Last year, I did a series of Wax Pack Flashback videos for The Retro Network that focused on “spooky” or Halloween-themed cards. I’m re-rolling these episodes here on Retro Ramblings for the Halloween season, and this week I’m highlighting the Fright Flicks cards from 1988. Watch me open this pack and see what treasures have laid hidden inside for over 30 years!
Last year, I did a series of Wax Pack Flashback videos for The Retro Network that focused on “spooky” or Halloween-themed cards. I’m re-rolling these episodes here on Retro Ramblings for the rest of the month, and this week I’m highlighting the Skeleton Warriors cards from 1995. Watch me open this pack and see what treasures have laid hidden inside for almost 30 years!
The Halloween season is upon us, and I thought it would be fun to go back in time to the days of trick-or-treating and look at just what were some of my absolute favorite things to find in my treat bag at the end of the night. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was hard for any treat to be classified as “bad”, but we all had the favorites that we hoped to get a sack full of by the end of the night. Here in this Retro Ramblings, are five of my favorites!
When I was young back in the ’80s, there wasn’t much more revered candy amongst my friends than Nerds. We all loved these things. We’d carry the normal-sized boxes of them to school with us and compare flavors. So when the snack-sized boxes came along, we were all stoked. It was a big deal for a few years though to get these on Halloween night. We’d all bring in our Nerds haul to school and see who really hit the jackpot.
I know these things aren’t exactly politically correct these days, but back then, people didn’t see anything wrong with them. A lot of Dads smoked then, and one of the coolest things you could do was to imitate your Dad. I’d “puff” on these things for a while trying to look cool, but it didn’t take long for that chalky flavor to overcome me and I’d have to gobble them down. Not only that but in school, we treated candy cigarettes like prisoners do real cigarettes. You could trade these things for all kinds of stuff between classes.
Now I’m not talking about things like a $10 Starbucks card. No, I’m talking about the ones for free cones or fries at McDonald’s. While you couldn’t necessarily enjoy these the night you got them, it was like having money in the bank, and you anxiously waited for the day you got to go cash them in.
At that time, collecting and trading baseball cards was a rite of passage. All my friends were into it, and so was I, so anytime you could get a pack of cards was great. On the street where I did all of my trick-or-treating, there was an older fellow who was really into cards, and to pass along the joys of the hobby to the next generation, he gave out wax packs of baseball cards as Halloween treats. This world needs more folks like that man.
While getting all the individual items mentioned above was great, it was always more exciting to get a full little treat bag that held untold treasures inside of it. Historically for me, these things usually had a mini candy bar in it, with some Tootsie Rolls thrown in, and usually another item like a spider ring. These treat bags were the epitome of the phrase, “more bang for the buck”, and still would be my favorite thing to find in my treat bag.
Last year, I did a series of Wax Pack Flashback videos for The Retro Network that focused on “spooky” or Halloween-themed cards. I’m re-rolling these episodes here on Retro Ramblings for the rest of the month, and I’m starting with this pack of Tales From the Crypt cards from 1993. Watch me open this pack and see what treasures have laid hidden inside for almost 30 years!
I love sifting through old catalogs and sale papers from the ’80s and early ’90s. They’re filled with so much nostalgia with so many toys I had, and those I didn’t have but wanted gracing every page. For this Retro Ramblings entry, I’m going to highlight a few cool things I found in a KayBee Toys sale paper from 1989.
I’ve already documented my love for all things Nintendo here on the blog, and this ad for games is certainly in line with my love for all things Nintendo. Featured in the top left is my favorite game for the system, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. I also see some of my other favorites including Bionic Commando and WWF Wrestlemania. I could sit and look through old game ads all day and continue to drool over just how awesome we had it with our game systems back in the day.
Play-Doh was never really a top toy in my book unless I had a cool playset like this for it. There was just so much you could do with sets like these with all the various presses and cutting tools. Besides making plates of spaghetti and meatballs like the set intended, you could do other things with them. Like make your own cool monsters with long stringy hair. The various playsets offered almost limited play that other toys couldn’t.
In the past, I chronicled my fascination with the Super City Tool Box in a Classic Commercials post. While I never actually had the toy, I always wanted it. I had more than my fair share of Micro Machines, and several playsets, but this one always eluded me. I’m going to have to track one down on eBay now I think.
1988 was the zenith of baseball card collecting, well, until Covid-19 hit in 2020 and the hobby exploded all over again. But with 1988 being such a banner year for the business, it was no surprise that a ton of cards were also produced in 1989. Not all of them were good. Like these Bowman cards featured here in the paper. I had some Bowman ’89 cards in my collection back in the early ’90s, and they just weren’t good. They were slightly larger than other cards and were troublesome to get to fit into card pages. Plus they just seemed to be of cheaper quality. But all of that said, that would have been a good price to pick up a complete set of anything back then since finding all 492 cards in single packs would have cost a fortune.
So in the early ’90s, I thought Domino Rally was just so cool. Forget the fact that I could have just taken all the sets of old school dominos that were scattered around our house and accomplished the same thing, I had to have the brightly colored, thin plastic dominos that came in these sets to set up and then knock over. Plus, Domino Rally sets came with cool pieces like bridges and loops that had dominos attached that you could add to your falling masterpiece. These things really upped the falling dominos game to new heights.
Being 1989, I’m thinking this is in the early days of the release of the system. That and I don’t see Sonic the Hedgehog’s mug plastered all over the ad. I do see Altered Beast though, and I know that was an early hit for the system. I was always a Super Nintendo guy, and I always will be. But even in saying that, I would be a fool to not want to highlight this from the ad. Any old game system is worth a mention in posts like these.
Well, there’s six highlights from an old KayBee Toys sale paper from 1989. I encourage you to check out our full scan of the entire thing in the Time Capsules section of the site and pick out your own highlights. If you do, drop them in the comments below so I can check out what you thought the top picks were. I always get excited about stuff like that.
This is Wrestlemania week, and I’ve been feeling awfully nostalgic for old pro wrestling. Because of that, you got the post earlier this week on the old pro wrestling action figure lines. So to keep the ball rolling, here is an older episode of Wax Pack Flashback that I do for The Retro Network on TRNTV. Give it a watch and check out how awesome these cards were.
It’s always fun to open an old pack of cards, but these were even better than normal because they featured so many of my heroes growing up. Every card in the pack brought back it’s own old memories. I need to find more of these packs and see what other treasures I can find lurking inside.
If you enjoyed seeing this old pack of cards get opened, check out some of the other packs I’ve opened…
Here’s another rerun episode of the Wax Pack Flashback show I do for The Retro Network YouTube Channel. It’s where I open old packs of trading cards and let you watch along and relive the excitement of thumbing through the pack.
In this episode, I opened a pack of Dick Tracy cards from 1990. These cards were based on the blockbuster movie of that year and are made up of scenes from the movie. It was full of colorful, over-the-top characters, so it translated really well to a series of trading cards. You can watch the episode below, and if it tickles your fancy, you can check out the Wax Pack Flashback playlist on the TRN YouTube channel. There are over 50 episodes there currently, with more new episodes coming soon. Enjoy!
I’m in a comic book mood today, so I thought I’d share another old edition of the Wax Pack Flashback from the YouTube series I do for The Retro Network.
In this one, I opened a pack of Doomsday: The Death of Superman Cards from 1992. The Death of Superman is one of my all-time favorite comic book storylines, and these cards are mostly just images taken from the comic books themselves.
If you were into comics in the ’90s, I’m sure these cards will have the nostalgia coming back and waving over you. Enjoy!
Saved by the Bell nostalgia is running wild these days, what with the new reboot series doing well on Peacock and all. So I thought it was a good time to revisit when I opened an old pack of Saved by the Bell cards from 1992 on my Wax Pack Flashback show on The Retro Network YouTube channel.
Now back in the day, even though I was really into cards during the time period, I never saw a pack of these. Being the huge Saved by the Bell fan that I am, I know I would have been all over them. But I wasn’t even aware of their existence until I stumbled across them for sale on eBay.
Watch the video below to see a pack of them, and hey, if you had them back in the day, let me know your memories of them in the comments when you’re done watching.
Over at The Retro Network, I do a video series on YouTube called Wax Pack Flashback where I open old packs of trading cards and let folks like you watch along. It’s a fun series to do as I love old cards of all kinds and opening them really takes me back a few years.
I’m going to start posting the videos here on Retro Ramblings too when I do them so they’re easy for you to find. Plus, I’m going to be posting some of the videos from the last year for you to watch as well.
The first one I’m going to share with you guys is the one I did on Christmas last year. It was a pack of Santa Around the World cards from 1994. It was a set that featured Santa Claus on every card in his various forms from through the years and around the world. Give it a watch, and hey, subscribe to The Retro Network YouTube channel while you’re at it!
Here is another old Wax Pack Flashback video I did for the TRNTV Youtube channel. In this one, I open an old pack of Operation Desert Shield trading cards from 1991. I was fascinated by the thoughts of these cards when I saw them on store shelves back when they were new. I never picked any up though because there were other cards that I was more interested in and only had so much allowance money to go around. But I found some unopened packs on eBay for cheap and finally got to quench my cravings from all those years ago. You can watch the video below and live vicariously through me as I flip through the cards in the pack.
Here’s another episode of my Wax Pack Flashback series of videos I did for The Retro Network on our TRNTV YouTube channel. In this video, I open a pack of my favorite baseball cards ever, 1992 Topps! I believe the ’92 Topps baseball series is the set I acquired the most cards for in all of my years of collecting. I just thought they were some of the best-looking cards I had seen up to that point, and they were readily available everywhere I went, so I was picking up a pack or two on an almost daily basis back in 1992. So enjoy this little trip down memory lane and watch along as I break a pack and see what I find inside.