Cards on Cards

UCI Special Collections & Gail Hart 1 (Front)

Bringing this entry back to a more traditional style, I would like to get back the original purpose of this blog, being the relation of past events to the present. For this week’s entry, it will be about the relation of wartime gum cards, to actual war based came cards. Take a look at the example photo, if you do not already know that I am talking about.

UCI Special Collections & Gail Hart 2 (Back)

         Being the Humanities Core student that I am, I was quite surprised when professor Gail Heart brought up gum cards. Though I initially thought that the whole idea of giving kids a bunch of cards with lofty writing, for a kid’s reading level, was a poor idea, I realized that the audience stretched so far beyond that. From that, I though about how kids would even think about war, at such a young age, with the way that the scenes are depicted. It was then that I realized that a whole generation of children have been doing exactly that, with Pokémon and Yu Gi Oh cards.

These extremely popular forms of childhood entertainment centered around the use of fictional characters, weather it be Pokémon or Yu Gi Oh, battling until the other ran out of health. In Pokémon, when two or more Pokémon face each other, the scene is even called a battle. Take a look at clip, I have linked to, of a very tame Pokémon battle. Though I understand that it does not correspond directly to actions or images of war, it does draw a very interesting parallel.

Yu Gi Oh

As time has progressed, these card games have turned into a series long running animated shows, movies, and video games. Though there is also a great deal of adventure that centers around both Pokémon and Yu Gi Oh, the main focus remains the battle of one character, versus another, till the very end. Though there is still much done to make the combat more suitable, especially in game play and the animated series, it is still clear that these wildly popular franchises have their roots in war.