ESB York Peanut Butter Card Set [Canada] (Cracker Packers, 1980)

An unusual card set, in that they are ROUND.  These cards were a promotion in Canada, and were packaged under the lids of peanut butter jars! There are six in the set.  Here are the fronts and backs of each card!

Nice to see the 2-1B card at the end, which was an unusual choice.

ESB "Giant Photocards" (Topps, 1980) Part Two

Today, the second half of the ESB Giant Photocard set.  Here is the checklist for cards #16-30:

And here are those cards:

ESB "Giant Photocards" (Topps, 1980) Part One

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...

ESB "Super Scene Collection" (Burger King/Coca-Cola, 1980)

Burger King had a SECOND promotion for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK that year (and we haven't even mentioned their SETS OF FOUR GLASSES for each film--they DOMINATED Star Wars fast-food marketing), and it involved stickers (or "stamps" as they called them) that were given out in strips.  Each strip formed three different puzzle scenes, making a total of twelve, which the buyer would arrange in a large pamphlet, seen above.

Admittedly, I cribbed these photos from Ebay, because the "booklet" is larger than a scanner.  Here is what the inside of the booklet looks like:

The instructions at the very bottom are rather amusing--they tell the user how to peel a sticker.  I guess dumb instructions are not a modern invention.

Here are the four strips of stickers:

The backs of the sticker strips are generic, and looked like this:

Burger King was knocking it out of the park that year, if you will pardon the sports metaphor!