Mars Attacks is a science fiction trading card series released in 1962. The cards feature artwork by science-fiction artist Wallace Wood and tell the story of the invasion of Earth by cruel, hideous Martians. The cards depicted futuristic battle scenes and bizarre methods of Martian attack, torture and slaughter. The story ends with a combined Earth invasion fleet attacking Mars by landing on the planet and destroying it.
The cards proved popular with children but their explicit gore and implied sexual content caused an outcry, leading the company to halt production. The cards became collectors' items.
In the 1980s Topps began developing merchandise based on the Mars Attacks storyline, including mini-comic books and card reprints. An expanded set of 100 cards was issued in 1994. Director Tim Burton filmed Mars Attacks! in 1996 based on the series, spawning another round of merchandising.
Read more about Mars Attacks: Trading Cards, Adaptations and Merchandising
Famous quotes containing the words mars and/or attacks:
“Human beings will be happier—not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)
“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)