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Stardisc Trek

Sunday, August 27th, 2023

A few weeks ago I purchased this in an antique store:

A sealed box of Star Trek: TNG ‘Stardisc coins’! Released in 1994, this was a product I don’t remember but likely would have ignored at the time since ‘stardisc coin’ is just another synonym for ‘Pog’. Yes, this is a box of Star Trek Pogs!

The box contained 36 packs, each of which has six Pogs. I paid $21.75 for the box, or $0.10 per Pog. Would you have bought it?

The packs promise much: “A must for the true Trekker”! Note also the spelling of ‘colour’ and the tease of rare gold versions. I tore open the first pack with some dread…

Each pack contains three cards, each of which has two Pogs. Immediately this seems to be a second-rate product, since you need to punch the Pogs out yourself. This is tedious, and even after opening only two packs I hardly wanted to start.

Each pack also includes a checklist and instructions on how to play a ‘game’ with the discs. These are of course laughable, and I very much doubt the writer ever believed anyone would play it.

The checklist is important since the Pogs themselves don’t have any name on the back, which is unusual since they are uniquely printed (with a number) so they could have easily added the name. Also it’s worth mentioning that the quality control wasn’t great, and more than a few of the ones in my packs were damaged:

The back of the wrapper includes this laughable statement:

At a 1/72 rate, I had a 50% chance of opening the gold Pogs, so I was surprised that I got them in only my third pack! Here they are:

At this point you’re noticing that each card contains two Pogs, which means that for the set of 60 there’s only actually 30 unique cards (since the same two are always on the same card). So in the box of 36 packs, there are 108 cards which could – in theory – net more than three full sets. These statistics seem to hold up, since I was able to complete the set in half the packs, and I completed a good quality (no damaged Pogs) set in about 2/3rds of the packs:

This is a terrible product. The print quality is high, but who wanted these? No one ever played the game with them, and ‘collectors’ would have just put them in a box and forgotten about them immediately. They’re just a ‘thing’ that has no use or even purpose, manufactured and sold simply to profit from that bizarre Pog craze of 30 years ago.

I’ve got a few unopened packs left. If you want one let me know. Even if you don’t, maybe I’ll send you one anyway 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Miscellaneous, Trading Cards | 4 Comments »

20 Minutes Into The Future

Sunday, October 23rd, 2022

I recently bought these:

It’s a full set of Max Headroom stickers from 1986. Although not labeled as such, these were a Topps product and are mostly based on the TV film that introduced the character, although some images clearly come from The Max Headroom Show.

I was surprised to learn these existed since I’d never heard of them, and while wax packs do exist, I can’t find an image of a box anywhere. I have read claims that the set was released in very limited quantities in the USA only, and another online article claims it was sold as sets only (which can’t be true since there exist wax packs on eBay). It’s a mystery!

The first two-thirds of the stickers resemble fairly standard Topps-style trading cards from the mid 1980s, only they would be mostly meaningless to non-fans since the images seem to be in random order and the backs contain no text; instead being dedicated to two large ‘puzzles’ of Max:

The remaining quarter are foil stickers, which are reflective, slightly embossed and very impressive for a 1986 set. However five of them are extremely unusual, especially if you’re familiar with the character:

These look like poses the actor that played Max (Matt Frewer) did to test the prosthetic or perhaps to be digitized for marketing purposes. I’ve never seen these images on any other Max Headroom product and they seem out of place here!

The backs of the foil stickers contain the origin of Max taken from the film:

This is curious for a few reasons. Firstly I don’t think the film ever screened in the USA (and in fact Max himself didn’t catch on here until about a year after the rest of the world) and secondly it doesn’t say much at all about Max himself! Once again this would have been a confusing product for non-fans.

These didn’t cost me much (<$20) and the stickers are in perfect condition so it’s a fun curio for my collection. I’d love to test and see if a sticker still worked, but I don’t have any doubles so I’ll never know. Likewise I doubt I’ll ever know the true history of this weird product. Do any of you remember these from 1986?

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

Panini Warhammer

Wednesday, August 10th, 2022

Panini has been releasing sticker albums for decades now and the format has barely changed: you buy an inexpensive booklet with pages full of empty spaces waiting for stickers to be applied. The stickers are of course purchased separately in packs, like trading cards. Collecting them and sticking them in the album fills out the pages until you have a nifty picturebook. Aimed mostly at children, hundreds have been released – and continue to be released – since the 1970s.

Unfortunately, very few of these ever make it out of Europe. In the 1980s for instance Panini released loads of such albums for every imaginable kid-friendly film, but most were Europe and the UK only. A few were released in Australia when I was a kid, but they weren’t of little interest to me (Smurfs, football albums) so this was never a big part of my childhood.

In the years since I’ve bought a few more while on trips to the UK or Europe (a few different Star Wars ones, a WWE one) but with the exception of various sports albums or properties for very young children Panini still seems to mostly ignore the US market, and I’ve never had much experience with collecting the stickers or filling an album… until now!

When Panini announced a Warhammer 40k sticker album I was astonished, since it seemed so out-of-field compared to their other properties. But given how many other sets they have recently published – based on films, video games, toys, sports and even animals – it’s not unusual. It’s very specific though, and certainly aimed older than most of their other albums. The initial announcement was tempered (for me) by the followup that it would be England only, and exclusive to physical Warhammer stores. Bummer. However shortly after it was released sellers offered it on Amazon, which is how I got my album and a box of sticker packs.

It’s a beautiful album, full colour and crammed with detail and information. There are 204 stickers to collect, and each pack also comes with one of 50 ‘hero’ (trading) cards. The stickers are glossy and come in several shapes and sizes, some with various types of foil or holographic coating.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been opening packs and sticking the stickers into the album. With 50 packs I only had 200 stickers, and knew I wouldn’t be able to complete the album, but I hoped I’d make a good effort. It’s been a lot of fun, and now I know had Panini products been widely distributed in Australia when I was a kid I would have gone bonkers for them!

I’m impressed with how seamlessly the stickers match the book. In photos the page looks more matte than it does in real life, and when stuck (and aligned correctly) it can sometimes be difficult to see where book ends and sticker begins. A completed page doesn’t look like an array of stickers as it did back in the older versions (such as in the Gremlins book from the 1980s, shown in the photo at top).

The first and last page of the book contain 6-sticker murals. I was unable to complete either of them, and the above is as good as I got. There are many 2 or 3 sticker murals as well, most of which I completed. As you can see, the stickers align together nearly seamlessly (although I will admit I was extremely careful when applying them).

That’s a shot of two of the trading cards. Of the 50, I got 34 which I think is a good approximation of how many stickers I managed to get as well (about two-thirds). The cards are ok and have nice art, but are more a bonus than a reason to buy this collection.

Worth mentioning is the lore of 40k. If you know anything about Warhammer (which is a table-top strategy game played using miniatures) you know it has a bonkers story, and the snippets of lore in this album reinforce that. These aren’t just soldiers in robotic armor fighting orcs and demons: there’s all sorts of madness on both sides of the eternal war that is our future 38,000 years from now!

Once I had finished opening all my packs, this was the only one double-page of the album I managed to fully complete. Can you see the 11 stickers in the above photo? As I said I estimate I got about two-thirds of the stickers, which means I got about 60 doubles (which will go to Adam). Panini has a service where you can purchase individual stickers directly (for £0.28 each) which is nice for diehards, but I’m happy with my incomplete album and won’t try to finish it.

Overall I’m extremely impressed with this collection, and would love for them to not only make more genre-specific ones (such as Dungeons & Dragons or Ultraman!) or at the least sell more of them in the USA!

Posted in Art, Books & Comics, Collecting, Retro, Trading Cards | 1 Comment »

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

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