The Secrets Contained Within 33-Year-Old Mario & Zelda Trading Cards
Plus: Dispelling Man-Thing Myths
Trading card company Topps is (rightfully) most associated with baseball products, creating a template for all that followed with a pivotal 1952 line and since established a dominance that’s maintained today. (Topps also crafted the most expensive baseball card of all time: the ’52 Mickey Mantle card that sold for $12.6 million last month.) The company’s also taken some chances over the years, with forays into collectible cards for other industries; the long list of other IP turned into cards by Topps includes several highly collectible sets for Star Wars, the Beatles, and even a bleak set inspired by the Civil War. (And don’t forget its original and iconic original creation from the 1980s, the Cabbage Patch Dolls-parodying Garbage Pail Kids.)
One particular sideroad for Topps recently called out to me behind a jewelry store case at a thrift mart: the Nintendo Game Pack series from 1989. I bought a couple packs, with wrappers emblazoned with drawings of Link and Princess Peach, respectively, and brought them back to Power Action! HQ to see what wonders they contained. To be honest, I expected just some nice throwback imagery of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s popular characters of the time. They offered much more than that:
Even though each pack contained just three cards and two stickers, its contents carried volumes. The cards are actually part of a larger game that comprised 60 minigames in a single set. In one example, scratch-off circles around Link and an enemy Lanmola inform the fate of our hero, depending on which ones you scratch. The Link cards are divided into an Area 1 (left side of card) and Area 2 (right side). In Area 1, you must find the arrow to continue on to the next Area; three total swords determines that you beat the creature, and finding three Lanmolas means you lose. That kind of interactivity with trading cards is novel, even by today’s standards. Also, another neat touch: Each card’s scene is framed like a television screen of the time.
The 33 total stickers throughout these packs also pack a mighty punch: Each’s underside contains a tip to use in the NES games of the era. Some are obvious, like being able to ride a Hoopster's head in Super Mario Bros. 2 if you time your vine jump correctly. But here's one I had no idea about when I was a kid: "Even if it says 'Game Over' you can hold A and press Start. You'll continue on Level 1 of the last world you were on." All 33 “Secret Tips” found in Topps’ Game Packs can be read here.
Among all of these insights, these Game Packs also dispel a popular notion about Topps. Many news reports have claimed—and continue to claim—that Topps’ acquisition of the company WizKids in 2003 was its first foray into card games. But with the Game Packs' scratch-off battles, Power Action! just wants to correct that record—even if it’s not the kind of card game we think of today.
NOW STREAMING: Werewolf By Night (2022, Disney Plus)
Ahead of Halloween, the charming, (mostly) black-and-white special Werewolf By Night recently premiered on Disney Plus, and with it, we got our first live-action MCU Man-Thing appearance. (A 2005 SyFy film centered on the character is about the quality you'd expect.)
Seeing some chatter online, Power Action! also wants to correct another record: The notion that Man-Thing is simply a “Swamp Thing” knock-off isn’t just incorrect, it detracts from what’s actually a pretty interesting, albeit complicated story.
First, the notion of a swamp monster (or muck monster, for fans of the alliterative) goes back to ancient mythologies, whether it’s the European Will-o'-the-wisp or the Aboriginal creature Bunyip. Universal introduced them into their horror lore in the 1930s, and in comics, they began appearing around the 1940s. The Heap is the form’s primary predecessor to both Marvel Comics’ Man-Thing and DC Comics’ Swamp Thing.
Roy Thomas and Stan Lee first began talking about the creation of Man-Thing around 1970. Thomas eventually came up with the story of his first appearance, with Gerry Conway scripting his initial story and Gray Morrow drawing the character. He would first appear in Savage Tales #1 in '71. Writer Len Wein went to work on crafting a follow-up, but Savage Tales was canceled before it could see print in 1972 under a different title.
What happened between those first two appearances of Man-Thing is where the funny stuff happens. Two months after Man-Thing's first appearance in 1971, Swamp Thing made his first appearance in House of Secrets #92, in a story written by Wein. Wein and Conway were roommates at the time.
So to recap (and expand):
Thomas and Conway debut Man-Thing at Marvel in 1971 with a defined origin story.
Around that time, Conway’s roommate, Wein, is commissioned for a follow-up Man-Thing story for Marvel that’s shelved.
A couple months after Man-Thing debuts and Wein’s story is shelved, his new character, Swamp Thing, appears in a DC comic.
A year passes, and Wein’s shelved Man-Thing follow-up story is printed.
Wein’s second Swamp Thing story, the first in a long-running solo series, hits shelves after his Man-Thing does. It has a remarkably similar origin story to Man-Thing’s, which was already established by Thomas and Conway in 1971.
Conway would end up writing Swamp Thing down the road anyway, so there obviously wasn’t animosity about the dueling muck monsters’ origin stories. And then, Alan Moore would revolutionize Swamp Thing’s story, evolving him into much more of an elemental being and rendering the characters’ initial similarities moot anyway.
In an issue of the magazine Alter Ego, Thomas said this: “(Conway) and I thought that, unconsciously, the origin in Swamp Thing #1 it was a bit too similar to the origin of “Man-Thing” a year and a half earlier. There was vague talk at the time around Marvel of legal action, but it was never really pursued. I don’t know if any letters even changed hands between Marvel and DC… We weren’t happy with the situation over the Swamp Thing #1 origin, but we figured it was an accident. Gerry was rooming with Len at the time and tried to talk him into changing the Swamp Thing’s origin. Len didn’t see the similarities, so he went ahead with what he was going to do. The two characters verged off after that origin, so it didn’t make much difference, anyway.”
