It’s a really good feeling when my children get excited at something which does not have a screen or wires or a battery, the type of things many of us enjoyed as children and something as simple as trading cards.
Thinking back to my childhood, the trading cards that I remember most had to be the Garbage Pail kids. In fact I’m sure I still have some of them stored somewhere. There were many other collectible trading cards around too when I was younger and it’s good to see that trading cards still remain popular with today’s children, despite all the technology around them. I think what is most exciting about packets of trading cards is that we never know what’s inside until we open them and of course chasing those missing or very hard to get cards to complete collections.
The Topps Company manufactures and markets a wide range of sports and entertainment collectable & confectionary products. Their collections include the popular “Match Attax cards, Disney and their newly released “Marvel Missions” trading cards game.
I’m guessing they are called trading cards because kids can trade/exchange their duplicates with friends.
Marvel Mission cards feature cards from all films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this includes Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Avengers, Dr Strange and even the most recent Guardians of the Galaxy 2. In total there are a massive 272 cards to collect. These include special foil and holographic cards.
Special folders can be purchased to keep the cards as display, along with mini tins and multipack sets which contain card boxes.
The starter pack is required for the collectors folder and for playing the Marvel missions game.
The starter pack costs £4.99. With this comes the game play sheet, a card collectors guide to help keep track of collections, the card binder and one pack of trading cards to get the collection started.
These cards eventually build up into a huge collection and the binder helps to keep them together and keep them in good condition inside the individual plastic wallets. As well as being good for just collecting, there is also a game to play with the cards, once players have collected so many of them.
It’s a fairly easy game which involves at least 2 card collectors. Each player needs there own starter kit and game board. One side of each card shows a character or object etc.
The other side of the cards has a power value number on. Each player would play a card like those above then turn the cards over.
The winning card being the higher power number and that player gets to place the winning card on their playing mat. The winner is the one who fills up all their mission spaces first. It’s an easy game but to make the rules sound more simple, Topps have made this short video.
The trading cards are sold in single packs of 8 and of course children never know which ones are inside until they open them.
These cost £1.00 per pack. I think they would make a nice small weekly/twice weekly treat for good behaviour. If siblings have their own starter packs then swapping and trading can be fun.
For more cards at once, there are the multipacks which come with 5 packets of trading cards, a collectors box, and a limited edition card. These packs cost £5.00.
The two tinned products each contain 39 cards plus limited edition cards and cost £5.99 per tin. The tin making an extra storage container and quite handy when travelling with the cards.
Ryan is a very lucky boy and has many of the Marvel missions trading card products.
I am sure this lot will keep him very busy over the next six weeks of Summer holidays and so perhaps less time on the gaming consoles. He also intends to swap and share the cards amongst friends who also collect them. He has lots of packets of cards to open and sort, and if he finds he is missing the odd one from the collection then this is not a problem because so many missing cards can be ordered from Topps directly so no more incomplete collections.
Starter packs, multipacks and single packs don’t need to be ordered online, they are sold at many supermarkets including ASDA, Tesco, Morrisons, WH Smith and local newsagents.
There does not seem to be an age appropriate guide for trading cards. I guess the child would need to be familiar with the characters/movies so perhaps 3 and over. My son is 13 and loves his new collection so I guess we are never too old for things like this. I’m thinking a few older boys may just like them too.
