I used to collect these wonderful monster cards. There were no collector items as exciting to me as my monster cards. Beatle cards were a close second, but they could never capture the awesome majesty of my monsters! Trading cards was a commonplace event in my neighborhood. Kids on the block wanted to trade just about anything for my monster cards, but I never would. There was no parting with these, unless, of course, I ended with a real dud, or a one that I didn't like.
The one thing I did not like about a lot of the monster cards were the comical quotes at the bottom. These bubble gum companies had no right to make these incredibly wonderful and terrifying creatures into a comedy routine! What if the Wolf Man was hiding in their garage, or the Fiend Without a Face flying brain creatures were hovering over their beds at night? Would the comical quotes then come so fast? I thought not. I was a kid who took his monsters pretty darned seriously.
The majority of these cards depicted movies that I hadn't seen yet. This only made them all the more enticing and precious to me. Many of these great drive-in horror classics didn't make their way to our local TV screens until later. 1964 was the year that I saw a few of these great movies as they began to slowly trickle in across our air waves. These super cool monster cards came in packs of four or five, with a flat square of bubble gum all for a nickel!
I also loved the flat, chalky feel of the bubble gum slab as I crammed the whole thing into my mouth. Few flavors in the world could compare to bubble gum; it was a miraculous flavor dreamed up by scientists in secret laboratories whose only mad desire in life was to please us kids. Accompanied by five detailed cards of amazing monsters, I had to consider it all a nickel well spent!
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