GODZILLA in America: the 1960's (part one)

I've been planning this series of posts for months, and it all started from the offhand thought, "Man, there weren't too many American Godzilla items in the 1960's...you could count them on one hand!"  This isn't exactly true, but it's not too terribly far off, as we will see.  

"Horror Monsters" Trading Cards (Nu-Card, Green series, 1961)

As it turns out, the very first retail Godzilla items you could walk into a store and buy were trading cards...but since they were based on GIGANTIS THE FIRE MONSTER, they called him by that name, so therefore the 1963 Ideal board game still holds the undefeated title of "very first American Godzilla retail item." You could also throw the word licensed in there too, because who knows if Toho really had anything to do with these cards getting printed: wouldn't it have been Warner Bros., anyhow, in this case?  Also, since trading cards come in packs, you wouldn't exactly know which cards you were getting. The green Nu-Card series was also sold in packs of 2-panel cards you could separate.  I've yet to see an unopened example, but assuming those panels were sold on carded blister packs, a buyer could know what they were getting in that case!

But I digress. Rodan also gets a cool card in this green series, so I'm including it here.

"Horror Monsters" Trading Cards (Nu-Card, Orange series, 1961)

Continuing from the green set, the orange set contains no Godzilla (or Gigantis).  The only of Godzilla's buddies who showed up was Rodan, in a single card.  (For Toho Completeness' sake, I should mention that the orange series also included one MYSTERIANS card, #74, and one card for THE H-MAN, which is #110.)

"Terror Monsters" Trading Cards (Rosan, Purple series, 1963)

Some time passed, and the dearth of Godzilla merchandise was about to soon slowly reverse, as KING KONG vs. GODZILLA hit theaters the summer of 1963, and Godzilla became a household name.  The "Terror Monsters" set of purple-bordered trading cards featured Gigantis once again, but only credited him as "The Fire Monster," oddly crediting the image to American International Pictures. Rodan got two cards in this series, with one also being oddly credited to AI.

"Spook Stories" Trading Cards (Leaf, 1963)

KING KONG vs. GODZILLA did feature in one of the next series of trading cards that came out, the much-beloved "Spook Stories" from Leaf. On the back, the cards give "1961" as a date, but as you can guess, that's incorrect for the ones we are looking at.  The KK vs. G cards are later ones in the series, anyhow (#108, 113, and 126), so it may have taken a couple of years for the series to expand to those numbers, which explains the date.

In part 2, we will look at the first honest-to-goodness real American Godzilla toy, model madness, and more trading cards!