This card gave us Buck Rogers, a character who goes as far back as the 1930s and crosses many genres. starting out in newspapers in January 1929, and moving on into radio, film, books, comics, and eventually to television.
The first person to play William "Buck" Rogers live was actually not "Buster" Crabbe, as popularly cited, it was a man called John Dille Junior, in a short film of just ten minutes that was shown at the 1933 World`s Fair in Chicago.
"Buster" Crabbe`s version came along in 1939, but rather excitingly he also played a cameo in the 1979 series.
This set was released as a tie-in with the television series, and it uses images supplied by the studio,Universal City Studios, Inc. However, for some reason, the packet is an artist`s impression of Buck, played by Gil Gerrard, Wilma, played by Erin Gray, and Twiki, who was actually voiced by Mel Blanc, though for a few episodes of season two, when he was unwell, he was instead spoken for by Bob Elyea.
There was also a feature film, using many of the same stars as in the movie, (Henry Silva bailed on playing Kane again, and Erin Gray did not really want to do the television version, but relented, though she was not too happy about having to dye her hair blonde, and was allowed to return to her natural brunette for the second series.). This film was intended to be a television pilot but was instead released into cinemas - but then the series presumed you had seen the movie, and not every viewer had.
Sadly, though the programme was very popular, and actually came higher in the ratings than the rival BBC show, "Doctor Who", it only ran for two seasons between September 1979 and April 1981. To be fair there was a sudden rash of space related tv shows in the immediate aftermath of Star Wars, and critics were vociferous in saying they were all primarily made to cash in on the success of that film. Another grumble was that Buck Rogers was rather similar to Battlestar Galactica, especially in the second series - and this was true, in many ways, for both were produced by Glen A Larson, and many of the props were shared between the two sets which made it more cost effective.
To our card - or rather our sticker - and thrillingly, this is from a time when each packet contained "10 TV Photo Cards * 1 Sticker * 1 stick of Bubble Gum" - at a cost of twenty cents a packet. This is actually one of the stickers, and it`s the last one in the set, number 22. The full sticker checklist is :
- Buck / Wilma / Twiki
- Toward the Inner City
- A New Beginning
- Wilma Deering
- The World of Tomorrow
- Dr, Theopolis
- Get Off the Air, Buck!
- Tigerman
- The Lost Space Shuttle
- The Starfighter
- Dr. Huer
- Twiki Catches Disco Fever!
- Dressed in Style
- Princess Ardala
- Buck Rogers
- Death Throes of the Fortress
- Pirate Spaceship
- We Shall Take Them by Surprise
- Henry Silva as Kane
- Suspended in Time
- Twiki
- Disguised as a Space Pirate