A Look Back at Topps' Creature Feature Trading Cards

Over the years, I have blogged about many of the classic creature feature items I have either owned or encountered during my childhood, items that deepened my interest in horror and sci-fi movies to the point where such an interest became a lifestyle choice. These trips down memory lane have provided to me a greater understanding of how studios such as Universal and American International kept their movie monsters alive in the imaginations of kids long after they stopped scaring audiences at local theaters. This post is devoted to one of the collectibles I picked up on a whim in the early '80s: a set of collectible trading cards from Topps' Creature Feature set.

To be honest, I almost didn't know that the Creature Feature cards existed at all. I caught of glimpse of one of my classmates in elementary school looking at them one day and I immediately offered to buy them from him. After that impulsive exchange, I haven't seen any other Creature Feature cards or mention of them in any of the many, many classic monster retrospectives I've read. For this post, I even had to search for the proper name of the card set on the internet before drafting this post, because the wrappers had already been removed and thrown away by the time I bought them. Interestingly, it turns out that the Creature Feature cards that I got weren't from the original run. My cards are from the 1980 reissue; the original set was released in 1973.

Not knowing the proper name of the cards or which company made them didn't stop me from wanting them. They used the same black and white movie stills that I saw repeatedly in movie monster books (particularly in the Crestwood House series), so I was completely transfixed as soon as I saw them. This was just a few years before the home video rental market took off, so the only way that most kids could see vintage monster movies back then was on weekend TV syndication. As such, I was eager to snatch up whatever item I could find that would give me a closer look at these classic creepers. Furthermore, each card listed on the back the film from where the still on the front originated, which helped me identify some of the more obscure monsters that were included in the set.

A selection of cards from the Creature Feature set.

As a set of cards, the Creature Feature line is a mixed bag. The cards’ captions are meant to be humorous and the back of each card features a monster-themed joke. By this time in my early geekhood years, I was used to trading card sets providing at least some behind-the-scenes information about my favorite movies. Not so with the Creature Feature set--for the regular cards, it's lame jokes and bad puns galore.

As described on the Collecting Classic Monsters site in a post about Creature Feature set, "The back of the cards used the same “You’ll Die Laughing” headline and purple illustrated border as the original 1959 Funny Monsters cards and included a marginally funny monster joke. ... That title most appropriately refers to the 1959 Topps Funny Monsters cards which featured illustrations of monsters rather than licensed movie stills. Not only did Topps use the same headline and border in all three series, they used the same corny jokes in both 1973 and 1980 series as had originally run in 1959!"

Where the Creature Feature set truly shines are with its stickers: "The Monster Hall of Fame" stickers, which bear the faces of many classic movie monsters, and a selection of full color reprints of classic movie monster posters. Some books have been published recently that feature reprints of such amazing, iconic posters; however, back in the '80s, I had to get by with the Creature Feature trading cards.

Above: The Monsters Hall of Fame stickers.

Below: Vintage monster movie poster stickers.

The Monster Wax site has a post that lists the many monster-themed trading card sets that were published between 1959 and 1969, which indicates that monsters were a reliable staple for trading card companies. Nevertheless, the Creature Feature trading card set is a reminder of a different time for horror film fandom, before on-demand services such as video rentals and the internet changed the ways fans could get their fixes of fright. In a time when binge-watching your favorite movie monsters wasn't an option, products such as Creature Feature trading cards had to suffice.



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