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.

Marvel Missions – Trading Card Game

Over 270 cards to collect.

8 per packet.

 

Cards in the pack I bought:

22: CHARACTER: Howard Stark [Captain America: The First Avenger]: Power Value: 38

25: CHARACTER: Nick Fury [Captain America: The Winter Soldier]: Power Value: 69

90: ALLY: Captain America and Scarlet Witch [Avengers: Age of Ultron] Power Value: 69

117: ALLY: Thor and Jane Foster [Thor the Dark World]: Power Value: 53

151: WEAPON: Hydra Chitauri Blaster [Avengers: Age of Ultron]: Power Value: 66

184: VILLAIN: Heinz Kruger [Captain America: The First Avenger]: Power Value: 45

234: CHARACTER: Natasha Romanoff [The Avengers]: Power Value: 73 [mirror foil card]

248: CHARACTER: Black Panther [Captain America: Civil War] Power Value: 83 [holo foil card]

HOW TO PLAY

Step 1: Know your cards!

Marvel Missions is a game for 2 players. To win, you must complete game missions by defeating opponent!

Step 2: Assemble your team!

Take 20 cards from your deck and shuffle them. Then hold them face-up in your hands.

There are 2 great ways to play Marvel Missions!

BEGINNERS: Play until all cards have been used. Whoever has completed the most Red, Blue and Black Missions wins! Choose your Mission before you begin. Both players must play the same mission.

ADVANCED: Take on Avengers-level Missions where the first person to complete an Iron, Steel or Gold Mission wins! Choose your Mission before you begin. Both players must play the same Mission.

Step 3: Commence your Mission!

Both players take the first card from their hand and compare the Power Values.

Step 4: Complete your Mission!

The Player with the winning card puts it in their chosen Mission pile and the losing card returns to the bottom of the deck. Keep playing until you’ve got a winner!

TOP TIP: Make sure you have cards from a mixture of categories, as different categories will be needed to complete particular missions!

USE EVERY CARD TO WIN!

As well as Characters and Villains there are Weapons, Allies, Vehicles and Locations. All must be used to gain victory and complete Missions!

In the event of a tie, draw the next cards.

Step 5: MISSIONS COMPLETED

Mission Index

Red Missions [Beginner]

1: 1 Character / 1 Vehicle / 1 Villain

2: 2 Characters / 1 Vehicle / 1 Villain

3: 3 Characters / 1 Vehicle / 1 Villain

Blue Missions [Beginner]

1: 1 Character / 1 Ally / Weapon

2: 2 Characters / 1 Ally / Weapon

3: 3 Characters / 1 Ally / Weapon

Black Missions [Beginner]

1: 3 Characters / 2 Weapons / 2 Villains

2: 3 Characters / 2 Allies / 2 Vehicles

3: 3 Characters / 2 Weapons / 1 Location

Iron Mission [Advanced]

4 Characters / 3 Allies / 1 Vehicle / 2 Villains

Steel Mission [Advanced]

4 Characters / 3 Allies / 1 Weapon / 1 Location

Gold Mission [Advanced]

5 Characters / 2 Allies / 1 Weapon / 1 Villain / 1 Location

REVIEW

I paid £1 for a packet of 8 cards which I supose is better value than some other series I’ve reviewed. It promotes that there are ‘Guardians of the galaxy vol. 2 cards inside lucky packets’ so to me that means they’re advertising you’ll get cards associated with the most recent, as of writing this, Marvel film but in reality they’re the ‘chase cards’ – or in plain English the cards they have printed very few of so you buy more packets in order to get them. I didn’t notice until noting the information down but the ‘mirror’ and ‘holographic’ foil cards are hardly distinct at first glance. It hardly seems worth their effort to have had both versions. I can only imagine the ‘super holographic’ foil cards have that diamond patterning that other cards series refer to as their holographic ones.

This series has high quality cards in terms of materials and the quality of the still frames from the films or the promotional photos used for the cards but otherwise feel incredibly bland. In truth you could argue that has been Marvel’s marketing strategy across the board when you consider how their use of digital correction in the films leads to there being no ‘true’ black to shadows leading to a washed out look and the indistinct music used in the films [go on, test yourself right now and see if you can hum the following: Batman’s theme, Superman’s theme, Spiderman’s Theme (the cartoon version more than the films admittedly is the one we all know)…. now how about Captain America’s? Thors? How about Iron Man’s? Leif motifs aside, which you can argue are the themes we remember, can you recall any music in the Marvel films? And no any of the tracks from Quill’s tapes in Guardians of the Galaxy do not count. It’s that generic a sound Marvel have opted for].

I don’t feel the game is going to be that enjoyable if you did get enough cards to play it to be honest. How many packs would you need to play it too? I would imagine, accounting for randomisation, about 5 if you’re lucky so that’s a £5 investment for 40 cards minimum. It plays similar to Top Trumps but with a few more restrictions. It’s a little too fiddly for first time card game players, which will likely be young children who have the Marvel bug and want to play it, but then I can’t see the strategic possibilities that could attract the more seasoned table top card gamer to embrace it. It sits in that awkward middle ground between the two markets and might be forgotten sooner than even a standard ‘picture on the front, standard blurb on the back’ collectable card series would be.

To their credit they’ve tried something new but it doesn’t look like it will work out as they’ve tried to be something for everyone and the only way this project will recoup costs is if it became an international fad. Then again with how much recycling has been done with stock photo assets here it’s probably been incredibly cheap, for a well established multinational organisation, to produce in order to gain a little of a market they have rarely been involved in. I know that there are the Heroclix available in specialist shops but these sorts of games don’t tend to last long in the mainstream and are the passion of a niche community which Marvel, regarding their cinematic universe, don’t invest in preferring to get a few dollars from many people across the globe than have the investment of a smaller community who will spend high amounts should the game appeal to them and a community exist (the latter being the most important variable and one they have very little control over).

But I suppose that’s the point. It’s just testing the waters and will be deemed an acceptable loss in the long run. After all did any of us really think the Pokemon card game would still be going strong over a decade after it began? No doubt they thought with Marvel’s appeal they could replicate the success but they forgot that it’s the underlying game which has kept the Pokemon version going all these years and it’s evolution in terms of rules and other elements not just because it’s part of the Pokemon franchise.

Ultimately it’s not worth buying these cards. If you want an easy to access version of this game you can play at any age and you get a full card set to be played with right out the packet go buy the Marvel themed Top Trumps set. I haven’t gone to see what it’s called but I have no doubt there is a Marvel themed set considering all the franchises they’ve done sets for by now. In fact for all I know there are sets for each individual film. Even if you spend £5 to buy the Top Trumps set it’s still more cards and potential game play than spending the same amount of money on these collectable cards. These might appeal to Marvel fans or collectors speculating they’ll be rare in the future, due to no one buying them, but that’s a gamble I don’t feel will pay off as all the ‘modern rarity’ speculation requires you buy everything and people just don’t have the money or patience for it. The imagery on the cards is all available at a quick internet image search or freeze frame of the films so… that just leaves the game and that feels incredibly weak and not worth the effort of investing in as there’s little if any strategy even for children to enjoy. If you get a special foil card of your favourite character you might like it but… no.

Look out for special cards in packets including Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Cards:

Mirror foil cards 1:1

Holographic foil cards 1:2

Super holographic foil cards 1:3

 

Published by Topps Europe Limited,

18 Vincent Avenue, Crownhill,

Milton Keynes, MK8 0AW, UK

Produced by Topps.

(GB) Warning! Not suitable for children under 36 months. Small parts – choking hazard.

(DK) Advarseli! Ikke egnet til born under 36 maneder. Sma dele – kvaelningsfare.

What To Do When You Have Made Too Many Notes

I kept notes on my phone and never typed them up only to find out I cannot transfer them via Bluetooth, email, messaging or text. What to do? They are all full note documents which are about 1500 characters each and I have generated on average 4 per day for the past 5 months! I tried typing them out but that involves having to constantly tap the screen so it doesn’t shutdown. If it does then the entire Notes programme reverts to its default, sending me to the top of the list, to the newest entries, and I have to spend 30 seconds scrolling all the way down again and finding where I left off. So what to do?

Use a DSLR camera and photo, then scroll down while keeping the last line on the screen, photo, then scroll again, then photo, ad nauseam. The first set of images numbering somewhere in the region of 500 shots added up to about 1.5GB of data. Obviously once I type them up this will be far less but for the time being it is a step in the right direction.

With them off my phone hopefully it will not drain the battery as quickly… no that’s not the reason for this spring cleaning. I have a bad habit of making notes but not writing them up. I have scraps of paper from the last three years which have probably lost all meaning by now.

If I clear my phone will it clear my mind? No. But it will ensure I do not look at them during the day. Not discarded but at least placed where they will not weigh me down. A catharsis through clearing my record keeping.

Tomorrow I will photo all the scraps of paper – Held in a see through A4 carry case along with pieces of high quality 300gsm paper sheets and notebooks of previous years (including one from 2012 whose contents I wrote up in an early blog post on here should you wish to look https://ramblingatthebridgehead.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/the-faux-wisdom-and-miscellany-of-a-partially-filled-2012-notebook/ ) on a chair which has for the past year served more as a storage zone than a seat.

Monday I will sort out my paperwork – Presently spilling out of a filing box as if a small non-flammable bomb had exploded at its base.

Tuesday I will sort out the table in the corner of the room where I have put numerous brochures, programmes, pamphlets and leaflets from every event I have been to in the past ten years and many I never ended up attending in the end – A wicker basket, won from a Harrods contest, holds them all in check. If you have ever seen the artistry some people have in maximizing their one allotted bowl of salad at a restaurant buffet constructing fom that simple base a cyclopean tower ike structure defying all logic and yet in no risk of structural failure then you know how I have ended up creating a massively overloaded, blossoming flower like, paperwork mass billowing out from the corner table where it has been growing for over a decade undisturbed yet nurtured.

I have been too busy to write them up properly in all these years. A positive to take from that is I have been too busy living a life to do so.

All these image copies will of course take up a lot of space if I don’t go and crop them but ultimately it will save physical space in the house. Although it goes without saying I will further back these records up by copying them to an external hard drive. So in one way I am getting rid of them but in another they will loom there awaiting the day I return to them and find they were all a waste of time.

But what are these notes about? Ideas, turns of phrase, thoughts, story ideas, observations, trying to better guide my future self about certain people’s most common type of behaviour so I don’t keep finding myself always giving them the benefit of the doubt or condemning them along with other miscellaneous matters. Does it really matter what they are about? They mean nothing to anyone except me (unless the person looking is naturally inquisitive or nosey). When there are entire sites like Pintrest focused solely on ‘pinning’ things as if to make a note of them for future reference it seems nothing odd to be ‘old school’ and actually have such things in the real world.

It is a long task but in the end I hope it provides catharsis. Better this than burning all my worldly belongings no matter how alleviating and romanticized that idea may be to people who are at no risk of it happening to them. I hope it will be a cathartic experience. I am not sure if I am an enigma or an open book.

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