Two Packs of Topps Fright Flicks

When do you consider the Halloween season to begin? For me, I consider it "fall" or Halloween season pretty much when stuff starts appearing in stores. A lot of stuff started popping up in late July this year (looking at you Cracker Barrel and Michaels) however, for the sake of this blog, I'll say that Halloween season starts September 1st. Well, guess what, today just happens to be that day. I figured what better way to kick off Halloween season here on the blog than with two packs of Topps Fright Flicks that I've been holding on to for this very occasion.

For those not familiar, Fright Flicks features stills from 80s horror movies with a  somewhat comedic or cheesy caption. I think it's a pretty unique set, it's not for everyone though as some of the cards are honestly a little gory. However, they are definitely unique. My long-running goal is to put this set together as I think it'll be an interesting addition to my collection.

Pack 1

#41 Darn It, I Forgot the Marshmallows! (Nightmare on Elm Street II)

#26 Sorry - Wrong Answer! (An American Werewolf in London)

#24 Well I'll Be a Monkey's Uncle .. Oh Yeah, I Am. (An American Werewolf in London)

I already had the "Nightmare on Elm Street II" card according to my want list. The other two cards are from the "American Werewolf in London" film, which I can honestly say I've never seen.

#40 No Job is too Big for Your Local Exterminator! (Alien)

#29 Now You Put on the Bunny Outfit! (An American Werewolf in London)

#22 I Tell You, That Nuclear Plant Is Safe! (The Fly)

Yay! Three cards I need here! As you can see, the set not only covers horror but also sci-fi which I guess maybe "The Fly" could be classified as. Not sure, I'm not into those kind of horror movies. I did see "Alien" once and sort of enjoyed it.

#73 I Said I'd Give Blood But This Is Ridiculous! (Nightmare on Elm Street III)

Sticker #2 Long Live The Queen (Alien)

#21 Now Don't Get Cross! (Fright Night)

#7 Baby, You're the Greatest! (Vengeance: The Demon)

And I'll close the first pack with three more cards I need. I'm not sure if I'll keep the stickers yet. I've heard of "Fright Night" and "Nightmare on Elm Street III" but I've never heard of "Vengeance: The Demon" however a quick search on IMDB shows that it's better known as "Pumpkinhead".

Pack 2

#31 Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who's the Grossest One of All! (Nightmare on Elm Street III)

#36 What Do You Mean? I Just Had a Manicure! (Fright Night)

#41 Darn It, I Forgot the Marshmallows! (Nightmare on Elm Street II)

The second pack begins with two cards I need and one card I don't.

#11 Open Wide and Say Aaah! (Aliens)

#10 Darn! Now I'll Have to Learn Shorthand! (Fright Night)

#59 The Label Said Not to Open Before Christmas! (Aliens)

Three more cards I need! After seeing all these "Fright Night" cards, I think I might have to find it to watch.

#81 Hey, You're Right - I Can See Myself! (The Fly)

Sticker #8 Predator

#79 Phooey - Nothing's Good on TV Tonight! (Nightmare on Elm Street III)

#62 Charlene, Something Inside Me is Yearning to be Released! (Aliens)

And three more cards I need close out the pack. I'll freely admit, that card from "The Fly" kind of grosses me out.

I love the backs of these. The old-school movie marquee on the bottom with the card number is so cool. Each card also has a brief ghost story on the back. These were my favorites from each pack. 

Out of two packs, I ended up with two duplicates (the same card strangely) but these definitely made a dent into my set build.

Baseball, Racing, and ... Freddy Krueger?

As you saw in my previous post, last weekend I attended the card show at the Nutter Center. However, that wasn't the only card related thing I did. After the show, I headed over to TCI Sports Fan, a card shop I've written about before in my "Card Shop Chronicles" series, that was about 10 minutes down the highway from the venue. I had my mind set on getting some newer packs to rip since I figured it would be my only opportunity to do so for a while but there were some other very specific cards I was looking for as well.

Last year when I went to the Horrorhound Convention, I grabbed a pack of the Topps Fright Flicks cards from 1988. Since then, I haven't seen hide nor hair of those anywhere so I figured if anyone would have them, it would be TCI, since they literally have every sort of sports or non-sports trading card (except for gaming cards) available. I asked at the desk if they had any and Terry, the great guy who runs the shop, winced a bit and said he remembered having some but wasn't sure if he did anymore. He pointed me in the direction of display case that had the bottom filled with 25 cent non-sport boxes. He said if there were any, they would be there. I took a gander and it didn't take long for me to find them. There were a bunch of duplicates but I did manage to grab eight new cards for the set I'm building.

Most of these are from the Nightmare on Elm Street films but there are cards here from other films such as Predator, The Fly, Alien, and Fright Night. I'm not particularly one for gross out creature feature films like The Fly but they are a necessary evil in a set like this. I'm more for the suspense/thriller/slasher type films like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, etc. The other attraction for this set is that this is the only set (well, until last year) that had cards from the original Ghostbusters movie. Unfortunately, there weren't any of the Ghostbusters cards from the set to be had in the box I found. Perhaps I'll dig a little deeper next time I stop in. I have a feeling though that those are going to be the toughest part of completing the set.

Fright Flicks cards weren't the only thing I was after though. 

My main reason for heading to the shop was to get some packs of some current stuff to tear into. One of the things I really wanted was some 2017 Donruss racing. Now, I'm not really into watching NASCAR but I saw the Beckett Box Busters video of this and thought it would be pretty fun to get. Plus, it's always good to spice things up with a bit of variety. I'll share how I did with these in a future post.

Also coming in a future post will be these packs of Donruss baseball. Even though Panini doesn't have the MLB license, I still enjoy the Donruss cards as you get a lot of fun stuff for a decent price. As of this writing, I haven't torn into these but stay close. I did pretty well when I bought some Donruss on a whim last year so perhaps my luck with this will continue.

Finally, since they were completely out of Heritage, I picked up four more packs of Series 1. While I've already opened ten packs of this, it never hurts to pick up some more. Plus, I really like the cards this year. I'll share these in a separate post as well. Since I bought so many packs, the shop owner was nice enough to throw in the Fright Flicks cards for free without me having to even ask.

And thus, another fun trip to the card shop concludes. Speaking of card shops though, while I was at the card show, there was a vendor there from a new shop (well, new to me). I plan on checking the place out this weekend and who knows, I might find something fun.

1988 Topps Fright Flicks Cards

I first mentioned these back in the spring when I filed a report on the HorrorHound Convention. These cards were produced by Topps in 1988 and ran the gamut of horror films of the time, from the first three Nightmare on Elm Street movies to other movies like Fright Night, Predator, Day of the Dead, and yes even Ghostbusters. For the longest time, this was the only place you could find cards dedicated to the original Ghostbusters movie, that is until the Ghostbusters cards came out earlier this year from Cryptozoic. Anyway, I grabbed this pack at the aforementioned convention for five dollars, which is about the best price you can find on these. There are nine cards per pack and one sticker, let's see what I've got.

The first card is from the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I haven't seen that movie in quite a long time and I think it's time I need to revisit it. I don't really consider Ghostbusters a "horror film", it's more of a comedy but I can see why it was include as fans of the movie would buy the cards. This Slimer card is really cool though. Another movie I don't consider a horror film is Predator. I classify it as more sci-fi and I've only seen it a handful of times. It's a pretty good movie but the only thing I remember from it is Jesse Ventura stating "I ain't got time to bleed".

Left to right, these cards are from Vengeance: The Demon, Nightmare on Elm Street II, and Poltergeist. I've never seen, let alone heard of Vengeance but that scene they chose looks pretty creepy. I haven't seen Nightmare 2 but it's on my list to check out. I need to do that soon as Halloween is approaching fast. There was a remake of Poltergeist last year that did horrible business and I've never seen the original either, but that clown just looks creepy.

Closing out the pack are cards from three movies I've never seen, Fright Night, Poltergeist as I mentioned above, and Day of the Dead. Since I have no knowledge of these films, I'll speak to the card design a bit. It's very clean and simple, just a still from the film with a somewhat cheesy caption on it. 

The backs are equally as clean. There's a brief story on the back and I really like the design on the bottom with the film title in the marquee. 

There's also a sticker included in the pack, here's the one I pulled. I'm writing this during my break at work so I pulled this image from Trading Card Database. It's not my favorite sticker of the set but if you put all of them together, you form a nice collage of sorts.

Overall, this was a really fun pack to break into and if I can find more packs for a reasonable price, I'll definitely get more as I'm planning on building the set and collecting the four different wrappers. It's nearly Halloween and I've got a few more Halloween related posts before putting Project Halloween in the books for the year.