Showing posts with label SPOOK STORIES. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SPOOK STORIES. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

SPOOK STORIES STICKERS


Any Monster Kid from the vintage days will remember the "Spook Theatre" trading cards. Also known as "Spook Stories" for the title on the back of the card, we just called them "monster cards". Any Google search will show that many of these survived the years without being destroyed by using them as "flappers" on the spokes of bicycle wheels. Complete sets do run in the hundreds of dollars, but if you're just trying to fill in some missing numbers to your collection and aren't too picky about their condition, you can easily find individual cards selling for five bucks or so.

More expensive, however, are the stickers that came in the wax packs along with the cards. The numbers of these seem to have diminished from being used on notebooks, Pee-Chee folders (so-named for their color, if one is interested to know) or any number of other surfaces. Unlike the cards themselves, they are also prone to being counterfeited for their ease in being reproduced.

Gaudy, lurid and drawn by an unknown artist(s) they are a sight to behold. I'm showing a few examples here, some a little less common than others that I remember getting quite often, as well as the card doubles, triples, etc.












Sunday, October 8, 2023

DINOSAURUS! LOBBY CARD SET


Released on June 24, 1960 DINOSAURUS was independently produced by Jack H. Harris and distributed by Universal International. Noted for its stop-motion and puppet animation, the dinosaur models were constructed by Marcel "King Kong" Delgado and his (brother?), Victor. Harris' credits include, THE BLOB (1958, 1972, 1988), 4D MAN (1959) and SCHLOCK (1973).










DINOSAURUS was also fodder for the Spook Stories cards of the 1960s.




Read the DINOSAURUS comic book HERE.

Friday, October 26, 2018

TELL ME A 'SPOOK STORY'


Imagine this, Monster Millennials: As a Monster Kid in the 1960's, you didn't have the luxury of on-demand monster movies to watch whenever you wanted to. If you were lucky, your parents let you stay up and watch the late-night shows hosted by assorted and sundry witches, warlocks and just plain weirdos. Luckier still were the early evening monster movies that were shown during the week of Halloween. Later on, some of the shows were broadcast (in L.A. anyway) on weekend afternoons, but that was it until videotape showed up. All we had were monster magazines and a few toys and games (including the Aurora monster models) to remind us of the fun scares that we got watching TV.

That is, until 1962 when Leaf Brands introduced the "Spook Stories" trading cards. A year earlier, Nucard released a set with photos from American International and other B-movie distributors, but Spook Stories were the first cards to feature the famous monsters we knew and loved from Universal. Plus, the card stock was thick, sturdy and glossy, too.

The series came in two sets for a total of 144 cards. The wrappers came in two colors, orange and purple, and had the title, Spook Theatre. We never referred to them as that; to us they were just simply, "monster cards"!

Following is from the October issue of NON-SPORT UPDATE, which includes a short history of these legendary trading cards. 






Sample cards (front).

Sample cards (back).

Sample stickers.

Card box and wax packs.

Card wax wrappers. Images are from the collection of Hepcat.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

SPOOK STORIES TRADING CARD MYSTERY


Way back when, before the digital age of DVD's -- heck, before videotape even -- Monster Kids like me had to rely on something called commercial television for their dose of monster movies. We had to wait all week for the late night or Saturday afternoon showing from network offerings like "Chiller", "Weird, Weird World", or "Science Fiction Theater". When they were over, that was it. No slo-mo, no fast rewind or frame advance (that was only possible with 8mm home movie projectors and a handful of Castle Films bought from the camera store or through FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLANDs mail order business, Captain Company). We also didn't have the luxury of libraries stacked deep with our favorite monster flicks like today, where you have the capability of watching almost any title that comes to mind. Back then, we were on a strict diet of mainstream monster titles that to us were well known by then, thanks to the aforementioned FAMOUS MONSTERS and other monster 'zines.

So, when we were collecting Spook Stories trading cards back in the early 1960s -- you know, the ones with funny-captioned photos from the Universal and Hammer films -- there were a few stills that we couldn't recognize.




For instance, card #25 shows a poor sod who appears to be stumbling into a pond that looks an awful lot like quicksand. We had no idea what movie it was from. I didn't pay much attention to it after that, and after all these years a came across a movie still on the 'net that reminded me of the long-forgotten card with the unknown movie picture on it.

Well, here it is. The photo is from Hammer's SHADOW OF THE CAT. Mystery solved!


[Photo from theblackboxclub.com]

Friday, December 6, 2013

EYE ON EBAY: SPOOK STORIES CARD SET


Currently offered on eBay is a set of the Leaf Brand "Spook Stories" cards. The set includes Series 1 and 2. These cards were the trading card gold standard for Monster Kids in the 1960s. The set is selling for $290. At a little over $2 per card, this is one of the better offers for this not uncommon set of trading cards.