Robot Wars!

Gang! I went to Logan Hardware in Chicago (it's a record store) and they had ROBOT WARS! It was a set of trading cards by Fleer that included stickers and scratch off games. And, uh, cheap sticks of powerdery, stiff gum stuck to the stickers if you open it 25 years or so after their initial release!

Each pack beyond the gum comes with five cards. Of the three packs I bought, they each came with 3 game cards (nearly the same one in every pack), a sticker of a drawing of a robot, and then stickers for your robot action figures.

"Peel & Stick on your robots" yeah, not a chance in hell, Fleer.

These were pretty much the reason to get the packs. I was curious to see how well these images were done to match the scale of Gobots or Transformers...and if so, were there any in mind? Was Optimus Prime to wear the "Leader" medallion design on his shoulder over the Autobot symbol? Where does "Robots Only" go, on Metroplex? If you look closely you'll notice that printing of the designs is off a bit from where you'd remove them from the sheet, and thus if you were to apply these, they would look slightly off. Some of these aren't bad designs, the kind you'd see in the shoulder area of the Seekers or waist areas of Constructicons.

Of COURSE the gum will be covering each one of these in each pack. The card in the center is the only one that survived.

Then there was one sticker of a robot design in each pack.

Lasertron has TOES.

If I'm not mistaken, transforming robots ruled the mid-80's. Other than C3P0 and R2D2, I don't recall kids loving non-transforming robots figures, unless they moved or were remote control or you built them from plastic 'construction' sets. Y'know, actual robots. These are something out of a bizarre 70's fantasy script that got rejected. I got two Lazertrons and an Eagltor and they both look like Autobots that Prime would ask to stay in the Ark, and remain in the Ark, and then 20 years later he died and they're still waiting there.

Kids, you can now practice those games your uncle is always playing
to supplement his income.

Finally, the element of gambling. There were three scratch off cards in each pack and they were virtually the same cards in each pack you see above. I think I got one different but it doesn't matter, because Father Time and maybe bad storage has altered the bonding of silvery scratch off material and cardboard. I tried to scratch off a card and the paper underneath the material rubbed off with it. So, thanks Robot Wars.

Y'know, I would have loved a Hasbro sanctioned sticker pack. you could buy GI Joe figure weapon packs as extras or as replacements, why not the same with stickers for Transformers? Beat Reprolabels at their game?

Anyway, I DO have a figure I'm going to try the stickers on. I got a little haul and I'll discuss that next. For more on these stickers, check the linked review at the top, I think that's all you need to know about this cash-in.

BTW, you buy something at Logan Hardware, they open up a back room and it's full of vintage arcade games set on free play. I played Bosconian and got the highest score! (until they reset it for tomorrow.)