Trading Card Review: Hello Kitty World Adventures Collect Pak

            My wife actually gets the credit for finding these cards at Big Lots… for a dollar.  Wow, this is how I remember trading cards being when I was a kid, and what’s more so is that there is somewhat of a purpose to these cards.

            First off, you get your passport, and then you get two thick cardboard tokens you can punch out to use on your travels because if you hadn’t guessed, this trading card game is all about going around the globe.  There are regular postcards from various countries thrown into the pack, as well as one special postcard which is shiny.

            The normal postcards have stickers on the back of them, which I’m sure you can put inside your passport or just wherever you want depending upon what you want to do with the cards and how you want to play.   On the front of each postcard is a greeting in that language, so this is also somewhat educational if you only learn how to say “Hello” in various languages thanks to Hello Kitty.

            These are pictures of just my first pack, but I’m sure that there will be more to come.  I had a rather extensive postcard collection as a child (I still have it; don’t ask to see it) and this brings back memories of it, only with Hello Kitty which is just excellent.

Trading Card/Toy Review: Go-Go's Crazy Bones

            My two year old son knows when it’s time to go, so he can say “go” very clearly.  Putting it together twice proved to also be an easy task for him, as he now constantly points to Walgreens when we are nearby and says “Go-Go” repeatedly. 

            I first stumbled upon these little suckers in Walgreens, mixed in with the Easter stuff, and I thought they looked new and different so I’d give them a shot.  What appealed to me most about them, other than their design, is that they were $1.99 per pack or 2 packs for $3.00.   The first three series all have the same format per pack:  three Go-Go’s plus three stickers.  The fourth series cuts back to only two Go-Go’s per pack, but they make up for it with the shiny ones and two trading cards per pack as well.

            So what the heck is a Go-Go?  There is some kind of game you can play with this, even with the cards, but I don’t really care about all that.  They just remind me of gashopon, and at fifty cents per toy + sticker for the first three series, I couldn’t help but take a gamble on them.

            That chance I took turned quickly into two different tins and many more packs to the point now where I’m closing in on nearly one hundred Go-Go’s, but I’ll just say a lot of that also has to do with my son’s love for them.

            Fun Fact: I went to Five Below once specifically to look for them because the Go-Go’s website said that they would be there.  Am I obsessed yet?

            I am not 100% certain whether I’d rather have more Go-Go’s per pack or the trading cards, but these things are somewhere between kaiju, robots, luchadores and characters from Adventure Time, so that’s all I really need to know to be sold on them.   

Trading Card Review: Adventure Time Playpaks

            I was never fond of Adventure Time having dog tags or whatever they used to have in the Card Corner at Target, but when I found these I was quite excited.  Why, my face must have lit up like… Well, like my two year old son when I pulled him out of line and showed him what I had found.

            When I saw that there were five cards per pack and 45 cards in total, I thought, “No doubles and in nine packs I’ll be done”, but there are actually only two cards of each character per pack.  In my first pack, I got character cards for Ice King and Tree Trunks, which is cool because I like Tree Trunks for some odd reason.

            There is also a sticker card (I got Fiona and Cake), a glitter type princess card and a scratch-and-sniff card (mine smells like peppermint).    So, it looks like it might take me longer than I had expected to collect all of these cards, but I’m fine with that.  My son loves ripping open a pack of most trading cards as much as I do, and we both love Adventure Time so this works out perfectly.

            I am somewhat curious as to who the 45 character cards will be (I’m sure all of that information is online, but prefer to be surprised) but finding them will be most of the fun.  Adventure Time was undoubtedly on my list of properties that needed trading cards, so thankfully someone read my mind.

            Also, I feel worth noting that of these five cards not one of them has Finn or Jake on it except for the backside of the sticker, which is a puzzle piece.  If it was anything else I’d be upset, but I just love Adventure Time so much I don’t care that this pack was absent of the two main characters.  

Trading Cards Write-Ups: An Introduction

                When I was a kid growing up, I collected trading cards like crazy.   From the primary staple of baseball cards to so many other things I cannot even begin to list because there were just so many.   Of course, back in my day (Am I really that old?) most everything got a series of trading cards.  Have a band?   Have some trading cards.  Have a movie coming out or television series?  Have some trading cards.   Fighting a war?  Let’s make trading cards!

                These days, trading cards are much more select in what they put out.  There are any number of different properties and licensing that I think should be their own trading cards, and while they are not I do hope to explore some of them in writing about trading cards.   It is also my intent to share with you not only some classic trading card series that existed but pictures from my personal collection as well.

                So if you like anything from baseball to Adventure Time to hip hop, strap yourself in for what should hopefully be a fun ride.   It was only recently (within the last few years) that I managed to find myself back into trading cards after adding some stray Howard Johnson cards to my collection.

                After some recent baseball card purchases, I managed to get cards for Mars Attacks!.   Then came Garbage Pail Kids.  And the list continued into just recently when I was at my local Target, saw new cards for Adventure Time, got really excited and knew it was finally time to do this thing.