Doctor Who Trump Card Game Redux

Back in the late 70s, the British toy firm Jotastar produced a set of trump cards based on Doctor Who. I had a set. I seem to recall I purchased it at a gift shop at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Weston-super-Mare. Now, the quality of Doctor Who merchandise at the time wasn't exactly at its peak. But this pack of forty cards were something else. The instructions gave the game a more verbose title "Doctor Who and the Legendary Legion Trump Card Game" (Note the absence of the word 'Top'). The so-called legion turned out to be a selection of heroes and heroines from history that included four cowboys, Sherlock Holmes and Thor. Not too sure if they consulted a historian for their "legionnaires"! In amongst their number was the eponymous Doctor Who and, predating its sentience in the much later 'The Doctor's Wife', the TARDIS. 

It was in the selection of villains that the set really started cooking with gas. Culled from all of the first four Doctors' eras. these included: Sensorites, Cybermen, Gellguards, Davros, Mechanoids and the Wirrn amongst others. There were also Ogrons and Sea Devils but confusingly, their names had got mixed up.

 The illustrations were somewhat perfunctory. I can only assume the uncredited artist had been told to concentrate on making them colourful as opposed to accurate. The Ogron/Sea Devil was turquoise and looked more like a balding dog whilst the Sensorites were resplendent in their bright orange jump suits. Some of the artwork seemed familiar too... (Where's my Weetabix cards?) I remember noticing that the drawing of Sherlock Holmes heralded from a US Marvel Comics adaptation of 'Hound of the Baskervilles'.

Game play was the same as the branded Top Trumps game. The major difference being that you had three choices of attack instead of four. "Mental Ability", "Weapons" and "Special Powers" - the latter meant that many of the historical figures were a little low in that area. 

You can tell that, despite having a veritable archival smorgasbord of old monster, I was disappointed by the set. Compared to the actual official Top Trumps, they looked pretty shit to be honest. No snazzy plastic keep case to store them in. Jotastar pushed the boat out with a flimsy cardboard box decorated with a doodle of a seemingly blind Tom Baker. 

Fast forward to the present day... A bit bored last weekend so I delved into my file of unfinished projects and ideas. I had wanted to produce a new Doctor Who Monster Book - visually based on the old 1976 one but updated to feature series 11 and 12 of the current run. That would take too much time and involve the fag of writing which I usually abhor. Then the Jotastar trump card game came to mind... Brilliant. I can do that... and maybe even make the illustrations a bit better with new series stuff. So that's what I did over the past few days. Here is a new set of cards in the style of the 70s originals. It would be nice to be able to actually produced a genuine set but costs would no doubt prohibit that. You'll just have to settle for these images. 

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