Review – Masters of the Universe Trading Cards

I don’t know why anyone would keep sealed packs of trading cards for over twenty years, but I do know that each time I get my hands on old card packs the first thing I do is shred the wrapping. What’s the second thing that I do? Throw away that solid, nasty, pink-as-hell bubblegum stick. Damn, those things really cling to cards when they’re left in the package for over a quarter of a century.

Welcome to 1984

Once again we visit the eighties, exploring the madness of a time when Star Wars was fading, Transformers were just starting to take off, and Mattel was pulling in mad piles of loot with their Masters of the Universe toys . . . successfully marketed by a thirty minute commercial that had most boys — and even quite a few girls — tricked into thinking that what they were watching was the greatest thing ever. Only now can we look back and realize just how stupid a lot of what Mattel unleashed on us was.

You know what’s sick? Even knowing that characters like Buzz-Off, Dragstor, and Mekaneck are really dumb doesn’t stop us from wanting them. Because we are every bit as dumb today as we were in the eighties. Some things never change.

Oh Yeah, Trading Cards

Armed with the knowledge that their fan base — kids at the time — was really stupid, Mattel and Topps concocted an evil plan to suck money out of us by putting together a set of 88 trading cards and 21 stickers, sold to us in single packs of 10 cards and 1 sticker. Why only 1 sticker per pack? Because the sticker art is so damned superior to the art on the trading cards that Mattel and Topps knew we would have no choice but to buy more packs in the hopes of getting the good artwork. And since the good artwork was on stickers we — as kids at the time often did — would use the stickers on something just as dumb as we were. This forced us to need a replacement sticker.

Man, the madmen at Mattel and Topps at the time were geniuses! Give the kids just a little good artwork in a form that would force them to need a replacement. Genius, I say!!!

(NOTE: It’s possible that the non-sticker artwork is little more than shots from an existing Masters of the Universe storyline. I never was a huge fan of the animation or comics so I don’t have a lot of knowledge of what was or wasn’t in the various storylines. I just love the wacky characters and stupid, stupid names.)

Anyway, the trading cards in the set form a story that you can only completely enjoy if you get an entire set. I’ve posted a few photos of the cards and stickers here, but for more of the set see this page at He-Man.org where they’ve posted a few other images. I’m amazed that I can’t find a more complete set of cards online; I guess this card set is so unloved that very few people out there have bothered to write anything about it.

Skip This

There’s absolutely no reason to bother tracking down these trading cards, either in packs or as a set. The sticker art is the best art in the set, because it’s the Masters of the Universe packaging artwork reprinted. (Vintage packaging art post here.)

Hell, even the puzzle art on the back of the stickers is reprinted packaging artwork. So the only excellent artwork in the set is all artwork that had been produced to sell toys. Damn, we were stupid kids.

Overall this card set is an obvious attempt at snagging money off of stupid kids and there’s nothing here to really want. The hardcore fans probably already own a set (suckers) and the rest of you can save your bucks for something cool. (Like the upcoming Optikk.)

Trading card sets from the eighties can be fun, but when they’re packed with so much bad, dull artwork they should be avoided. I’m pretty disappointed in this 1984 Masters of the Universe trading card set, but it’s one of those things that exists and was worth a shot. Maybe Mattel will sink some of their resources into a modern, awesome Masters of the Universe trading card set. Imagine how fast a set of classic packaging artwork would sell. Hell, it’d be a perfect project for Matty Collector since it would give them another way to under-produce something the fans want.

Philip Reed will again say that he wants a Masters of the Universe art book that sees reasonable release . . . complete with an AFFORDABLE price. Come on, Mattel.