Monday, July 18, 2016

5 Random Trading Cards: Vol. 1

Today I'll be taking you back to the days of cardboard cards, stale chunks of pink chewing gum and wax wrappers. Today we will be looking at 5 old trading cards! I loved collecting cards as a kid. Baseball, Ninja Turtles, Superheroes it didn't matter. I just loved opening a pack and smelling the gum and seeing if you had opened a pack with new cards or more doubles! The stickers were always the premium pieces, but having a few extras to trade never hurt. Let's open this pack of awesomeness and take a look at 5 random cards from the 80s & 90s:
 Baby (Topps, 1985)
I never collected these cards as a kid. Mostly because I never knew they existed until I found them thrown in with some other collectables I purchased a while back. I remember seeing this movie in theaters at the age of 5 with my family. This was one of the few movies my mom went to with us. As a 5 year old I was blown away by the "lifelike" dinosaurs in the film. To me it was Jurassic Park before Jurassic Park. Looking back now, the movie and effects are horribly outdated, but it's the memories that give me a fondness for this film and it's card set.
 Gremlins (Topps, 1984)
This is another movie I saw in the theaters at the age of 4! I thought it was AMAZING but the Gremlins still scarred the hell out of me. The part where the Gremlin gets sliced up by the blender always stuck with me. When we got home from seeing this movie at the theater, my dad went into the house and the lights would not turn on. Of course he joked that "The Gremlins must be in our house!" Of course it was just a blown fuse, but still I WAS 4 AT THE TIME...thanks for the trauma dad! I did collect these cards as a kid with my brother and sisters along with Gremlins toys, candy and books!
 The Rocketeer (Topps, 1991)
I always thought this looked like a cool movie. It was very retro, but still modern and stylized. Oh, it also had 90s Jennifer Connelly in it! I remember watching it as a rental as a kid and enjoying it. I tried watching it recently on Netflix but fell asleep pretty quick. I'll have to give it another watch soon and see if it still stands up. BTW did not collect these cards back in the day.
 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Series 1 (Topps/O-Pee-Chee, 1989)
Who did not collect these cards? I had the entire set of cards and stickers from this set plus the movie cards and stickers, then I kinda slacked when the second series came out. I had a few of the cards, but definitely not as many as the first. I'm not sure why? Maybe my collecting tastes changed at that point? The card pictured here was the Canadian O-Pee-Chee version of the card. It seems to be a bit more on the high end side. The colors are brighter and the card stock is more slick and less brown/cardboard textured. These are like a premium version of the Topps cards we got in the US. Damn you cheap Topps company!
X-Men: '94 Fleer Ultra (Fleer, 1994)
Ah the X-men. One could say that the merry mutants along with the Death of Superman were the reason for the comics boom & bust in the 90s. I enjoyed the cartoon so much, but the comics became a little confusing around this time with all the crossovers going on. If you missed one issue, you were lost for years! Who is that new guy? Who killed him? What future is this guy from? All questions that became all too familiar to X-Men readers in the Bronze Age. The cards that spun off from this popularity though were amazing! These were probably the most traded cards on the school yard and why not? They had great art, cool info on the back and were laminated with gold foil stamping! These guys were huge in the 90s!

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