Stickermania: Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1978)

Excerpts from the card and sticker set that accompanied the 1978 Steven Spielberg film

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, which still ranks high on my list of sentimental favorites.

Trading Cards: Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Excerpts from the Saturday Night Fever trading card set which accompanied

 the iconic 1977 film. The music, style and aura of this cultural behemoth was

  practically inescapable throughout my childhood despite the fact that I was only

 four years old (and way too young to watch this film) when it was first released.

By the time I was a 1980s teen, whenever it was rerun on television 

(in a highly edited form) it seemed like a campy and out of date museum

 piece of wide lapels, bell bottoms and polyester. It gave me a bit of a smirk:

toe tapping entertainment for a moment or two, but nothing substantial to a kid

 immersed in the current flow of eighties sounds: new wave and alt-pop from the UK.

One evening in the mid-1990s, I revisited the film in its unedited form and was

  amazed at the layered themes: social climbing, economic strife and racial divides.

  I had recently watched a cable broadcast of the 1961 masterpiece West Side Story 

and was struck by how similar they were. Both films delivered popular musical

 styles of their respective decades with innovative dance sequences on a platter of 

   provincial "New Yawk-ness" that was very easy for me to identify with. As a result,

 Saturday Night Fever has remained a rediscovered favorite of mine ever since.

Stickermania: The Black Hole (1979)

Stickers from the mammoth 1979 trading card set for Walt Disney's 

production of The Black Hole. Before gifs, YouTube, fan fiction, Blu-Ray, 

DVD or even VHS and Beta cassettes, the only way a kid could hold onto

or relive the experience of a much-loved film was through action figures,

trading cards, stickers, posters, lunch boxes or the occasional TV rebroadcast.

I have fond memories of going to see this movie with my dad as a six year

old in Staten Island (and yes, it's in my DVD collection). I recently scored the 

full set of 88 trading cards and 22 stickers on eBay and was immediately 

brought back to the excitement of the film, which included the frightening

proposition of being sucked into a massive, lightless space vacuum.

While browsing other items from the movie, I saw several sealed

boxes of wax packs of Black Hole trading cards with excellent graphics... 

I may have to see about adding one of those to my card and sticker collection.