Mars Attacks trading cards from 1962

Amongst personal belongings I chose to bring with me to Tenerife are my collection of Mars Attacks cards that I have had since 1962 when I was only nine. Sadly I only managed to get 42 of the set of 55 because Bubbles Inc, the company that made them, had to stop following protests in the media by Mary Whitehouse and other concerned citizens who claimed that the images depicted were a very bad influence on young minds.

It was said that there was violent sexuality implied by images of a Martian with a terrified woman prisoner and that other pictures including "Destroying a Dog"and "Burning Flesh" were far too gory and brutal for children to see.

For kids like me, who had no say in the matter apart from being miserable because we could no longer collect the cards we loved, it came as a great shock and disappointment to suddenly find that the cards and bubble gum they came with were no longer on sale.

The story the cards told, which is obviously loosely based on War of the Worlds by HG Wells, was that Mars knew it was in danger of being destroyed by an atomic explosion from within the planet and so the leaders of the Martians had decided that the only answer to safeguard the future of their race was to invade the neighbouring Earth.

Mars sent fleets of flying saucers with Martian soldiers armed with atomic death ray guns that they would use to destroy humans. The Martians had heat rays that would burn bodies or destroy crops on farmland. They also had a frost ray that froze its victims.

The Martians attacked all parts of the globe and no humans were not in danger. The Martians went on to enlist the help of the insects that live on Earth by enlarging them to 500 times their normal size.

However, depite massive losses and the destruction of major cities, Earth fights back by sending its own rockets and soldiers to Mars. They try to bomb Mars from space but the Martians put up a force field to repel the bombs.

The Earthmen have to land but with their bazookas, grenades, guns and army tanks they succeed in beating their Martian foes and leave the vanquished planet just in time because the atomic explosion the Martians had been fearing takes place and Mars is blown into thousands of asteroids.

So were the graphic images and story a bad influence? Personally I don't think so, although I am not saying that people cannot be influenced by what they see and hear, and I don't think a diet of violent images is good. But I regarded it all as a story and I was more excited with getting cards I needed for the set than anything else.

It was something really important in my life to get all the cards in a set and I remember buying the gum more for the card inside than the sweet.

The moment of excitement was unwrapping it to see what new card you had. Even if you already had the card you could hopefully swap it with a friend.

I used to collect lots of other bubble gum cards and had a full set of Flags of the World, Outer Limits and Beatles cards. I also used to collect and read DC Comics with Batman, Superman and Green Lantern being personal favourites.

Often I found myself siding with the aliens rather than the humans in the Science-fiction stories in the Outer Limits, which I used to watch on TV. Even with the Mars Attacks it seems so sad that the Martians with their obvious superior technology and beautiful Martian cities were all to be destroyed.

As an adult now it is of interest to me to see how much of the story has found its way into conspiracy theory and ufology. There is the idea that aliens are depicted as evil when they are not. This would have been an early part of that plan.

The Martians are shown as ugly little men with heads that look like skulls in which their brains are on display. The Earth women are stereotype blondes and the soldiers are typical American gun-toting military men.

The story the cards tell at one stage points out that all the Earth governments come together to fight the threat to them all that the Martians have created. This is similar to something President Reagan said when he talked about if a threat came from space that it would unite the nations of the Earth.

This has become part of the Project Blue Beam conspiracy idea - that the elite of the planet will be staging a fake alien invasion to convince the masses that we need a one world government and army to fight the invaders from space.

Many years later director Tim Burton, of course, made the film version of Mars Attacks and according to Wikipedia there have been several relaunches and adaptations of the story and images.

The original series was created by Topps and test marketed via Bubbles Inc. The cards I have, which are now collectables, were all manufactured by Bubbles Inc.

I have cards number 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54 and 55. I wonder how much they are worth?

Copyright © 2010 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.