Topps Juice Gum Cartons from 1982-1985

This just goes to show you that you can pretty much find anything for sale on Ebay.

This post from Dinosaur Dracula sparked my memory of these.

I only really wanted the Pink Lemonade carton(Pink Lemonade was my favorite, based on taste, and the look of the carton.  Look at it!), but the auction, as it turns out, was for all four.  They are pictured in the order of the years printed on their sides, starting with Grape from 1982, and ending with Orange from 1985.  All four have gum inside, but I am not tempted to eat any of it.  Well maybe I am just a bit curious to see if, at least the Pink Lemonade tastes the way I remember it.

A Look into One of My Non-Sports Trading Card Albums

I’ve shown you some of my favorite non-sports trading cards before.  Tonight I’m going to keep the theme, but add a little twist to it.  Instead of showing some single cards in top loaders, we’ll see full 9 card pages from one of my albums.  I’ll cover a good range, but have tons more for future follow ups.

I’m pretty sure that I started collecting trading card before I started to get into collecting comics.  It started with getting some albums full of baseball cards from my older brother and step brother.  The eighties and early nineties were a great time for non-sports trading cards.  This was before companies started adding chaser cards with their various gimmicks.  Most non-sports cards were a regular set of cards and a set of stickers.  Topps had tons of licenses for all the popular properties.  And if you bought a pack of cards manufactured by Topps during this time, you also got the requisite stick of their famous now stale gum.  When the cards were new, the gum was a nice bonus.  But now the gum would be old and stale(trust me, this stuff went bad years ago.Do not eat it).  You can see a picture of this gum from one of my other card related posts here and here.

Here is the album we’ll be peaking into today.

There’s not a single Pokemon card in here!  That’s not to say that I don’t like Pokemon, because I actually do.  They remind me of Battle Beasts in a round about way.  I got into them when the craze started, and got this binder pretty cheap(and it’s officially licensed).  The Gameboy games were what really got me into the lore.  It’s not too bad, give it a chance!  But we’re not here to talk about Pokemon, I just wanted to explain the album choice.

First up…

We have a sampling of my Punisher cards.  The Punisher has been my favorite Marvel character ever since I started collecting comics.  I especially like the old school prismatic sticker(I’ve had this for a long time).  Some of these were found in packs, while others were found in binders in card shops and conventions.

Here we have some stickers from Topps’ Nintendo Game Packs from 1990.  I’ve talked about the cards in a previous post, and briefly mentioned the stickers.  Some of these stickers are pretty ridiculous, but they’re fitting of the time period.  While I’m missing 4 cards from the set, I do have the complete set of stickers.  On the reverse side, they have “Top Secret Tips”.  And I stand by my assessment that they’re bullshit!  Not only did every kid know the tips, but a lot of them were the lamest ones!  I’ll even give you proof with a scan from the backs of the above stickers.

While the tips suck, I love the design!  Any time I think of a spy, that’s exactly what I would imagine.

Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!  One of my favorite shows and toy lines of all time!  These are Pee-Wee’s Playhouse trading cards.  They have 1988 Herman Toys printed on them, and I would guess that’s when they were released.  I never saw these when they originally came out, and I don’t feel like finding the wrapper to find out, so we’ll assume that they were released in ’88.  These were something special.  Topps went a different route with this set than they did with any of their other licenses.  These were sold in “Fun Packs”.  Fun Packs we’re more like a trading card goodie bag.  You get cards, temporary tattoos, stickers and a lenticular card in every pack!  You can usually find loose packs on Ebay for as low as $1.50 a pack(although most will overcharge for them, so shop around).

These are some of the cards for the custom comic art from Mallrats(I guess these would be considered a sub-set).  If you’ve seen the movie, these were shown during the end credits.  When I worked at Tower Video, we got all types of cool stuff.  As soon as these hit the shelf, I bought the whole box(with a very nice employee discount)!  I thought that I made a complete set, and gave away all of my doubles.  But, I made a mistake, and my set is one card short of being complete.  😦

These are the first series of trading cards based on The Simpsons.  Released in 1990 by, you guessed it…Topps.  These were released around the time Simpsons-mania started.  The animation is rough compared to the polished look of The Simpsons today.  And that’s part of the charm!  The earlier episodes had a bit of a different feel to them compared to a bulk of the series.

I just have one last card to show you tonight.  This is just an awesome card from one of the most memorable scenes from any movie, period!  I’m thinking of using it for my banner.  What do you think?

I think this would work great for an anti-meth poster.  Dontcha think?  🙂

Trading Cards

For today’s post, I wanted to talk about something a little different, but I’m sure many have indulged in.  Just as there was toys and comic books for cartoons and movies, there were trading cards.  For me, collecting comics and trading cards went hand in hand.  Sure, I collected baseball cards in the beginning, but then I found non-sports trading cards.  Just as there were kids trading their Pokemon cards at school 10 years ago, I remember trading Marvel Universe trading cards before class.

These things were all the rage in my school.  Even if you weren’t into comics, you collected these cards.  For me though, these were an awesome addition to the comics I was reading and collecting.  There were cards of characters you knew and ones for those that you weren’t familiar with.  But with these cards, they added something every kid pined for.  Randomly inserted into these packs were 5 different hologram cards for kids to collect.  I think on average, there were 2-3 holograms per box.  I learned a trick to finding the holograms before you bought a pack from a kid a grade above me.  These packs were made of plastic.  If you scratched a small hole on the front of the pack, you would see if that pack had a hologram(all of the hologram cards manufactured were the first cards in the packs that contained them).  Of couse, store owners and employees realised this and had to place them closer to the registers.  To get around this, I found out another way to find out which packs had those precious hologram cards.  If you placed 2 packs side by side, you could tell which packs had holograms by finding which packs were just a bit taller compared to the other packs(hologram cards were just a bit thicker than ordinary cards).

Here are two sealed packs from 1991.  Sorry, I’m not going to open them today.

And these are the cards

As you can see, there were a few different sub-sets.  We have Super Heroes, Super Villains, Rookies, Famous Battles and some cheesy Spider-Man interview cards(not pictured).  On the back of each card it gave you some stats, such as, their real name(if known), their height and weight, as well as the comic book they first appeared in and their win/loss record.  On the bottom of the card backs there were little trivia blurbs, titled, “Did you know?”.

I bought countless packs of these and eventually completed the set and had each of the 5 holograms.  Of course, alot of wheelin’ and dealin’ went on.  For some reason, it seemed that the card of Quasar was the most difficult to obtain, and he’s like a D-list character!  This was the first of many wildly successful comic book trading card series

Of course comic books weren’t the only cards that got the trading card treatment.  If you’re around the same age as me(31), I’m sure you remember Nintendo being a way of life for a good chunk of years.  There was merchandise for everything Nintendo.  Games, magazines, sheet sets, stationary and toys.  In 1989 our good freinds at Topps, put Nintendo GamePack trading/scratch and win cards on the market.  There were one of three Nintendo characters on the wrappers.  There was Mario(of course), Princess Peach and Link.

Here is an unopened pack with Link on the wrapper.

And here are the cards.

The idea behind these cards was the same idea of scrtch-off lottery tickets.  On the back of the card, they showed you all of the possible icons you would uncover by scratching the different spots on the front, and their meaning.  Your objective was the same as the game that the card represented.  There were six different games represented, with a total of 10 different cards for each game.  The games represented are, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros.2, The Legend of Zelda, The Adventure of Link, Punch-Out!! and Double Dragon.  In addition to the 3 trading cards cards you got in every pack you also got 2 stickers.  On the back of these stickers there were “Top Secret Tips”. Most of these so-called ‘tips”, were bullshit!  Almost every kid on earth knew them already!  Maybe I’ll show you some examples in a future post.  The cards were pretty much useless after you scratched them, but that didn’t stop me from buying a whole lotta them!

The last set of cards we’ll revisit are cards that I went absolutely nuts for in the 3rd grade.  I present to you…ALF trading cards.

In 1987 our friends at Topps(seriously, is there a property they didn’t make cards after?), unleashed ALF trading cards to the masses.  As you can tell from the picture above, the cards must have been successful, as they released a 2nd series.  In each of these packs, you got 5 cards, 1 sticker and 1 stick of Topps’ famously stale gum(do not eat!).  I remember trading my regular cards and stickers for the “Bouillabaseball” cards.  These cards were cartoon drawings of different Melmacians that played on various bouillabaseball teams.  I have no idea how they came about, but I loved them.  They had a weirdness about them that totally spoke to me.

Here’s a few of the cards and stickers you could have got.

And there you have it!  A few of the many trading cards marketed to the kids we all once were.  I wouldn’t say that I won’t do a similar post in the future, as I have a huge selection in my personal collection.  I hope you had fun on this trip back in time.  And with the famous line from Jerry Springer…”‘Until next time America”.