Wednesday 15 April 2015

Fighting Fantasy Books (1982-95)

The first in the series
I still remember the blurb on the front cover of The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain and many of the subsequent Fighting Fantasy novels.

Starship Traveller was the first Sci-Fi FF Novel
"An original fantasy adventure in which YOU are the hero!". This described their unique selling point perfectly. A book where you take on the role of the lead character and decide their fate.

Deathtrap Dungeon was my personal favourite.
As a teenage geek back in the early eighties I enjoyed fantasy role playing games but the problem was you always needed a group of friends to be available and a good size place to play them. You were also expected to bring a fair amount of materials to someones house, at least your own painted models and a variety of different shaped and sided dice and quite frankly some of the rules seemed to be more complicated than they needed to be. So complicated that you usually needed a Dungeon Master to run game and if it's you who's running the game you miss out on all the fun of playing it. Well that's my opinion. In my experience very few people ever seemed to volunteer to take on the role of Dungeon Master. I quite enjoyed the creativity of it but I seemed to be in the minority.

Sunday 12 April 2015

Marvel Stickers (1974-75)

Packaging that I don't remember

From Topps chewing gum in the mid seventies. I must have been around six years old and I still have quite vivid memories of this particular collection of stickers. I remember the whole sheet was a sticker but you could peel off the marvel character seperately from it's familiar black background surround. This meant the sticker was the actual shape of the character. Very cool.

Ghost Rider & The Thing

I remember the taste of the chewing gum and that brings further memories but I really don't remember the packaging at all. I also don't remember any kind of album being available to put the stickers in. They just ended up on doors, books and fridges. They made a mess but it was a fun mess.

Valkyrie & Sub-Mariner