As we have already seen, there was quite a lot of marketing done for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (just at Burger King alone). That year, Topps got the idea to experiment with the traditional size of trading cards. Luckily, they didn't replace their conventionally-sized series(es), but instead issued a separate one.
The "Giant Photocards" made for the film were 5 x 7" in size, and were sold in packs of ONE. I'm sure they were more expensive to produce, and with only 30 cards in the set, extremely frustrating to the consumer. Maybe we will find out more when the next Topps book comes out (Volume Two is set to cover ESB, so maybe they will include the Giant Photocards), but I have always read that this particular experiment was a failure, and that sales were not as fantastic as they'd hoped.
No doubt, these were meant more for pinning up than trading, or putting in bicycle spokes (not that I've ever seen that occur, but I've always been told that kids used to put baseball cards in the spokes of their bicycles, which has never made any sense to me). It would make sense that these were taped in lockers, or on bedroom walls. I don't even think back then there was anything to PUT them in that worked very well, outside of a photo album...and old photo albums had gummy pages that were NOT acid-free, and would wreak havoc on collectors in the long term.
Anyway, the cards were divided into two groups of 15, because the card backs also served as checklists, with photos of each card. Here is the first checklist (in other words, the back to cards #1-15):
As you can see, the cards are given a number on the checklists, but NOT on the cards themselves! With that in mind, here is the first half of the set:
TO BE CONTINUED...
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