I am too young to bear skilled this most predominant hand, but young of us in the 40s and 50s and 60s engaged in a game called ‘card flipping’ whereby Kid A would attach a baseball card on the ground and Kid B would in some model hurl a baseball card of his own on the first baseball card on the ground in an are trying to flip the first card over and thereby “get”. Right here is what we did sooner than video video games, apparently.
At any price Eastern young of us did the identical dispute with playing cards identified as “menko playing cards”. Squatter and heavier than American baseball playing cards, menko playing cards were imprinted with a bewildering diversity of subject subject subject – ballplayers, wrestlers, judo champions, horses, rockets, spacemen, and – oh yeah, Eastern animation characters. They would hurl these cardboard squares at every diversified, now not realizing that forty years later some goof with a blog would put up photography of them. The fools!
I sold these playing cards years previously at an Atlanta Story Comely from Flaming Carrot cartoonist Bob Burden, who, when now not drawing the looped-out adventures of the Strangest Man Alive, would man a dealers room desk stuffed with unbelievable stuff he’d culled from attics, junk stores, and yard gross sales all the map throughout the nation. When I grow up I desire to be Bob Burden. Anyway, right here they are!
Alakazam The Huge battles an sizable scorpion in his quest to Whisk To The West on this calm from the 1960 Toei film of the identical title, which of course used to be called Saiyuki in Eastern, is predicated mostly on an passe Chinese fairy fable in regards to the Monkey King, and used to be the muse for anime as extensively varied as Dragonball, Nighttime Peek Goku, and SF Saiyuki Starzinger. Alakazam used to be voiced by Peter “Speed Racer” Fernandez on this film, which used to be launched letterboxed on laserdisc by Orion Photos, sooner than they vanished.
Meanwhile, the Tezuka manga character-became-anime Cyborg Enormous X seems on with trepadation as bands of Scotch tape wrap round the midsection of his menko card. One assumes this card seen hundreds action in the streetcorner battlefields of the Menko Wars.
Cyborg 009 and the unique 60s toddler-vogue Cyborg 007 are on the retreat from both an sizable spider robotic and their miscolored uniforms on this kinda tidy taking a idea card. Menko playing cards are now not identified for his or her printing excellence or their attention to the finer facets of character scheme. Personally, I love the fuzzy off-register printing.
Right here Kimba The White Lion bites what appears to be like to be a extremely skinny hyena as legions of jungle animals price in direction of the scene. I salvage the sensation this card used to be extra or much less traced from the opening credits of Jungle Emperor. Oh, similar to you bear by no methodology completed this.
Extra playing cards to exhaust in Menko, Half Two!