a month, which I’ve found is the best way to enjoy a full box of cards.

The bulk of the set is 67 story cards and 91 monster cards, and I got them all. The numbering is such that about the first third of each type is for Ultra Q and the remainder Ultraman.

The story cards have full episode summaries on the back, which seems normal for those of us that have been collecting cards since the 1980s but is very rare for modern sets.

The monster cards have pictures on the back that can form ten different nine card mosaics. I love when cards do this and these are particularly great!

One cool subset are 3D cards, and the box actually comes with a pair of glasses. The 3D effect is incredibly good – easily the best I’ve seen on a trading card – and I’m very impressed with these!

Other subsets include copies of some of the sketch card art (a very nice inclusion)…

Stickers based on the opening credit silhouettes…

And several types of character portrait cards.

But you want to see the chase cards I got don’t you? Well my (actual) metal ‘box topper’ was this:

A bit bland I admit, especially compared to some of the other ones, but this is my first ever metal card and it’s very impressive. I also got (in a pack) this original sketch card:

That alien is called ‘antlar’. Obviously getting a sketch of someone like Ultraman or Zoffy or Zetton would have been amazing all original sketch cards are special. I looked up the artist and she’s done cards for many different series, always in a comical, cartoony way like here.

I also got a lenticular card (which doesn’t photo well) and as part of the Kickstarter they threw in some test print cards as well:

And this was one of the more unusual things in my box:

It’s a ‘DIY sketch card blank’! Should I draw my own Ultraman on it?

This is a set with a mind-boggling amount of variant cards. In fact the checklist spans the inside of three pack wrappers and even then doesn’t include every possible card:

I daresay it would be impossible to collect everything, but I’m happy that of the 360+ cards I got, I completed the basic set of episode and monster cards, got all the stickers, all the 3D cards, all of the lenticular and metal art cards, over 90% of the sketch art cards and a good selection of limited variants of most of the above!

I even have a full second set of episode cards, which of course will one day go to Bernard. All told, only one card in my box was an un-needed duplicate, but even then I’ve got an idea for it…

Needless to say this is a great card set and I’m extremely happy with my purchase (which was about $70). The Kickstarter itself was very delayed due to the pandemic (many sketch artists were overseas and the mailing of the art slowed considerably) but the company was extremely communicative and as you can see delivered in spades. I will certainly be joining the follow up set which will include Ultraseven and Return of Ultraman!

Posted in Art, Collecting, Otaku, Trading Cards, TV | 1 Comment »

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