Fast Times Series II

With the succession of Fast Times cast member's birthdays that are in July and August as well as the 38th anniversary of the film's release that just passed on August 13th it got me thinking of the movie which happens to be in my top 5 favorite movies.  The 20 card Fast Times mini-set I made back in 2018 is still one of my favorites.  I love the look of the 1982 Topps baseball inspired design and Fast Times at Ridgemont High is just soooo good, especially for anyone with a fondness for the 1980s.  

Being in the Fast Times mood that I was in I decided to pop in my copy of the movie and enjoy it for the umpteen-millionth time.  I've always enjoyed the movie from the awkward coming-of-age comedic aspect of things, but this time I was watching it a little differently.  The movie is so well done from the standpoint of really feeling like you lived this high school year with these characters.  You had some just coming into high school trying to figure it out, some in the hazy middle years and others at the end of their journey with "real life" about to bear down on them.  The casting is so crazy when you are able to look at how all of these unknowns, at the time, went on to be important players in Hollywood for years to come.  There's not another movie cast that can boast the same level of career success.  It really is a special movie for so many reasons.

While my first Fast Times mini-set focused on making character cards that spanned that unforgettable cast, I had a thought about making a follow-up set highlighting some of the most classic scenes in a 1982 Topps kind of way.  

I guess you could consider the first set the "base cards" and this second set the special "subset" cards.  I took my ques from the "In Action", "Future Stars", "All-Star" and "Team Leaders" cards from the set.  

The 7 card "In Action" design highlights some of the film's most classic scenes.  The "Future Stars" design I had fun with grouping together some of the film's special interests that came in threes.  

I made the Spirit Bunnies card for two main reasons, one, I wanted to use the Ridgemont Wolf logo on a card, and that was my chance as that's the only cards that had team logos in Topps' 1982 baseball offering.  Two, I wanted to get Pamela Springsteen on a card.  She's The Bosses sister and also she's notable for her role in the '80s slasher classics Sleepaway Camp II & Sleepaway Camp III.

Rounding out the 14 card follow-up set is a Brad Hamilton "Manager" card in the style of the "All-Star" subset.  Brad is the character I related to the most in the film.  I spent my high school career focused on working and having a cool car.  Looking back I would have done it differently and not let the parade pass my by.  Hindsight...there's plenty of time to be old, but not enough time to be young.  

If I hadn't already done a Spicoli surfing card I would have also put it into the All-Star template as well.  But, I feel Spicoli's greatness is represented pretty well in this set.

One thing Series II has over the first Series is dedicated card backs.  I wasn't doing those two years ago.  My goal with the card backs was to stay honest to the '82 Topps baseball but tweaked in slight ways to lend tie-ins to Fast Times.

Although the first 20 card mini-set was not numbered, this set picks up at #21 just to make it feel like a true follow-up to the first set.

1982 Topps 

Batdance

This image of Prince rollerskating with a 1989 Batman logo tank top on was too good not to become a custom card.

The summer of 1989 was aptly dubbed "The Summer of Batman".  I don't recall a movie more hyped (although Titanic was close) than Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film, and this is decades before the superhero movie craze.  The movie lived up to the hype.  Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson were both brilliant and helped make Batman the hottest property on the planet.

For those who maybe don't know or don't remember, the entire Batman soundtrack was done by Prince.  The album was #1 on the Billboard 200 for six consecutive weeks and helped give Prince's career a commercial revival.

I was eager to finally use a 1989 Topps Batman inspired design.  I was one of the millions of kids who wanted anything they were slapping a Batman logo on, especially trading cards.  The movie was big enough to support a series one and two card set.  Series One had a white border, and is probably the more recognizable of the two series.  I chose, however, to use the yellow frame of the second series as it was more of a behind-the-scenes card series, which this card would fit in better with.

Tiffani Thiessen

 

Next in the running Dream Girl series that was inspired by the 1991 Score Dream Team subset is none other than Miss Kelly Kapowski herself, Tiffani Thiessen.  

Dream Girl Kathy Ireland

This custom card is probably long overdue.  I've made a few of these "Dream Girl" cards from a 1991 Score baseball "Dream Team" inspired design.  When you're talking about dream girls for Gen X'ers, Kathy has to be on the shortest of shortlists.  Hopefully, this card makes up for her absence to date.

John Goodman

This image is a pretty internet famous image, but it's usually the photoshopped version of it where John is wearing a Black Flag band shirt.  I figured the original image where Goodman is wearing a shirt of his beloved LSU Fighting Tigers would make for a pretty fun card because who isn't a John Goodman fan?  He's been a lot of great stuff which includes several sports-themed roles.

I'm not 100% sure what year the image was taken but I'm fairly sure it's from the '80s.  Usually, I'm a stickler researching so I can match the year to the card design but I knew from the outset that I only wanted to put the image in a 1984 Topps football inspired design.  It's the only football design from the 80's that incorporates a logo (not counting the on-helmet logos '82 & '88 designs), and I really wanted to use the logo LSU used as their primary logo throughout the 1980s.  That logo, to me, looks so generic and dated, therefore it has the type of charm I dig.

I've used the '84 design quite a few times in the past but this is the first time I added a card back.  I was unfamiliar with the back of these cards.  I had to check several sources to make sure I was indeed looking at the back of the right cards because it looks so dated, even more so than 1984.  It looks more like it would befit a football card from the 1970s, or even older.

1984 Topps football 

Joe Dirt

Joe Dirt is one of those late '90s / early '00s comedies that I didn't realize how much I liked.  Also, I never remember taking note of what a good message the movie has --while being cloaked in lowbrow humor.

If you've read this blog in the past you might remember that my affinity for trading card design, for the most part, comes to a halt in the early '90s.  Joe Dirt came out in 2001 and I have no idea what trading cards looked like by then.  I know they were shinier with foil stamping, but that's about all I know.  So I had to choose a vintage-inspired design that I thought would be a good fit for the movie. 

In looking at the movie's poster I noticed the Joe Dirt type logo has something of an orange gradient fade coloring which made me think of the 1988 Topps football design with its gradient color fades that coordinated with the different NFL teams.  I chose to color the frame the same as that movie poster font logo.  I did that for the 6 character cards in the mini-set and then made 3 "Classic Scene" cards with a blue gradient fade coloring to set them apart as a subset.

1988 Topps football

The card backs are inspired by the '88 Topps football card backs, but not a 1:1 match.  I freestyled a bit to pack as much into the back of these cards as possible. 



I also did an additional David Spade card as a bonus card to the set. 

Snake Plissken

This card is based on the basketball scene from John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. (1996) starring Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken.

This particular card drove me a bit mad.  I like the way it turned out overall, but I didn't get to do *exactly* what I wanted to do.  I didn't get to add the Skybox signature basketball motion trail.  The quality of the image wasn't the greatest for starters.  The positioning of the ball didn't make the most sense and the trail also made the card look a bit crowded.  I wasn't as discouraged after seeing that at least the James Worthy card in the set just has the glowing ball without a trail.  Fortunately, I didn't have this problem with the first card I did using the 1990-91 Skybox inspired design because there wasn't a basketball present in the image. But, like I said, overall I feel it's a pretty cool card.

1990-91 Skybox