Star Wars: ‘Journey To Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Trading Cards

Cost: £1.00 per pack (from Tesco)

Over 210 Cards to Collect – 8 cards per pack including one Star Wars: The Last Jedi Foil Card.

Look out for special cards in packets:

Jedi Foil Cards 1:3

Gold Cards 1:4

Limited edition card to replace regular card 1:36 packets

Cards Acquired:

11: Supreme Leader Snoke – a photo still from The Force Awakens during his hologram meeting with Kylo Ren and General Hux. It’s dark and blurry and at this scale just doesn’t work.

31: Rey – Promotional materials stock image portrait. Generic. You like Rey? You’ll love this. But it’s as generic a trading card as you can get.

95: A still from the teaser trailer of one of the new ships (I tried to look up the name but gave up – you probably know what it is if you’re reading this) just before it starts dragging through the surface revealing clouds of red dust. If you hadn’t seen the trailer this is a bad card with no meaning. Even having seen the trailer I find it amongst the weakest.

100: Millennium Falcon: A generic stock photo but on the back of the card it gives some of the ship’s statistics which makes this quite a nice card.

108: Qui-Gon Jinn vs. Darth Maul: A still from Episode 1 during their duel. In hindsight were there any ‘original trilogy’ cards in this series? Card 100 doesn’t count since it’s in the, as of writing this, new trilogy. This is a bit blurry too due to being a still from an action scene.

127: Luke Skywalker – painted portrait (I wish the artist had been named out of respect though of course Disney/Lucasfilm own the image). This, by far, is my favourite as it seems something not just copy-pasted from stock promotional materials or motion blurred film stills.

187: Stormtrooper Executioner – portrait from a stock photo. (It’s has that effect usually referred to as ‘holographic’ so I’m guessing it’s one of the limited edition cards). On a side note there sure have been a lot of variants of Stormtroopers since Disney took over. Got to push that merchandise guys! You could probably replicate it using a black permanent marker on a standard stormtrooper figure…

209: Agen Kolar – Jedi foil card – portrait from a stock photo. Who is he? I had to go look him up too as he is really minor and only found in the background of scenes with little to no development…

Published by Topps Europe Limited,

18 Vincent Avenue, Crownhill, Milton Keynes,

MK8 0AW, UK

http://www.toppsdirect. com

http://www.starwars.com

Lucasfilm Ltd. / Topps / Disney

Review

I might have been lucky with the ones I got but I’m quite pleased with these in contrast to other collections. The portrait cards are all very nice and high quality with the painting of ‘The Last Jedi’ Luke being probably my favourite. However on the downside, as has been the case before, the still taken from the film all have motion blur to them and thus look low quality in comparison to the other cards. The card stock used is of very good quality and I couldn’t see much risk of disappointment unless you have a distinct aversion to the prequel trilogy and let’s be honest how many people actually know Agen Kolar let alone what scenes he was in? Short answer: Palpatine killed Agen just before his duel with Mace Windu.

There you go. Now you know who he was… unlike some of the other secondary Jedi I don’t think he ever appeared in The Clone Wars TV series to be a more developed character like Kit Fisto or Plo Koon amongst others.

On the whole I wish they were a bit cheaper, but then doesn’t everyone, but I see no real issues with the overall quality nor number of cards you get (in comparison to other series recently) and they serve as a nice little treat for Star Wars fans young and old. I can’t say how easy this would be a collection to complete but since much of it is stock imagery I don’t think you will miss out on anything should you never pick a packet up. It’s purely a ‘teaser’ promotional item and even at the time of posting this a few weeks after purchasing them Tesco have already stopped stocking them. The low points are the photo stills with motion blur (that very dark and blurry Snoke one especially!) but all the character specific ones really do harken back to the golden era of trading cards and more than make up for them. If you’re a fan of the series, and can find them, take a chance and buy a pack. If you’re looking for value for money it’s probably better to invest in something else.

Advertisement

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.