Disney’s Frozen: Olaf’s Frozen Adventure Collectable Stickers

Printed by Panini.

Price: £0.50 for a packet of 5 stickers.

Stickers in the packet:

47 – A screen grab of Olaf and three white-haired children looking up an unlit fireplace chimney.

74 – Left half of a two-part image featuring a complete screen grab image of Elsa.

124 – a pair of vector art generic white on matt kharki-gold snowflake images (a two for one ‘sticker’).

142 – A drawn illustration of Anna featuring glitter covered silhouettes of goats and a glittery border.

173 – Bottom Left corner of a larger illustration image featuring the lower part of Elsa using her powers.

Review

I usually look for the good in these packets of stickers but this was a rip off. Only 5 stickers per pack is ridiculous for basic stickers no matter how good the quality of the print is (I would expect at least a shiny/hologram sticker included per pack to justify the price). The full body sticker of Anna was nice (maybe this one with a small amount of glitter is the ‘special sticker’ per pack often seen in other ranges?) and I like the illustration style but otherwise the stickers feature screen grabs and the generic snowflakes vector art ‘two for one’ sticker which you could easily get in bulk from other seasonal decorative sticker ranges.

I was either unfortunate with the single packet I got or there is an over reliance on multiple part images in the sticker album thus ensuring you constantly buy more to chase for the missing pieces. Just go get a pack of stickers you can see the contents of if you want something from Frozen. There’s not much to add… the packet was rubbish hence why it took me so long to get around to reviewing it months after I actually bought the pack when everyone has probably already forgotten it existed.

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Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (2017) Collectable Stickers

Price: £0.50 per pack

5 stickers per pack

Made and printed by Panini S.p.A – Modena.

Viale Emilio, Po 380, 41126, Modena.

Made in Italy.

Www.paninigroup.com

FSC Mix Paper FSC C115044

Stickers featured:

#31: The right side of a 2 part image: A white horse, Phillipe, hidden behind some frozen wintertime tree branches as he travels through the forest. Some of the foreground is out of focus.

#33: Whole landscape image: Maurice warms himself before the castle’s fireplace. A small foot stool launches itself at his foot unnoticed.

#49: The right side of a 2 part image: The cloaked shoulder of Belle and out of focus a candelabra in the background.

#55: Special glitter bordered portrait image: Beast holding an out of focus candle.

#69: The left side of a two part image: Lumiere and Cogsworth walk across a well lit hallway about to enter another room.

#80: The left side of a two part image: A cooking range. You can see knives floating in the air cutting vegetables and pipe like arms on one side holding a pan up.

#98: The right side of a two part image: Belle rides on Phillipe away from the snow covered castle. In the foreground is some out of focus shrubbery.

#104: Special glitter bordered sticker: Belle looking shocked/concerned while looking to the right as she holds Phillipe by the bridle.

#163: The left side of a two part image: A crowd of townsfolk hold lit torches.

#167: The right side of a two part image: The towns folk walk in procession, some on horseback, along a country lane (towards the castle).

Review:

If you have ever read my other reviews of merchandise stickers you know I tend to only buy one pack and end up saying ‘I got a lot of stickers that are only part of an image but you may have better luck than me if you buy a pack’. To counter this I bought two packs this time and… apparently multi-part imagery is the norm not the exception nowadays. Perhaps if I bought even more packs there are stickers which are complete images and I just have bad luck but it seems unlikely.

The stickers are decent quality and the images look nice in person despite how my camera has picked up on the underlying colour printing mesh and my noting how parts are out of focus as these have all clearly been transferred from stills of the film. The ones with a glittery border are nice stand alone images but very few of the others really stand on their own. In particular #49 particularly I feel could have just had the left side of that image as nothing is added to the image here save to add another sticker to the collection’s count needlessly. In fact that is what I am finding a lot with recent sticker collections – if you’re lucky you get the ‘good’ side of the image while the other side is pretty pointless save to add a sliver of a cloak or something else which is unnecessary.

For £0.50 it works out as £0.10 per sticker and I cannot recommend purchasing them at that price even as a treat for your children. They cut cost, as is common nowadays, by making all the packs multi-lingual but still seem to feel £0.50 is an acceptable price point for only 5 stickers per pack.

I assume there are other sticker products available for the film which show exactly what you are getting so if you really need to get stickers of the film look elsewhere as this range is far too hit and miss.

Star Wars : Rogue One : Trading Cards

£1.00 per pack from tesco.
Produced by Topps.
8 cards per pack. Each package comes with one of the main characters on the front so even the packaging itself has some value to collectors of such things.

“Over 210 cards to collect. 8 cards per pack.
Including one holographic foil card.
Look out for special cards inside lucky packets:
Plastic cards 1:4
Sticker Cards 1:4
Limited edition card to replace regular card 1:36 packets”

The cards I got were:

26: Stormtrooper. Nice and generic just like them.

35: Jyn Erso… I’m not sure if this is production art prior to the actress’ casting but that is definitely not Felicity Jones. Either that or it is an unflattering shot of her. Either way the image has been overworked by post edit photoshopping.
37: Cassian Andor: In a kneeling stance ready to fire his rifle. A promotional image no doubt.He looks surprised or scared doesn’t he?

83: Death Trooper: stats card. Height: 6′ 5” Allegiance: Galactic Empire. The card has a ‘worn’ red/green patterning to it. I remember that from the 90s. I suppose it’s meant to look ‘punk’ but in an inoffensive way or as if this has been weathered in a conflict zone.

113: The top right corner of a nine part image: 3 X-Wings and the Topps logo. (You can see the split between the two card faintly at Baze’s hairline).
116: The Left middle section of the 9 part image: Baze Malbus and Bodhi Rook. Of these section of the multipart big poster image (every card collection has at least one) I can’t complain as, looking on the back of the card at the full 9 part image I see that, apart from the robot K-2SO, I got the best framed cards of the set as neither of the men has his face severely cut up nor is there any vague midbody shot. They don’t stand fantastically on their own but of the 9 these were amongst the best.

138: A slightly blurred action still of Baze Malbus running from an explosion of sparks behind him. In this day and age of HD I was quite surprised by it being blurred. They must have had access to a higher quality images than this? In fact this is one of the promotional images and has definitely been presented far more cleanly elsewhere.

162: Cassian Andor: Holographic foil card: A promotional photo of the actor in costume. On the back it reads ” An accomplished Alliance Intelligence Officer with combat field experience, Captain Cassian Andor commands respect from his Rebel troops with his ability to keep a cool head under fire and complete his missions with minimal resources.” This and the Death Trooper were the only cards to have anything written on the back. The others had a close up of the front image with the Rogue One logo or, in the 9 part image it indicated the placement of the card in the larger image.

The surface of the cards I notice have a dappled texture with the printed images being smooth on top of it. The only one I have which was completely smooth was the holographic one so clearly these special ones are printed in a completely separate run to the more standard cards probably elsewhere.

So my reaction… Trading cards seem so old fashioned to me as I remember them from my childhood and felt they had fallen out of fashion a long time ago. However ‘everything old is new again’ and there is no doubt that with a long running series like this there will be many adult collectors who have complete collections of previous series. The cards are very nice quality. A bit generic for my liking but what is to be done really as that was always an issue with trading cards?

Maybe a little pricey for what they are but if you get cards of characters you like, and once I see the film for all I know Cassian Andor might be the run away darkhorse favourite of the film, I might look at myself being incredible fortunate to have fluked getting probably the two best cards about him from picking up a pack at random and of course the Death Trooper and Storm Trooper cards no doubt are making a few jealous to have gotten them.

It is hard to tell after all some cards might be overpacked while others are under produced in a subtle effort to make you order them directly from the company so they can charge a bit more for anyone desperate to finish their collection and not spend money on random packs which by that point will statistically have a 7:1 or higher chance of being nothing but copies of ones they already have.

The price of £1 seems more than I would be willing to pay to be honest if I was going to have more than just a single packet. 80 pence or so would be more reasonable but considering how many they will have printed off for this internationally profitable property I think they could afford to lower the price to something like 50 to 75 pence if they really wanted to.
My advice… They’re a nice one off novelty but like all branded merchandise it is hard to say these will have much value a few months from now unless you have some of the more exceptionally rare cards. Which ironically won’t be the ‘1 per pack’ foil ones or the 1:4 plastic or 1:4 sticker cards I didn’t get but in fact the generic ones which will be underpacked and they’re ‘boring’ like the bottom corners of the 9 part image. Deny it but we all now know about how much the Yak Face toy goes for so maybe one day I will dig these out of the bottom of a draw and find they are worth something. They won’t, but it’s nice to dream.

Minions Movie Tie-In Collectable Stickers

5 Stickers per pack (4 normal and one foil in the pack I bought).
Price: £0.50 (I bought them at Tesco so the RRP price may vary elsewhere).
Published by TOPPS Europe Limited, 18 Vincent Avenue, Crownhill, Milton Keynes, MK8 0AW, UK.
Hellsteller: Topps Deutschland GMBH, Goethestr, 18, 60313 Frankfurt, Deutschland.

The size of the stickers is smaller than I have seen previously. When I was growing up Panini, and its imitators, stickers were larger while Topps measure 68mm x 54mm with the foil sticker being 85mm x 61mm. However I do remember a Street Fighter II sticker collection by Merlin which had these dimensions so it may just depend on the individual company producing each series.

In comparison to the previously reviewed Frozen ‘My Sister, My Hero’ stickers, which were 97mm x 64mm, these were far smaller. If I was to make a comparison for anyone without a ruler then think of it this way: the minion stickers are ‘small business card’ size while the Frozen ones are ‘trading card’ size. However it may be a case I only ever bought stickers from Panini made series and so this smaller size seems worse when it could be the standard for most collectable sticker series otherwise.

The images are clearly printed though the print colouration seems dull compared to the vibrancy you would see on other promotional materials of these same images. The foil sticker has promotional images of the film’s villains on a foil background while the standard stickers are mostly stills from the Minions film itself. I did get one sticker which seemed to be an original image for the collection which seemed to be a generic minion, set off to one side, with a ‘funky’ pattern background. I say ‘funky’ because this is the sort of thing a think tank of advertising executives, out of touch with current trends, would consider ‘funky’ when looking at Google search for the sort of things that would be ‘60s style imagery’ such as the psychedelic artwork of Peter Max but then go on to make it as plain and generic as possible so as to not offend anyone’s sensibilities and thus ensure maximum market saturation potential for sale. This is a pretty standard practise across the industry for sticker collection tie-ins of movies so while it seems uninspired it is sadly expected and a cheap money maker for companies. It’s all about the marketing of the product not the quality of it.

On the back of the stickers is an original illustration of the 3 main minions from the film and I would hope that the rest of the series was composed of more original artwork like this than just the generic ‘print screen’ imagery that is standard for movie tie-in collections.

There is nothing to really complain about, although the foil sticker easily picks up finger prints and is then near impossible to clean without using a soft cloth so be careful when handling them, but in this day and age you would hope for more. We used to get 10 stickers in a pack when I was growing up but now it is 5 albeit they are of far higher print quality.
I think this was a missed opportunity. They could easily create a much more original and fun series even with a basic concept of producing images of various ‘____ type minion’ having the various minions dressed as different jobs or stereotypes. We already have a Fireman Minion, a Maid Minion, Baby Minion and many others so a collection of these could easily be made and enjoyed with only a very small amount of investment in design.

If kids want stickers of the minions then they will be satisfied, just as we all were in childhood collection of footballers (i.e. the classic company cash cows as the yearly ‘same game different player names’ computer games are for their respective companies), movie tie-ins (for me it was Jurassic Park through to Space Jam) or oddities (Garbage Pail Kids… say no more) but in comparison I think the ‘Frozen: My Sister, My Hero’ ones are far superior in quality and individual image value (so you don’t get as many dull scenes of ‘character stood with blank face in unrecognisable scene #A204b) that are not amusing in their own right. I don’t think at £0.50 these are of equal value to the Frozen ones which retail at the same price but if its minions you want then these are okay. You won’t be disappointed but you won’t be impressed either. Sort of like the film I guess if the reviews are anything to go by…

For those interested here are the stickers’ numbers:

• 10: Napoleonic Minions: with cannon
• 18: 1960s line up of the main Minions: green hat, robot arm and lava lamp
• 41: Ancient Egyptian Minions: with an upside down pyramid plan
• 99: Blank face minion with ‘funky’ background
• 132: (Foil) Scarlet Overkill and Herb

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