THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Who Trumped?

Welcome back dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! A few weeks ago we were rummaging in the games cupboard and unearthed a fondly remembered deck of cards that was essentially a set of Marvel superhero Top Trumps. They were made by the toy company Jotastar, who held a great many licenses to produce spin-off and tie-in tat for a variety of kid-friendly franchises and properties. However this Marvel card game was not their only foray in the twilight world of exactly-like-Top-Trumps-except-in-name-only card games. For in 1978 they produced another suspiciously Trump-like card game but tied to another legendary fictional universe - Doctor Who.

Back in 1978, Doctor Who was enjoying one of its many golden ages, for this was the era of the Fourth Doctor. And not only was Tom Baker's incarnation of the Time Lord that delighting the kids with his own brand of anarchy, humour and jelly babies. He was teamed up with popular companion (and in particular very popular with the Dads watching), Leela, she of the handy dagger and tribal garb, plus at that time was just coming to the end of a run of particularly scarifying stories, which had greatly expanded the Who canon of iconic monsters and villains. 

Now the card game produced by Jotastar was assembled by using pretty much the same template as their Marvel game, with the same rules being were used with minor tweaks here and there. Aside from the rules text being rewritten to include references to the long running  SF show, there was a slight change to the stats on the cards - while we still had the attributes Special Powers and Weapons, just like the Marvel deck, instead of Physical Strength we now had Mental Ability - a fitting change as the Doctor tends to outthink his enemies rather than throw buses at them.

Just like the Marvel game, you could divide the pack into to halves and play the good guys vs the baddies. However it is here that this game goes a little weird. For over the years the Doctor has had a long line of companions and assistants, plus he has met a host of good characters who have helped him out, such as the Brigadier, assorted Time Lords, Thals, and so forth. However somewhat weirdly, in the Heroes list the only familiar faces we have are the Doctor himself (obviously) and the TARDIS.  And instead of other characters from the show's history, we have the following - 

HEROES
Alexander the Great
Annie Oakley
Boadicea
Chaka King of the Zulus
Colonel James Bowie
Davy Crockett
Doctor Who
Geronimo
Hercules
King Arthur
Lord Nelson
Parthian Warrior
Robin Hood
Samson
Sherlock Holmes
Shiao Chi Samurai Warrior
Spartacus
The TARDIS
Thor
Wyatt Earp

Yes for some reason it was decided that famous historical characters should be the good guys. The rules refer to this disparate group as "the Legendary Legion". Now firstly it is only right and proper to question why we have mythological characters (such as Thor) and fictional folks (Sherlock Holmes) rubbing shoulders with actual historical personages. But to kids back in the 1970s the more important question was "Why the hell are this lot in here? They were never in the show!". Well alright, Wyatt Earp had appeared in an First Doctor Story The Gunslingers, back when the show still did purely historical stories without any alien monsters in. But even so, that was back in 1966, well before most of the target audience would have been able to remember, or even been born. So then, here was a Doctor Who game in which nearly the half the cards had bugger all to do with Doctor Who.

On the whole, looking at the selection of characters in the deck, I rather suspect the deck was devised by someone who had never seen the show properly - which would explain the good guys being pulled from history books. And as for the Aliens selection, it looks like they just went through the seminal Target tie-in tome The Doctor Who Monster Book which was first published back in November 1975 (and you can read about it here). And hence, there are no monsters more recent that Tom Baker's first season (Davros and the Zygons). However while it was suspicious there were no newer monsters and villains, in all fairness  it is a rather good list of famous foes! 

ALIENS

Davros
Gellguards
Omega
Sea Devils
The Autons
The Axons
The Cybermen
The Daemons
The Draconians
The Giant Robot
The Ice Warriors
The Mechanoids
The Ogrons
The Sensorites
The Silurians
The Sontarans
The Spiders of Metebelis
The Wirrn
The Yeti
The Zygons

However there is an obvious anomaly - for although we do have their creator, Davros, their hired muscle, the Ogrons, and two races they fought bloody and bitter wars with, the Mechanoids and the Draconians, the Doctor's most famous enemies, the Daleks do not appear,  Possibly this was down to the fact that Terry Nation, who originally created the intergalactic terrors, still owned the copyright to the Daleks, and indeed around this time he was considering various plans featuring the pepperpots from Skaro such as having them appear in Blake's 7 and developing a separate Dalek series.

However judging from some of the attributes given on the cards, it is equally plausible that the Daleks being missing was just a blunder. For it seems clear that not only had whoever devised the set never seen Doctor Who, they were also wildly oblivious to both history and even what was on the cards. For example, Boadicea has a Weapons score of 0 despite being shown waving a dirty great sword and riding in her famous chariot with spiky wheels!

Sadly also the artwork on the cards isn't quite as good as the Marvel pack. Some cards do like rather nice, and it's fun to see familiar faces for Whoniverse rendered in a pseudo comic-book style. On teh downside though, many are clearly copied from very familiar photos (hello again Target's Doctor Who Monster Book) and some look distinctly wobbly. Also as many of photos used as reference were in black and white (spookily enough just as they all were in Target's Doctor Who Monster Book), you can see where the artist has just been guessing what was in the dark, smudgy areas. The Ogron is a great example of this, with clear guesswork filling in many areas of shadowed detail, and the whole picture looking like a ripply funfair mirror reflection. See also the background face on the Spiders from Metebelis card, whose features have been clearly surmised from a blurry photo.

On the whole then, while it seemed like a brilliant concept, sadly this Doctor Who Trump Card Game didn't deliver on its promise. Nor did it live up to its Marvel cousin - while that card game had felt authentic and official, to the extent it was like a little loose leaf encyclopedia or guidebook for the Marvel Universe, the flawed execution of the Doctor Who game clearly marked it out as cash-in tat. Much like the Doctor Who Annuals of the same era (more on which another day) or the previously discussed TARDIS TUNER, while we were happy to have them - there wasn't a lot of merch about back then remember -  at the same time you knew they weren't exactly right; they weren't proper Doctor Who like the Target Books or the Palitoy Talking Dalek. In fact in many ways they were a pale shadow of Doctor Who cards given away free with Weetabix around the time which featured not only better art but an innate understanding of the series (and again, more on those another day)

However despite all that, the set now goes for a hefty price, with many sellers flogging off individual cards for a couple of quid a go. And while my inner collecting geek naturally baulks at breaking up sets and selling off cards one by one in this manner, at the same time I can understand why you might really want, for example, the Sea Devil or Mechanoid cards but be more than happy to pass on the wobbly Ogron... 

If you want to see the set without paying an arm or a leg you can download a copy here - DISCLAIMER - I have no idea about the legality of this

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Top Marvels! Part II

Last week we learned how in the mid '70s, there were two hot crazes gripping the playgrounds of the UK - Top Trumps cards and Marvel comics. And it was perhaps inevitable that these two titans would not only meet, but be fused together by colossal cosmic forces in a Stan Lee style plot twist!  Well, that was almost the case... For back then Top Trumps were still mainly concentrating on vehicles and military hardware and it would be several years before the brand began to produce packs that were tie-ins to fictional properties such as movies, TV shows or comics. Clearly they were missing a trick here, but in the shadows, other eyes were looking to seal a canny and timely toy licensing deal. 

Those eyes, presumably glowing with the uncanny light of comic-book radiation, or at least the prospect of big money to be made, belonged to Jotastar, a toy maker who would produce a great many tie-in toys for a variety of different kid-friendly properties, from the Mister Men and Hollie Hobby to The Real Ghostbusters and M.A.S.K. Now when it comes to games, rules mechanics are very hard to copyright, mainly because so many share commons ones i.e. roll a die and move that number of spaces, or play a card on your turn etc. Now in the case of Top Trumps, things were even murkier, as that game itself had evolved from earlier card games such as Quartets. Hence you could, quite legitimately produce a game with identical rules, and provided the magic words "Top Trumps" never appeared in the instructions, packaging or marketing there was very little to stop you.

Now while cars and motorbikes undoubtedly had an appeal for kids, Jotastar couldn't help but notice that superhero comics were greatly outselling motoring magazines down the newsagents. And so, in 1977, the Marvel Superheroes Card Game was launched, and news soon spread that there was now a marvel Top Trumps. Of course, that last two words in that sentence very carefully did not appear anywhere in the rulesor marketing, but kids everywhere instantly knew who to play this game - indeed the rules included could have been written in ancient runes of Latvaria and the game would still have sold shed-loads.

The pack itself consisted of forty cards, two a card detailing the rules and another listing all the character in the deck. The pack was divided into two halves, twenty heroes, and twenty villains -  

SUPER-HEROES
Black Bolt
Captain America
Captain Britain
Daredevil
Ghost Rider
Goliath
Invisible Girl
Iron Man
Mr Fantastic
Spider-Man
The Black Panther
The Hulk
The Human Torch
The Mighty Thor
The Silver Surfer
The Sub-Mariner
The Thing
The Vision
The Wasp

VILLAINS
Absorbing Man
Dr Doom
Dr Octopus
Dr Strange
Galactus
Hammerhead
Loki
Mephisto
Morbius
Tarantula
The Abomination
The Dread Dormammu
The Green Goblin
The Gremlin
The Grizzly
The Human Top
The Jackal
The Red Skull
The Rhino
The Vulture
Tiger Shark

The rules of the game suggest dividing the pack into heroes and villains and for two players to have at it. An alternative is also suggested under the banner of GAME TWO - basically a brief couple of lines saying just shuffle the pack and divide it among the players and use the rules for GAME ONE.
However of course many kids came up with their own variant, such as pitting a small team of heroes, like for example all the Fantastic Four and seeing how they fared against an army of villains, or if they could take down their fellow heroes.

Indeed using the stats given on these cards - Physical Strength, Special Powers and Weapons - many a geek argument was settled. And fact-fans, in case you wondering how Civil War would play out in this deck, well it was no contest really - with Iron Man out-gunning Cap in all categories: Physical Strength - 8 vs 7, Special Powers - 5 vs 3, and Weapons 6 vs 5. Yep, Shell-Head wins every time! Now you may argue that these stats were just pulled from the air by some desk jockey at Jotastar, but these cards were OFFICIAL Marvel merch right? They even advertised in the pages of Marvel's flagship comics in the UK, The Mighty World of Marvel as seen below (which even cheekily included the word "Trump" just to ensure everyone knew what they were getting). And what's more you could even send off from a pack from the advert too in case your local toy emporium didn't stock it. 

And hence as they were not only advertised but sold in the pages of Marvel UK comics, this game felt like pretty definitive. Indeed even the rules sound like Stan the Man himself, complete with unnecessary capitals - "a game for challenge for two players in which those Mighty Marvel Super Heroes battle the most awesome array of Vicious Villains ever assembled!". Of course now we may question the actual selection of characters - Grizzly and the Gremlin but no X-persons - but it is a fascinating snapshot of the Marvel Universe as it was back then, an era before the likes of Wolverine, the Punisher and Venom became mega-favourites with the fans.

Back in the 1970s however, in an age before Wikipedia, and lavish coffee-table books on comics lore and history, this card game was more than just a fun pastime - it was a secret encyclopaedia of the Marvel universe. Remember that cheesy old song about how a soldier gets out of trouble for having a deck of cards by spinning an elaborate explanation of how the cards all remind him of something in the Bible? Well, that was close to how we felt about the Marvel Super Heroes Card Game, except we really sincere (unlike that soldier in the song who I suspect if he were a Top Trumps card would have stats such as BARE-FACED CHEEK 8 and BULLSHITTING SUPERIORS 9). And this was even more true I think for UK kids, who had only recently discovered this universe thanks to Marvel UK opening as few years earlier. Of course, even back then we knew there omissions - what no Nick Fury or Man-Thing? However this was a close to a guide book to the comics as you were going to get back in the mid-'70s. And hence that what it was to many of us - an encyclopedia with shufflable pages! 

Interesting around the same time, Jotastar would produce a very similar Doctor Who themed deck... But that's a story for another day...

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Top Marvels! Part I

Welcome back dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! While a new year may well be beckoning, rest assured that all of the crew here at the 'Orrible Old'Ouse have our eyes firmly looking to the past, where things may not have been better but certainly on many occasions were more amusing! Now on this blog, several years ago, we ran a lengthy series on the infamous Horror Top Trumps sets (which may well be resurrected in a new form at some point this year), however they weren't the only cultish decks available. And today we're going to have a look at another must-have pack! 

Now in case you don't know, Top Trumps is an enduringly popular species of card game, and the basics are as follows. Every deck has a theme, such as cars, tanks, animals, and each card features an particular item complete with a picture, sometimes a bit of text, but always with a list of statistics. To play the game, players pick one of these stats from the top card in their hand and compares it with the other players' card. Whoever has the highest or best stat wins that round, with the winner collecting the vanquished cards and adding them to his hand. The game ends when one player has got all the cards (or some one has a massive strop). It's a very easy game to learn, quick to play, and the game has been adapted to many themes over the years, ensuring that no matter what floats your boat, at some point there's been a Top Trumps deck to suit your interests. And yes, there have been adults only naughty decks produced over the years! 

However while the leading brand and game generally goes under the name of Top Trumps, thanks to the way the game evolved - namely being spawned by earlier card games such as Quartets and Ace Trumps (a history which is explained here) - no one company or individual own the copyright. Hence many different companies have produced Top Trumps-a-like games. In fact, even in 1977, the year Dubrec launched Top Trumps in the UK, within months rival companies had started producing their own Trumps-a-like games. And as it happens, one of the coolest decks to own back in the first flowering of Top Trumps mania, and one of the most fondly remembered, wasn't an official Top Trumps deck. 

But to set the scene, we first have to step out of the toy shop, carefully step over that hazardous pile of white dog poo, and pop in the newsagent next door. Just as in America, Britain had a flourishing comics industry entertaining the nation's kids, and just as the market in the US was dominated by two titans, Marvel and DC, weirdly enough,  it was the same state of affairs in the UK, with another DC - DC Thomson, publishers of venerable heavyweight titles such as The Dandy and The Beano, fighting it out with arch rivals IPC for dominance of the British comics market.  However in the 1972 the titanic twosome's fortunes were threatened by the sense-shattering arrival of a bold new outfit. Can you guess who that was true believers? 

Now American comic books had been finding their way to this septic isle for many decades beforehand. Famously in the war-years, US comic books were packed into the crates as padding. However thanks to the vagaries of shipping and having no proper national distribution network, while you could find copies of US comics featuring the likes of Batman and Spider-man in UK shops, it was somewhat a haphazard affair, and the mighty superheroes of Marvel and DC were better known through reprints by UK publishers such as Odhams Press or Alan Class Comics. However these reprint deals had petered out at the end of the 1960s, and hence in the early 1970s, Stan Lee decided it was high time to bring Marvel back to British shores. 

He realised that aside from the expense of shipping comic books to the UK, and lacking a proper means of distribution in Blighty, there was another tricky problem. And that was that UK comics were very different to their US cousins. Rather than been published monthly, British comics appeared weekly. They were twice the size, and rather than featuring the adventures of one character each issue, British comics were anthologies running several strips in every week. With characteristic insight, Stan realised that for Marvel to break the British market, they needed to radically rethink their comics. Like the Skrulls they would have to shapeshift to infiltrate the UK comics scene. And so, Marvel UK was born, an outfit based in that London, but taking orders from the Big Apple, with a remit to publish classic tales from the House of Ideas, but in a format that blended in with the home-grown British titles. Hence in early 1972, a new weekly comic appeared in newsagents up and down the land, The Mighty World of Marvel, which served up adventures featuring The Hulk, Spider-man and The Fantastic Four. 

It was soon joined by Spider-man Comics Weekly later in 1972, with more titles being added to the roster over the next few years. Pete Parker got a second title all to himself, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Superheroes featured tales of the X-Men and the Silver Surfer while The Titans brough British kids the adventures of Captain America, the Sub-mariner, Captain Marvel and the Inhumans. Outside the land of the spandex brigade, Marvel UK also thrilled kids with a Planet of the Apes tie-in comic and more exciting still, delivered spooky action with Dracula Lives that featured a selection from theer horror lines. In 1975 a young chap called Neil Tennant was put in charge - yes, the same Neil Tennant who is now half of the Pet Shop Boys - and his two year reign saw Marvel UK begin to produce their own UK-grown material for the Marvel Universe with the debut of Captain Britain in 1976. 

So then by 1977, the year Top Trumps was released, nay, unleashed upon the nation's kiddiewinks, Marvel UK had a thriving stable of titles and were giving IPC and DC Thomson a run for their money. Plus they had given Britain its very own Marvel superhero to boot! Marvel was no more an exotic import, but was now well and truly part of British pop culture. Now the initial decks in the Top Trumps range were very much vehicle obsessed, with packs themed around cars, motorbikes, tanks and planes. However some bright spark in a rival company noted how these card games were selling like hot cakes and had the smart idea of producing a game that might appeal to something other than the petrolhead market... 

NEXT TIME! Discover how kids in the '70s could play their own version of Civil War decades before Marvel had come up with that epic storyline! 

TOMB OF THE TRUMPS #0 - The Packs

Last week in Great Ghosts of the Shelves, I reminisced about the wonderfully lurid Horror Top Trumps of the 1970s, and as promised we now start our epic journey uncovering the secret history of the packs. This entry #0 in the series details the basic important facts about the Horror range of Top Trumps, and provides a full rogue's gallery of both packs of cards.

In 1978 Dubreq launched the Horror Range of Top Trumps, and they were re-released in 1982 when Waddingtons acquired the rights to Top Trumps. Both packs consisted of 32 cards for game play, plus several additional cards - a title card whose reverse had the rules of the game printed on, another showing the title card of the other Horror Top trumps Pack, a Top Trumps reference card listing the other packs available (with handy tick boxes to keep track of your collection), and a Special Offer card.

Both packs came in clear plastic cases, and both packs of cards featured a vampire bat design on the reverse. In rarer editions of the packs released both by Dubreq and Waddingtons this beastie is printed in blue rather than black. The card stats for both packs were -

• Physical Strength
• Fear Factor
• Killing Power
• Horror Rating

And the rules of the game were -

And the card listings for both packs are as follows -

DEVIL PRIEST PACK

• Alien Creature
• The Beast
• Colossus
• Creature From Outer Space
• Creature From the Black Lagoon
• Cyclops
• Death
• Devil Priest
• Diablo
• Dr. Syn
• The Fiend
• Fire Demon
• Frankenstein
• High Priestess of Zoltan
• Hunchback of Notre Dame
• The Jailer
• Killer Rat
• The Living Gargoyle
• The Living Skull
• Lizard Man
• Martian Warrior
• Mistress Vampire
• The Mummy
• The Slime Creature
• The Sorcerer
• Talon
• Terror of The Deep
• Thor
• Venusian Death Cell
• Wolfman
• Zetan Priest
• Zoltan

DRACULA PACK

• Ape Man
• Cannibal
• Circus of Death
• Dracula
• The Executioner
• The Freak
• Fu Manchu
• Gargantua
• The Ghoul
• Godzilla
• The Gorgon
• Granite Man
• The Hangman
• Headhunter
• Incredible Melting Man
• King Kong
• Lord of Death
• The Mad Axeman
• The Mad Magician
• Madman
• Maggot
• Man Eating Plant
• Phantom of The Opera
• Prince of Darkness
• The Risen Dead
• Skeleton
• The Sorceress
• The Thing
• Two Headed Monster
• Vampire Bat
• Werewolf
• Zetan Warlord

NEXT TIME on TOMBS OF THE TRUMPS, we begin our quest to discover where the art on these iconic cards was shameless ripped off from, I mean, *ahem* was inspired by! 

GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #18 - Horror Top Trumps

Alright, alright, I know these aren't books per se... However they certainly lived on the same shelves as my growing collection of Armadas, Fontanas, and Hainings, and judging by the huge impression these sets of cards made on a whole generation of kids, there is a good case to made for them being two seminal unbound books of horror. 

First up though, some background history... 

In the 1960s, an Austrian company named Piatnik began making a card game called Quartets, primarily aimed at the educational market. Now Piatnik had been - pardon the pun - a major player in the card world, forming as Wiener Spielkartenfabrik Ferd Piatnik & Sohne in 1824, and therefore knew a thing or two about art and game design. In this new game, there was a deck of 32 cards, divided into eight groups of four cards each, and the goal of the game was to collect as many complete quartets as possible. Now the rules of the game were very similar to that well-loved card game Go Fish, but Piatnik's innovation was to create themed decks and give every card statistics to use in play, with the idea being that young minds could absorb facts while playing with colourful cards with appealing art. 

Quartets provided to be very popular and soon various other manufacturers were producing their own ranges of decks, with minor variations on the Go Fish rules. But by the early '70s, they also began expanding the scope of the themes, with a Germany company Alternburg-Stralsunder producing a variant series called Ace Trumps, aimed at appealing to boys,  featuring a range of decks themed on military and transport vehicles. Now other companies such as Schmid and Dubreq were doing similar lines, but Alternburg-Stralsunder had introduced new rules that simplified and sped up play, with the goal now being to win as many cards as possible. 

Not to be out-done, Dubreq launched new ranges of cards with an even more streamlined ruleset, and  the game of Top Trumps as we know it today was born. Launching in the UK in 1976/77 with a range of eleven different packs to collect and priced at 50p, comfortably in the pocket money range of most kids, Top Trumps became a genuine phenomena, with even adults enjoying the fun too. The game itself was simple to learn, easy to play, and involved the right mix of skill and luck. However soon the concept of collecting all the packs became a hobby in itself. Hence Dubreq were soon producing more and more decks, and as competitors and rivals began to hit the market, they began expanding the scope of their themes to appeal to a growing audience of players and collectors. And hence from the initial and profitable ranges focusing on vehicles, we soon had decks based on sports, history and animals, most of which largely held to the original ethos of Quartets in being factual, and therefore educational.

However as Trumps mania burned bright and fierce, roaring across the UK, evidently the over worked deck creators lapsed into some frenzied fever dream, for in 1978 a new range was launched consisting of just two decks. And these two packs would become infamous - the Horror sets! Appropriately enough the origins of these decks are shrouded in mystery, and despite the best efforts of Top Trumps historians and the propensity of the internet to turn up even the most obscure nuggets of trivia, no one knows who devised these sets or who did the notorious artwork. 

And possibly that might be for very good reasons, for these two packs, known as Devil Priest and Dracula to trumpologists, are dubious in the extreme, not so much designed but more flung together by some gibbering madman. Now all top trumps cards had statistics on them which you matched against each other in play to win cards. And usually these were derived from solid factual things about the cards' subjects such as height, weight, top speed, age etc. (although in fairness I did think that many vehicular decks needed more abstract categories such as Unobtainabilty and Boredom Factor). 

Now obviously for the Horror decks, providing the usual factual/educational basis was a real  challenge for the designers, apparently so much so that they ditched the entire concept and just made up their own nebulous categories. Hence each card gave its horror the following stats - Physical Strength, Fear Factor, Killing Power, and Horror Rating. Not a bad basis for some horror trumps you might think, and many would agree. However unfortunately the nameless designers decided to just bung in any old numbers in these categories, seemingly without rhyme or reason, leading to infamous playground enigmas such as why did Death only have a Killing Power of 95? 

However the discrepancies in the stats paled into insignificance compared to the actual subjects on the cards. Now in fairness we do have reasonably faithful portraits of the big names in the horror world, with the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Wolf Man getting semi-decent portraits albeit ones that appeared to be done in frenzied felt tip. But why is Godzilla wearing a tuxedo? Why is the abominable Dr Phibes purporting to be the Phantom of the Opera, while the famous Lon Chaney incarnation of the Phantom is moonlighting as 'the Hangman'? 

One might charitably assume that at some late stage it was realised that several horror icons and their images were under copyright and hence some desperate name changing was done. But then again,  just who in the name of Hades are some of these characters? Where the hell is Zetan and why does it have a Warlord and a Priest? And what is the Norse god Thor doing in here, and more to point why does he have four eyes? Just how hallucinogenic were magic marker fumes back in the '70s? 

Even monster-obsessed and Top Trump addicted kids at the time knew that these were a shoddy piece of work, but despite their numerous, infamous failings, we loved these decks. Yes, the art looked like something that had been rushed out by a lunatic ten year old hopped up on sherbet dips and Alan Frank's Horror Movies in a single rainy break-time. And yes, it's true that most of us could honestly claim to know better artists in our own classes. But despite the screaming crudity of the sets, these cards still cast a deep spell on the minds of a generation. While the artistic execution may have left much to be desired, the imagery had a manic energy, boldly mixing solid blacks with lurid colours, and attempting to be as horrible as possible with a gusto that bordered on unusually demented. 

And indeed horrible they were! In fact, I'm quite surprised that there wasn't a huge fuss and moral panic over these two decks. That might sound a bit far fetched, but consider this - I am very sure that you could not get away with selling a pack of cards called 'Devil Priest' to kids these days. And you certainly couldn't put a children's card game in the toyshops now that featured so many tortures, slayings and maimings, complete with severed limbs, spurting blood, and in one memorable case, shattered vetebratae. So then quite how there was never a huge outcry from self-appointed moral guardians back in the even more strait-laced '70s I'll never know.  

But certainly I think it's fair to say that Horror Top Trumps were much akin to the EC comics of the 50s or the video nasties of the '80s. They were the subject of playground rumour and it was a badge of honour to own a set. Horror Top trumps weren't so much played, but passed around like contraband - could you bear to gaze upon the bloody beheading in The Fiend? Brave the gruesome horrors of the Venusian Death Cell? Dare to ask again why is Godzilla wearing a fricking tuxedo?

With their gleeful crudity and unashamed gore, the visions on these cards made deep impression on all who saw them, haunting the imagination of an entire generation. And if you want proof of how  fondly remembered these sets are, just have a look at the prices of complete sets up for sale - at the time of writing, decks are regularly going for £50, a hundred times their original price. Yes, such is the power of these Horror Top trumps that people who should know better are prepared to pay large sums to relive their delights once more. Or possibly just to see if they are a as demented as they remember...

However despite the opiated nostalgic delights these decks bring us, they surprisingly still offer us a great game today... But I don't mean a round of Horror Top Trumps! Going to back the question of why some cards clearly have the wrong names on, looking through both decks now, it's very obvious that a large proportion of the art was heavily based on stills cribbed from assorted movies, hence Chaney's Phantom operating a gallows. But how many cards were sourced in this way? Where did our mysterious artist steal from? And was there actually a precedent for demented visions such as the Zetan Priest? 

Well, dear friends over the coming weeks we are going to unravel these mysteries in a new weekly series of articles - which I think I'll call the Tomb of the Trumps and hopeful reveal the secret origins of this iconic cards!