Big Trouble In Little China

I’ve been wanting to do a Big Trouble in Little China set for quite some time now but I kept putting it off and putting it off.  The reason why is that I knew it would be time consuming.  I knew it would just be a couple of cards because I wanted to do the movie cardboard justice.  I try to make to make the best cards possible not only for my personal satisfaction in a job well done but anyone who may be a fan of the card’s subject.  All of my cards take time to make, but this set a little longer due to the size.   Big Trouble may not have been a box office smash -- grossing about half of what it took to make the movie -- but it’s garnered as big of a cult following as most any 80’s cult classic, especially after being released on VHS in 1996.  I added three new complete revolutions on my tape’s spools while making this set just so I could get down more of what I would call fan-accurate details.

Big Trouble would have been ripe for a card set.  There’s all of it’s colorful characters and scenes that just plain look great as cards.  Director John Carpenter has gone onto say that Twentieth Century Fox never got behind the movie not really knowing what they had with Big Trouble in Little China.  I think a card set could have gone a long way to help capture the imagination of kids who would have bugged their parents to take them to see the movie.

I knew I would be doing more of a storyboard type set than just a principal characters set with Big Trouble.  There’s so many great scenes in the movie that I wanted to include but I kind of had to take what the internet would give me, which fortunately was the majority of what I wanted to include.

This set ended up being 38 cards that is split evenly into a Series 1 and 2, but it could have easily been double had I come across more images.

When I thought about how I wanted the set to look there really was only one template I seriously considered, the 1986 Donruss design.  I was so pleased with how the design complimented my Wraith and Thrashin’ sets that it really was an easy decision to use it once more, just this time in an all too fitting jade green colored border.

This set features a couple of firsts for a Phantom Cardboard set.  For the first time I finished a set off with a checklist.  The second first is a 6-card puzzle back of the Lo Pan’s catacomb monster.  The puzzle is complete with three cards from the first series and three from the second.

Update: See - Jose Canseco Would Be Proud

Thrashin' Drops In

If you’ve never seen it, Thrashin’ is ninety-two minutes of 80’s awesomeness.  I think if I was teaching a course on 80’s cinema it would be on the required watching list.

For my money Thrashin’ is the Citizen Kane of skateboarding movies.  But, I guess a movie that has a similar story as my all-time favorite movie, The Karate Kid, would create some bias in my eyes.  Corey Webster (Josh Brolin) is the new kid in town who quickly finds himself the annoyance of a rival gang and the only way to settle things is a big competition for Southern California skate scene supremacy.  There's also that idea of a class struggle, although in this movie the protagonist is on the Valley end of things.  Mix that with shades of Romeo and Juliet with Corey’s love interest Chrissy (Pamela Gidley) being the younger sister of Hook (Robert Rusler), the leader of the punker skater faction “Daggers”, sworn enemy of the Corey and his “Ramp Locals” buddies.  If you're a fan of fine 80’s cheese this flick is Havarti. Mmmmm.

If that little write up isn’t enough to make you shell out the bucks to get your very own VHS copy then maybe this line will seal the deal:

Chrissy: "Well, what do you thrash?"
Corey: "What do ya got?"

1986 Donruss

And if your STILL not convinced there's lots of rad skate scenes and cameos by the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers,  pro skaters Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, and Eddie Reategui.  Plus, it was the film debut of Lost Boys' vampire Brooke McCarter.

Alright, now for the card mini-set.  This was the second time I used the 1986 Donruss baseball inspired design, the first was with my set for The Wraith (also with Sherilyn Fenn).  Although this time I took a couple of gnarly creative liberties. I changed the color of the frame to pink.  It's a color that's used in the movie's logo plus it's a predominant color of the 80's fashions worn in Thrashin'.

On the veritcally oriented cards I moved the Thrashin' logo to the upper left of the card.  I just thought it looked better.  On the horizontal cards I put it back in the lower left of the image where the team logo would be for the '86 Donruss.  I also added a 1986 Donruss-esque Phantom Cardboard logo which I thought fits nicely with the overall design.

Lucas

I decided to watch Lucas in order to get the details down to make a mini-set.  First off, it's as cute of a movie as I remembered it to be.  I like that it's a bit of a different take on the teenage high school experience than other films of that genre.

Lucas came out in 1986.  I've used a 1986 Topps football inspired design a few time so that part was pretty straight forward.  I chose to go with the Atlanta Falcons color scheme from that set because the Park High Pirates red and black jersey reminded me of Atlanta's unis.

The biggest challenge for me with this set was what I would call the 'fan accurate' details.  Or, me just being extra anal about my cards.  I always like to have first and last names when available.  I was running into different spellings of Lucas' last name between Bly and Blye.  It was about 50/50 between the two spellings.  It was finally settled when I found some 8" x 10" studio promo pictures on eBay that had the spelling in the picture’s caption as Blye.  Those pictures also helped to confirm the spelling of Cappie's last name.  For whatever reason little details are important to me.  Unfortunately I could not find any additional name info for any of the other three cards in the set.

I had fun with Lucas' football position if you'll notice.  In the scene where Lucas is inserted into the game against Rockford he yells back to Coach asking what position he's playing and Coach yells back "prone".

Labyrinth (Updated)

At the urging of my 8 year old daughter I've expanded the Labyrinth mini-set. What once was but five cards is now is now sixteen! She was right though. Too many great characters in the Goblin Kingdom to stop at five.

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9/22/17

Lately I've been into making multi card sets.  Whether it's something new or adding another card to a set I've previously created.  At first I avoided anything where there wasn't a hope of getting an autograph, but I've found that it's fun to make cards of what are often times the main character of a movie or show.

That brings us to this five card set.  It's hard to believe that Labyrinth never had a mass produced card set.  You would think that it would be very marketable as a trading card set being that it was a Jim Henson creation with muppets and all, not to mention David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. The glass half full of there never being cards for it is that 31 years after it was released in theaters it gives me an excuse to create a few cards of one of the '80s biggest fantasy / adventure movies.

1987 Donruss

For some reason I was under the impression that Labyrinth came out in 1987.  I guess I assumed because it seemed like an '87 movie.  What I mean by that is that soooo many awesome movies came out that year. As a sidebar if you ever get a chance check out all the movies that were released in 1987 and also 1984 you'd see that those two years housed a majority of the decade's best movies.

Being that I mistakenly thought Labyrinth was released in 1987 when I hatched my idea to make cards for it I had already decided that I was going to use a 1987 Donruss baseball inspired design and how I wanted to cards to look. Then I did a quick check and discovered that I'd overshot my mark by a year.  If you follow this blog you know that I like to pair the year of the card design to the subject's release year or debut.  I was already committed to what I wanted to do when I picked the 1987 Donruss design so there wasn't any turning back once I envisioned how these cards were going to look.  I did ever so briefly contemplate other card designs from 1986 but I just felt the '87 Donruss' layout best fit my vision and would make the most sense.

In my mind I was picturing the movie's poster and drawing inspiration from that.  I've always been a big fan of movie poster art.  Posters from artists such as Drew Struzan, John Alvin, and Richard Amsel to me can be as iconic as the movies themselves.

I chose to go with a white border as opposed to the 1987 Donruss' black border to go along with the large portions of negative white space on the poster.  The gold colored borders are also meant to coincide with the poster's pallet as well as the blueish-purple colored nameplate. The color's placement locations are meant to mirror the poster's color progression.  I borrowed the labyrinth illustration from the poster to go in the place of the baseball trim that runs through the center of the card.

The baseball cards featured a team logo in the lower right corner so I completed the card with the movies font title in the form of a logo.

I've started with my five favorite characters from the movie but I'll update this post if I add other characters.

The Wraith

I got a message a direct message from an Instagram friend, @creature1031, asking me if I had done cards from The Wraith (1986) yet. I told him that not only had I not done any, but I've never even heard of the movie, to which he recommended I go on Netflix and check it out.  So, I did just that.

Within the first couple of minutes of watching The Wraith I knew that "yes" I was going to make some cards.  Then, I started to feel embarrassed for myself having not known of this movie until now.  I even contemplated turning in my '80s kid card but figured I could atone by making some cool trading cards.

1986 Donruss

This movie is so cool. You've got a cast that features names like Charlie Sheen, Randy Quaid, and Clint Howard.  You've got a soundtrack with names like Mötley Crüe, Robert Palmer, Billy Idol, and Ozzy Ozbourne.  Add a smoking hot Sherilyn Fenn, a totally '80s-fied story and some really cool cars to get a movie that I literally love and have watched 4 times since -- some of it was for "trading card research", so save the complete loser accusations, even if it might be the case ... maybe.

For the template it was an easy choice, a 1986 Donruss inspired design. There's no way to build this choice up other than to say that it fits perfectly. In my opinion it fits better with these cards than it does the baseball cards. I could even imagine a similar design on the trim on the inside of the Turbo Interceptor.

I found making cards for this set like potato chips.  This is my largest set to date.  The only reason I stopped at 17 was lack of images to use.

Cameron Frye

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is one of those movies that is just kind of synonymous with the 1980's, so it was only fitting that it got the Phantom Cardboard treatment.

Has there ever been a more pull forable (not a word?) character than the depressive, hypochondriac Cameron Frye?

Cameron sporting Gordie Howe's winged wheel sweater in the movie made him perfect for a custom card. I was turned on about making this one because it's the only hockey card I've done, although I'd really get a kick out of making some cards from Slap Shot too.

I chose the 1986 Topps hockey design, the year of Ferris Bueller's release.  It all came together pretty well, in my opinion.  I was able to recreate the design with no frustration which is always a bonus.

Now I wait for a TTM success from Mr. Alan Ruck.

The comparison

You Keep For Your Collection, I Know You Like It.

I'm a a HUGE fan of The Karate Kid franchise, well, the first three movies at least.  So, expect to see other Karate Kid customs on here is what I'm saying.

For this one I took inspiration from the 1986 Topps Baseball design as a tie-in to the year The Karate Kid II was released in theaters.  I figured this would not be a complex design to emulate, and by and large, it wasn't.  Except when it came to the font.  I couldn't find a font to match the original cards so I had to recreate the "Okinawa" from a number of different cards to get all of the letter.  As a little bonus I added the symbol that can be found on Chozen's Karate gi where the player position would normally be.

I sent a copy to Yugi Okumoto to be signed, as well as one for him to keep as is my custom - sort of a way of saying "thank you" for the autograph.  With my signed custom I also got a little note thanking me for his copy.   Needless to say that made my day.