Joy of a Complete Set - 1980 Burger King Star Wars

Archives is live and here are all the fucks I give.

The vintage card show is back in town next week and I just got a pile of cards in a traveling box and in a card draft and honestly new cards don't appeal to me at all unless they are 2012 packs deeply discounted so I can buy 'em all up cheap and feel like I'm sticking it to the MAN when in actuality I could have put that money to much better use just completing sets online. What, what is this post about again? Oh yeah! I completed a set! A vintage set! Ok I bought a vintage set at the flea market. But it's vintage! And STAR WARS!!! No, not Topps Star Wars, I can't even find singles of that anymore because of all you damn nerds hoarding it, it's BURGER KING STAR WARS.

Don't look at me like that, Burger King Cards are cool. Some random BK cards from 1978 that have been lost to history were my first cards ever probably. I can't say for sure, but I'm almost certain that I got some '78 Burger King Tigers cards while on a family vacation when I was 6. It may or may not have actually happened but if I ever become hella famous enough to write an autobiography that's going in the book. It's in my headcanon at least. What? I can be a fan of myself if I want. Wait, what was this post about again? This is why I don't write posts while I'm drunk off my ass. (also why I haven't posted much lately but I digress) Dammit, I forgot what the post was about again. Oh yeah, CARDS! Star Wars cards. From when the movies were actually in the theater. No, the first time. Without 3D or extra added bullshit CGI monsters wandering about in the background for no reason. Wait, did they do the original Star Wars in 3D yet? No, that was The Phantom Menace that was in 3D. And nothing else because no one went to see The Phantom Menace in 3D in the theaters because The Phantom Menace in 2D sucked rancid monkey balls and an extra dimension could only possibly add to the suck. DAMMIT FOCUS. STAY ON TARGET. (Target has the new Archives live already, but not in every store you gotta look around and go to three or four stores). Wait, ARGH

When you think of Burger King Star Wars (if you're middle aged like me at least, you young 'uns missed out) you think of STAR WARS GLASSES which were the coolest damn things ever. You could only get 'em for like a month and this was before the interwebs with over 9000 Star Wars fan sites giving you to the minute updates on all the new merchandise coming out with up-to-the-minute alerts on Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and a half a dozen websites I'm not cool enough to know about yet and if you didn't eat at Burger King every week or didn't see the commercial you missed out on these glasses FOREVER unless you stumbled upon them at a flea market or garage sale after the fact. I have no Star Wars glasses now, but I had them at one time and I remember them as fondly as I do the Snoopy cookie jar that I scarfed cookies out of when I was a lad but no more because it has been lost in time along with the glasses that my mom's ex probably took in the divorce along with the complete set of RC Cola baseball cans and my little league championship trophy that year I was with the Astros along with all the big kids that actually new how to play. Well glasses weren't the only thing with a Star Wars license that Burger King used to hawk flame broiled goodness. They also put out a card set. THIS CARD SET. THIS IS CRASS MARKETING HISTORY RIGHT HERE SO PAY ATTENTION.

After Star Wars came along and kicked Hollywood right square in the junk Lucas made a second movie which turned out to be the first Star Wars film I saw in the theater so it's the best Star Wars Movie now and forever screw the prequels and whatever crapola JJ Abrams comes up with EMPIRE IS BEST AND IRVING KIRSHNER IS THE GOD OF ALL MOVIE DIRECTORS BECAUSE NOSTALGIA. Thankfully the movie I imprinted on as a young whippersnapper actually turned out to be the good one and to help promote the film as well as sell burgers in a weird symbiotic promotion of synergy Burger King came up with a contest WHERE EVERYONE WINS. Yes, you too can be a winner if you buy a hamburger at the fast food featuring royalty instead of jesters. So here's how YOU can be a winner (if you are under 12 and find a time machine and go back to 1980 and buy a hamburger (no purchase necessary(restrictions apply)))

First go to 1980 and get hungry. Then go right past those damnable arches and walk into Burger King. There you can get a scratch card where every card is a winner. This is not like your normal scratch card games where if you choose the wrong circle to scratch off you're a big fat loooooooser, but if you mess up the first time (or two) you can just keep scratching until you're a winner. Among the prizes available were a flying disc or even a handheld video game (!!!!!) but you were going to get a sheet of trading cards. Don't even lie that you won a video game back in the day because you won a sheet of trading cards. Which you immediately separated and lost one of the cards before you were even out of the restaurant and the remaining two were played with until they were creased and dog-eared and you eventually lost one of those two when that asshole you traded cards with in 3rd grade stoled one of them and now if you are extremely fortunate or a hoarder you still have that last lonely beat up card of a Sand Person that no one cares about left to remind you of a fast food meal you ate over 30 years ago. I didn't have any of the cards until I bought this set for about the price of a Whopper meal and a shake recently. When I looked online for info (which there seems to be little of, surprisingly) I did kinda recognize the scratch off card and I immediately regretted not hoarding that little scratch off gold mine because those things have to be hella scarce nowadays.

At any rate I got the entire 36-card set in 12 different panels now, with 6 panels for Star Wars and 6 panels for Empire. No panels for Jedi because too early and Ewoks suck. The fronts remind me of another set that I can't quite place and the backs are all the same, just advertising Burger King, Coca Cola and reminding you if you don't get 'em all by 7/30/81, you're screwed. My set looks like it has been in a flood although that might be just how they looked like when you got 'em. I've orientated the scans according to whether there were more horizontal or vertical cards on the panel. If you really have to see the Han Solo card face up, download the thing and rotate it. Enjoy the set while I try to figure out where I can find 4 three-card sheets to put this into.

These things appear to be all over the internets if you want to spend the cash.