Ah yes, 50 years ago a relatively bizarre set of trading cards made their way into the spokes of children’s bicycles around the world. The series was known as Mars Attacks! and I believe a trading card company today would be hard pressed to release such an endearing, yet gruesome, series of images without sending some special interest groups into politically correctness laced conniptions; card #36 of Mars Attacks! alone would send the folks at PeTA into a frothing fury!
This July, Topps will release the classic as Mars Attacks Heritage Cards with all new features including signed foil variants signed by the sole-surviving creator of the original Topps set, Len Brown. Ten copies of each of the fifty five cards (for a total of 550) will be randomly inserted into the packs and hand-numbered, one through ten.
From Topps:
Celebrating 50 Years of Martian Mayhem! All 55 original Mars Attacks! cards from the infamous 1962 release are reprinted on Heritage stock for the first time! Housed in a re-creation of the original packaging, each pack contains 6 retro-cool cards. However, this is not merely a reprint set. Exciting subsets feature all-new original art including a selection of vintage “Lost” Mars Attacks! sketches brought to life as full-color paintings by Wacky Packages veteran Jason Edmiston (1 per pack), and never-before-seen new illustrations from John McCrea, the Eisner award-winning artist from the IDW Publishing Mars Attacks! comic book (1 per pack). Plus, collect 3 levels of parallels: Green Borders (1:3 packs), Silver Borders (1:24) & Gold Borders (1:TBD); along with stunning 3D Cards (1:8) and introducing hand-drawn 1/1 Mars Attacks! Sketch Cards featuring today’s top trading card artists (1 per box). A point-of-purchase poster is also included in every box!
Who knows, maybe you can collect the whole set and have them in your pocket when you go see the Mars Attacks! musical…
