Some Famicom Playing Cards - Mach Rider Style

 Famicomblog is not dead!  Its owner and curator does, however, have a 6 month old baby at home to keep him occupied, leaving precious little time for blogging. 

I do have a few minutes to spare here though so I thought I would use it to introduce one of my more interesting Famicom ephemera additions - a pack of Mach Rider playing cards.

These are pretty neat, they seem to have been issued by Nintendo back in the 1980s.  I am not sure how many different games they released packs of cards for, but I have also seen Spartan X ones out there.  They come in a nice plastic Family Computer case that is blue on the bottom with the Nintendo logo in the middle:

Open it up and you have a deck of cards ready to play poker or whatever:

If your pack is new like this one it will also come with a special stamp on it:

There used to be a tax levied on playing cards and these stamps, issued by the government, had to be applied to all decks of playing cards as proof that the "Trump Tax" had been paid.  You don't see playing cards in stores with these stamps anymore so I assume the tax was abolished at some point, but I think it adds a layer of interest to these cards.

I will try to start updating the blog a bit more regularly from now on but we will see how that goes.....

The Original Mach Rider

 Despite the Fact that I am desperately trying to make some more living space in our apartment, every once in a while I find something so neat I cannot resist the temptation to splurge.  My most recent purchase: the original 1972 Mach Rider!

As usual, Erik over at Before Mario has beat me to writing a post about Mach Rider by about 3 years and I recommend checking his post out for the full scoop on the toy.  Just to recap the highlights here: It is based on a toy originally released by Hasbro under a different name.  It came in 3 colors (I got the yellow one, but I guess the photo gives that away).  Its basically a racing car that will fly at high speeds off a jump ramp.  It is awesome.

The box mine came in is a bit beat up, but its awesome nonetheless:

 Inside, its got a pretty cool control platform (the dials are stickers, but its got a gear shift that actually shifts):

 I don`t have the batteries or the floor space (or as Erik`s post suggests, a lack of pets) so I haven`t given it a try yet.  I`m satisfied for the moment to just look at it.  Mine came with an interesting bonus goodie, a chirashi (flyer) advertising Nintendo`s mini game series, which was being released at the same time.  Its a pretty neat piece of Nintendo history:

 And best of all, it came with the decals still unapplied.  I`m very tempted to use some of these on my bicycle that I commute to work on, but I won`t.

I`m pretty happy to have this in my collection, its one of the more colorful and neat toys (among many) that Nintendo released in the 60s and 70s which are pretty hard to find today.

Before finishing this post, I have to put a little plug in for a friend of mine over on Famicom World, Dire51 (aka Rob Strangman) who has just put out a book about retro gaming entitled "Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman".  If you are looking for some light retro game reading, give it a look!