KLS bought me a ‘mystery’ variety pack of trading cards for my birthday. It was a plastic bag with about 30 different packs of cards from 10+ years ago. Starting now – and in no particular order – I’m going to showcase every pack, with a bit of info about each set.
These Hunchback of Notre Dame cards (1996) are obviously based on the Disney film. It’s a weird set since each pack includes only one or two traditional cards with the rest being standees, jigsaw puzzles, strange 3D model pieces etc. I reckon kids would have loved this, but I wonder if perhaps it failed since this approach – ‘activity’ cards – hardly caught on.
This Bill & Ted’s series (1991) is based on the first two films and is a mostly bare-bones set showcasing movie photos but with no chase cards. Alas, I didn’t win the bodacious trip to San Dimas 🙂
As a result of opening this pack I bought the set of both Bill & Ted films for a mere $3.74 at Walmart the other day. I bet they’ll be non-heinous!
Hyborean Gates (1995) is a legendarily bad TCG that was maligned in early reviews and delayed upon release so when it finally hit stores no one bought it. It’s spectacularly badly designed, and the base set includes cards that cannot even be played since they require cards that were to be included in an expansion that ultimately was never released. Furthermore all the art is by Boris Vallejo or Julie Bell, so if their airbrushed style isn’t to your liking the cards aren’t even appealing for their art.
I bought a couple of boxes of this series a few years ago for $1 each, so this single pack would be worth maybe $0.04. In other words, these cards are just garbage!
Just who was the target audience for a Blondie card series in 1995? The newspaper strip was ancient even when I was a stripling, so this is a good example of the rampant overproduction in the card industry in the 1990s. The cards themselves are poorly designed, with strips reproduced over multiple cards so you’d have to buy many packs to even read a tiny comic! Interestingly 1 in 72 packs contained only chase cards, which was pioneering then and very rare even today! Still, this set probably didn’t need to exist.
I’ve never seen Hook so all I’ll know about the movie I’ll get from these cards. They’re certainly nice enough, and follow in the design footprints of the famous Topps sets from the ’80s. Plus the stickers are (always) cool! The cellophane packs are extremely unusual, and probably one reason why the set has no chase cards.
I actually have an entire unopened box of these cards. If you leave a comment on this post I’ll send you a sticker 🙂
I’m less than a quarter through this big pile of trading card packs, but could there be any set weirder than Iditarod (1992)? Before opening it I thought it may be nice photos of dogs and snowy vistas, but it’s almost entirely photos of (human) entrants with ridiculous statistics on the back. Who was this aimed at?
As I said there’s many packs left to go. What’s coming next? Wait and see…
