Although Topps had produced entertainment tie-in cards for
such properties as The Beverly
Hillbillies, Lost in Space, and Batman, the company’s decision to try a
series based on Planet of the Apes in
1969 was a different kettle of monkeys. This was the first time Topps produced
a series of cards based on a big hit movie starring a big movie star: namely
Charlton Heston. This had certain legal ramifications since Heston was not
thrilled with the idea of having his square-jawed visage packaged with stale
bubblegum. In the end, he only gave the OK for Topps to include him on a mere
nine cards, an offer Topps kind of wasted by using a few of these cards to only
show the back of Heston’s head, his feet, or in one glorious instance, his
butt. To give the impression that Heston was better represented than he
actually was, Topps reduced its usual run of 66 cards to a mere 40. Although
she was a complete unknown at the time, co-star Linda Harrison didn’t have any
face time in the series at all. Fortunately, there were no such issues for the
actors and actresses hidden in ape make up, and let’s face it, the kids who
bought these cards were more interested in ogling awesome ape faces than Heston
and Harrison’s pretty pusses.
Abrams’ new collection of Planet of the Apes cards would be a pamphlet if it only assembled
that original 40-card run, so it widens its net to include the card series
based on the short-lived 1974 Planet of
the Apes TV show and Tim Burton’s bad 2001 remake. The upside to the
relatively few cards collected in Planet
of the Apes: The Original Topps Trading Card Series is that each card is
allowed to occupy its own page at extra-large dimensions. Also, Gary Gerani, who
provided captions for the Planet of the
Apes TV series cards, and whose text in Abrams’ recent Topps Star Wars cards books was so
entertaining, does the same for this new volume.
