Mars Attacks trading cards

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dinosaurs attack, mars attacks, Martian, norman saunders, topps, trading cards

For the eighth birthday of Mars Will Send No More on WordPress, and my forty-fifth on this planet, let’s have a look at some of the craziest Mars-based paintings of the twentieth century: the Mars Attacks trading cards!

From the 1984 reissue set

Because Topps is still producing new sets and republishing the originals now and then, I won’t post my complete collection of scans of the original cards. But we can enjoy a few of the classics together.

from the 1984 reissue set

As much fun as these cards are, doesn’t it sound better to have them all reproduced in a high-quality book with essays about the cards’ history? If you think so, too, avoid spending a fortune collecting original vintage sets, or even the 2012 reissue set, and pick up the book Mars Attacks: 50th Anniversary Collection on Amazon.

from the 1984 reissue set

If the originals aren’t enough to satiate your Martian appetite for carnage and chaos, the gory story continued with sequels: the Mars Attacks Revenge set, the Mars Attacks Invasion set, and the Mars Attacks Occupation set.

from the 1984 reissue set

Not all reproductions of the original set include the same cards, and this has been a point of contention in many online reviews. I tried to find a guide to exactly which set you’d need to buy to get not only the original 55 cards but also the ones omitted from the set due to excessive nastiness. The result? A bloody headache!

Ouch my brain!

So, I ask you to post in the comments section with any information you have about which set is the definitive, complete, all-inclusive version.

Maybe marketing these to children wasn’t such a great idea!

You might already know artist Norman Saunders painted many of the original 1960s cards, but reader Ed Dietrich tells me Norman also painted a 1966 series of Batman trading cards. Here’s a sample from Ed’s collection, with an appropriately horrifying giant spider! Big thanks to Ed for helping with this post!

Last but not least, a Dinosaurs Attack set was released on a terrified populace in 1988, and while rampaging dinos might seem well-suited to the fury and frivolity here at Mars Will Send No More, an awesome collection is already available for your viewing pleasure at http://dinosaurs-attack.blogspot.com/

Fun for the whole family!

Despite its relentless, gruesome carnage and widespread destruction, Dinosaurs Attacks was clearly produced by cat lovers.

I like most stories where cats win.

More Retrofuturistic 1950s Cards: Jets, Rockets, and Spacemen!

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bowman, cats in space, jets rockets and spacemen, outer space, pteranodon, science fiction, space octopus, space pirate, trading cards, vintage space art

Bowman produced these beautifully painted trading cards beginning in 1951: Jets, Rockets, and Spacemen! The “jets” cards merely showed normal airplanes with informative text on the back, but the rest of the series told a story about a fantastic space adventure, with each card as a chapter.

The slideshow below features some of my favorites. You can find a complete collection of both the fronts and backs of these cards, so you can take the entire journey, at http://www.lowellsplace.com/jrs/jrs_main_page.html

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Though I only heard about these cards this year, the series is clearly a direct ancestor of the Meteor Mags stories. Its conception of space involves pirates, cats, octopuses, and dinosaurs (flying reptiles, actually: pteranodons). That’s my kind of space adventure!

Octopuses in space!

Vicious cats on other planets!

Space pirates!

Interplanetary Dinosaurs!

I love keeping up with current developments in space exploration, but I guarantee you that interplanetary travel will never kick as much ass as it did in 1951! Tragically, this series stopped before the complete story was told. You can read more about its production, and why it was never finished, at https://www.psacard.com/articles/articleview/6976/psa-set-registry-1951-bowman-jets-rockets-spacemen-trading-card-thats-blasting-off-popularity

 

Retrofuturistic Topps Space Cards from 1958

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1958, fried eggs, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, meteor, Moon, outer space, planets, topps, trading cards, vintage space art

Space travel ain’t what it used to be! Technology, design, and planetary knowledge have evolved since these beautiful Topps trading cards came out in 1958. But if you are like me and easily amused by vintage space art, these cards are worth checking out.

Below is a slideshow featuring a few dozen of my favorites. You can find a complete collection, including scans of the text on the back of the cards, at http://www1.coe.neu.edu/~dan/tsc/go.html

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Meteor Peril! Isn’t space travel exciting?! The only thing that could make it more fun is fried eggs.

Animals of the Past as Painted by Matthew Kalmenoff

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animals, charles mcvicker, dinosaur, dinosaur books, golden books, Matthew Kalmenoff, painting, Prehistoric Animals, prehistoric birds, prehistoric fish, prehistoric mammals, stamp book, trading cards

Today’s images come to us courtesy of reader Edward Dietrich, who recently discovered a 2012 post with my scans of a 1960s booklet, Sinclair and the Exciting World of Dinosaurs. Another reader had informed me that the artist was Matthew Kalmenoff, and Ed added that Kalmenoff did the full-color paintings on the stamps in a book I loved when I was a kid: The Golden Stamp Book of Animals of the Past.

The cover, featured above, has art by Charles McVicker. Ed sent the following scans of Matthew Kalmenoff’s paintings for us all to enjoy. He included notes about different versions of this book, of which there were many!

Though the blog Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs has scans of some pages from a 1950s version of this book, the art was apparently recycled into many editions. Ed says he’s owned a third printing from 1968 (priced at 59¢), plus an eleventh printing from 1975 and an eighteenth printing from 1980 (both priced at 89¢).

Most of Ed’s scans are not from the stamp book edition, but a 1961 version called Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals Trading Cards, and branded “Golden Funtime Trading Cards”. Instead of printing the artwork on sheets of lickable stamps to affix to the pages, this version presented the images on heavy cardstock and had oversized pages. This version only had 45 paintings, compared to the 48 in the stamp books, so Ed thoughtfully scanned the remaining stamps from the other editions.

Some updates to the captions happened between the 1950s stamp book version and this 1960s trading card version. For example, the Protoceratops is clearly labeled as such in Ed’s scans, but was labeled “horn-faced dinosaur” in the 1950s version. Also, the Ichthyosaur is named in this edition, where it was labeled “fish-like reptile” in the 1950s book. “Winged reptile” got updated to Rhamphoryncus. Other captions changed, too, but why should I ruin all the fun of letting you find them?

If you’re like me, you now want wall-sized prints of several of these gorgeous (if somewhat scientifically outdated) paintings. If you’re willing to settle for something smaller, I’ve seen some of them on Amazon repackaged into a 1988 book called Ready to Frame Dinosaur Paintings. I hope Kalmenoff got paid well for this artwork, considering how many times it was repurposed into different publications over the years.

If you’re digging these paintings and want to see more of Matthew Kalmenoff’s vintage artwork, cruise back to the original post that started all this madness, because I updated it with more images and links. I was excited to learn about this connection to one of my childhood treasures via total strangers’ commenting on a post about a book I randomly found on eBay. Talk about going full circle!

A big “thank you” goes out to Ed for taking the time to scan and share these images! This blog would be nothing without the people who have dropped by over the years to share my enthusiasm about dinosaurs, prehistoric animals, comic books, poetry, and mutant brains from outer space. Happy New Year to you, and may your dreams be filled with prehistoric mammals!

The next three images are the ones from the stamp books that did not appear in the 1961 trading cards version.

If I ever get around to recording another album of guitar instrumentals, it’s going to be called “Skull of the Uinta Beast”. Hell yeah!

Here are two images of the cover from the 1961 trading cards version!

 

William Stout Dinosaur Trading Cards!

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collector cards, dinosaur, Lost Worlds by William Stout, prehistoric mammals, trading cards, William Stout

Several years ago, William Stout’s artwork came out in a series of trading cards packaged by Comic Images as “William Stout Lost World Collector Cards.”

Today we share with you the dinosaur and prehistoric mammal cards in our packages.

While we love the art, we have to warn you that time had not been entirely kind to these cards. Many of them were stuck together inside the silvery packages. You’ll see some ‘scarring’ on theses images as a result. Still, they’re cool mementos for dinosaur fans and William Stout afficionados.

If you’re not hip to William Stout, he put together one of the best modern books on the lives of dinosaurs, lavishly illustrated with day-in-the-life stories based on the latest scientific thought on dinosaur biology: The New Dinosaurs.

William Stout also did an amazing series of prehistoric murals for the San Diego Natural History Museum. His book Prehistoric Life Murals takes you through the whole process, from thumbnail sketches to a wall full of raging dino. You’ll learn a few things about the mural process on the way, and the fold-out pages replicating entire walls are astounding. Bonus: It’s a lot cheaper than flying to San Diego!