So, at the Hickory-con I picked up several vintage booster packs.  I am going to start with the Magic the Gathering pack from “Fallen Empires.”  I paid $5 for an eight card pack.  NO RARES.  I believe this to be a re-pack.  Maybe not, though, after reading up on Fallen Empires.  From what I gather from the internet, Hymn to Tourache is the best card in the set, and I opened it…

I had the Homarid and the Homarid Warrior already.  Goblin Churigeon also.  But I got a cool land and the Hymn to Tourache.  meh.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cards!  These are from the first cartoon show, 1989-mid nineties-ish.  Actually, these cards chronicle the first seven episodes of the cartoon, which even in my adult memory I remember being INCREDIBLE.  (The foot soldiers were worthy foes even as robots.  The turtles just barely thumped them in later episodes and they would explode, so it seemed.)  You can see the gum was still intact!  There is a puzzle piece here too, which you could collect and make a big picture.  I remember having these as a child, but seeing them in the wax pack there, I knew I just had to have them.  The backs just give a little synopsis of what the front portrays.

The MAIN EVENT.  These are the ones that caught my eye first.  The seller had about five more packs…but at $6.00…These cards are basically the same as the Ninja Turtles cards.  But the gum was melted to the back of one of the cards.  😦   By the way.  Don’t try and eat that gum.  The MOTU trading cards are interesting because they have a mix of ways they portray the characters.  For instance, the “Like Father, Like Daughter” title card depicts Sorceress armor Teela, but the episode shows Filmation art.  The sticker art depicts box art from the toys.  Who drew that He-Man on the front of the wax pack?

And finally, The Simpsons cards.  I definitely remember getting these from a teacher at church…he used trading cards as his classroom management technique.  He was always careful we didn’t get cards that had curse words on them…but I knew they were out there because I bought my own packs.  My parents didn’t like me (and my brothers) watching The Simpsons because of the profanity and the bad influence of Bart Simpson.  These cards really capture those early days of the show, where Bart and his misbehavior seemed to be the focus of the show  The sticker (with Bart in army gear) has Bart writing “Krusty the Clown is not God” on the chalkboard a hundred times.  Homer Simpson calling Bart a Smart@$$ is on one of the cards.  These, and the Ninja Turtles cards, were the ones I remember from my childhood.  I don’t have a memory of the Masters of the Universe cards though.