Revenge Of The Nerds

Revenge of the Nerds is a movie that a lot of us loved, but maybe hasn't aged so well.  There's the cultural stereotypes, the "toxic masculinity" from the bullying Alpha Betas and that problematic err-ummm love scene? between Betty and Lewis on the moonwalk.  But, my '80s kid eyes prefer not to view it as the un-P.C. cluster-bleep it would be by todays standards, but as the underdog sex-comedy it was before our childhood's became so cancellable.  

This is a set I've had the back burner for a long time now.  If you're new to the site I started making custom cards in hopes of sending them off in the mail for autographs 6 or so years ago.  I had made 5 or 6 cards from this movie with no intention of making a mini-set out of it.  Those were just the cards I thought I might stand a halfway decent chance of getting autographs on.  There's a lot of cards from my earlier days that I'd like to expand to a set.  Picture and industrial sized stove with back burners as far as the eye can see, something like that.

I finally decided to buckle down and put this baby to bed.  The cards I had made previously were tightened up since I've got new operating standards that I didn't have then.  I just needed to fill in the blanks character-wise and then design a card back to what ended up being a 14 card mini-set.

For the Lamda's (and one Omega Mu) I used a card front inspired by the  1984 Topps baseball design, a personal favorite of mine.  For the Beta/Pi faction I went with a design inspired by the 1984 Topps football design, which to me just makes perfect sense as the Betas were the football jocks at Adams College.

The cards all got the same card back design to give the set more continuity since the card fronts varied between the heroes and antagonists.  The back design is derivative mostly to '84 Topps baseball set but with some liberties taken to give them the right amount of nerd flare.  

I had a lot of fun packing the card backs with info.  Each card has a "Transcript" section which basically serves as a listing of some of the character's prominent characteristics. Each character also has a quote attributed to them and their frat/sorority affiliation.  There's a "Nerd Factoid" on each just because I'm into that DYK? kind of shit.  The card back finishes off with quiz question so you can test your RotN fanhood.

A number of the sets I've made recently somewhat storyboard a movie so I like to keep those cards together and not offer them with the PCb. card shop's "You Pick Single" option.  This one (all though I would prefer collector's get the entire 14 card set) because they're all character cards and I get that there's some that just might want certain characters, so I'm leaving it open to the Y.P.S. option.  But, as an incentive, I've created a bonus card *only* available with the purchase of the complete set.  

Not that I wanted to highlight the sorta rapey love scene, but it's just that the card makes tons of sense.  What I mean is Lewis was wearing some sort of Storm Trooper/gorilla/Darth Vader hybrid costume and the 1977 Star Wars set is so iconic, and not to mention how the Star Wars franchise is known for their almost cult-like nerd fanboy following.  It just all comes together too perfectly not to make the card.  And hey, *spoiler alert* Lewis and Betty end up married in the sequels so it's sort of  the beginning of a meant-to-be nearly consensual love story!

The Shockmaster

For any of you that might not know who The Shockmaster is, he's an extremely short-lived World Championship Wrestling character of great infamy.  In 1993 at WCW's Clash of the Champions Pay-Per-View event the promotion was debuting a new character... live.  

Fred Ottman (formerly Tugboat/Typhoon in the WWF) was set to make a dramatic debut as the mystery partner for Sting and The British Bulldog.  The plan was to have him bust through a wall with pyrotechnics going off and then do a little spiel about an upcoming Pay-Per-View.  What happened was Ottman busted the wall from his waist up and when he tried to come through it the unbroken bottom half turned him into a human teeter-totter upending him onto the floor and causing is glitter covered Storm Trooper helmet to fall of and start rolling away from him.  It was such an over-the-top botch that off camera you could hear the other wrestlers break character and laugh at something that was originally intended to be an intense confrontation.  

Obviously whatever credibility the character would have had rolled away in that glitter-glued helmet, and the gimmick was essentially D.O.A. I have read that in the years since Ottman has been able to have fun with the whole thing, which is good to hear because I could see it really getting the best of some of those guys back then who really lived their gimmicks.  

With the Shockmaster's standout adornment being a glittery Stormtrooper helmet there's only one right answer for a custom card, that being the iconic 1977 Topps Star Wars design.  I thought the blue starfield border would be the cheekiest choice for The Shockamster.

Darthy McFly

There's been a couple of times I've come up with a custom card idea that I can't believe I didn't think of earlier.  Add this card to that list.

Remember that scene in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox appears to  Crispin Glover as Darth Vader the extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan?  I went out on a limb thinking some Stars Wars fans may have also seen BTTF and could appreciate a good custom trading card mashup.

Freddie Mercury

The image used for this custom card is a pretty famous picture.  Without any fear of hyperbole I think I can say an image featuring Freddie Mercury riding the shoulders of Darth Vader while wearing and Flash Gordon shirt could be used a visible representation of the word epic.

With all the buzz around the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody I started to see this image pop up again and again until it finally dawned on me ... hey, what about a 1977 style Star Wars card?

I made Freddie's pumped right fist break the top border for a little more drama, which is something you didn't see Topps do, if I'm not mistaken, until the late '80s.

Step Brothers

Update:
Per the genius suggestion of an Instagram user I've added a 1977 Topps Star Wars style card to make a Step Brothers two card Phan Pack.  I actually wanted to make a "Boats 'N Hoes" Yo! MTV Raps style card but I shockingly could not find one quality screen capture image of that video :(

Step Brothers may not fit the nostalgic vintage theme that most of my cards share but I think it still qualifies as something the is universally loved and could benefit from a Phantom Cardboard treatment.

This card was more about the card design than the subject.  Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan Step Brothers.  The movie is about as quotable as it gets.  But, I've been wanting to use the 1988 Topps football design for something.  One thing that has kept me from using it for all this time is I really don't know how I feel about the two-tone gradient colors that all the base cards have.  Then, I ran across an picture of the Jerry Rice / Jim Breech Scoring Leaders card.  I personally remember pulling that card out of a pack of '88 Topps football.  That was a big card to get back then.  Jerry Rice was a favorite of mine.  I think he was a favorite of everyone's.  The 49ers were kind of like "America's Team" back then.  Or, at least it seemed that way to me.  I liked this one design for my card because it didn't have the two-tone gradient like the player base cards, or a team helmet for that matter.

I made the template and then plugged in the post-brawl picture of Dale and Brennan with my fingers crossed that it lined up with the the card's split frame ... and it did, perfectly.

Cheech!

I just wanted to take a second out to show off this Cheech Marin autograph I'm totally stoked about receiving in the mail. Very cool that his PR person took the time out to write the little note that's also pictured.

Now I have both Cheech and Chong signed from my Up In Smoke mini-set while Tom Skerritt, Stacy Keach and Luoisa Moritz are pending.

Up In Smoke

Here's another movie that is in my top five and that I've seen more times than I can count. Up In Smoke is, to me, just a brilliant comedy.  The story is okay, but it's the characters that make this movie classic.  Cheech and Chong themselves are gold, but then you have actors like Tom Skerritt (Strawberry), Stacey Keech (Sgt. Stedenko), and Christopher Joy (Curtis) who all totally own the scenes they're in. Just writing this makes me want to watch this movie.

I think the Curtis character needed his own spin-off movie

For this mini-set I chose a 1977 Topps Star Wars inspired design.  Up In Smoke was released in 1978.  I diverted from what I always aim to do with my cards which is match the year to the card design.  The reason I chose to do this with these cards are for one the design is so iconic and synonymous with the '70s, and I wanted the green border for reasons that I hope are obvious. I found a Star Wars-esque font for the movie title which really was a fun touch for these cards.

I started with just the Chong card that I made a while back. This is when my primary focus was making cards that I had a good chance at getting an autograph on and Tommy Chong is a good TTM signer, as well as having one of coolest signatures ever incorporating a joint into his John Hancock.

Keach was the perfect square foil for this film and Louisa Moritz was a total fox.

Now that I've been having fun expanding my single one-off cards into mini sets I've added 5 more cards to Chong's. The biggest problem I've been having with making these"mini-sets" is actually keeping them mini. Some times I'm thankful when I'm limited by the number of images out there because for a movie that I love as much as Up In Smoke it could have easily turned into full blown set that takes you from start to end instead of highlighting a few of the characters.  I would love to add a couple more cards to this set if I could find the right images.  Scenes like the Ajax girl, the battle of the bands and so on.  We'll see if any ever pop up.

This card here is one of my absolute favorites of my signed custom card collection.  I'd go so far as to call it a "prized possession".  I got two signed and gave one to a good friend of mine. He loves Up In Smoke every bit as much as I and is somewhat of a savant when it comes to quoting exact lines with all the proper voice inflections. 

Get your own set here.

Alexandra Daddario

This card utilizes the iconic 1977 Topps Star Wars design for Alexandra Daddario's character "Blake" in 2015's San Andreas. I saw this movie over my buddy's house.  He has the whole 3-D projection surround sound thing going on.  The ultimate way to watch a natural disaster movie, and 3-D Alex was a nice treat as well.

For the card there wasn't a whole lot to do.  Most of the time spent was masking out the yellow action burst thing.  Then I got a hold of a Star Wars-esque font and viola! I like Star Wars, but I wouldn't consider myself a "Star Wars geek".  But, I do love the Topps Star Wars card set.  So vintage, and instantly recognizable.

This card went out awhile back and I've got my fingers crossed for a TTM success on it.