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April 7, 2017 7:04 AM   Subscribe

Desert Storm Cards:
Although we Americans remain strongly split in our beliefs about whether or not our military belonged in Iraq after the Twin Towers fell, most of us felt it was the right thing to do to help Kuwait in it's battle against Saddam Hussein's invasion way back in 1991.


Several companies previously known for producing baseball trading cards saw this historic event as an opportunity to document the action via their own unique media. Thus were born the Desert Storm Cards. The leading producer was Topps, with three series of cards. Pro Set and several other sports cards producers soon followed but Topps provided the most interesting and graphic series of cards as well as sticker sets complementing each issue.
posted by Elementary Penguin (24 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
A couple of years ago, I bought a couple packs of these at a vintage toy store in my neighborhood for 50 cents a piece. I've yet to open them so I'm glad to see what I'm missing online.

Also, America is fucked up.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:18 AM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can almost hear Styx's 'Show me the Way' playing in the background.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 7:19 AM on April 7, 2017 [4 favorites]


Somewhere I still have my "General H. Norman Schwarzkopf" rookie card from this. (I assume he wasn't in any earlier sets.) I'm going to guess it hasn't appreciated much in value tho.
posted by neilbert at 7:23 AM on April 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


I have a box of these unopened still... don't know why I keep em, they're worth less today than when I bought them as a speculative investment as a child.
posted by some loser at 7:26 AM on April 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh, wow
posted by OverlappingElvis at 7:26 AM on April 7, 2017


I remember these. I would've been about 6 when they came out. I had a Hello Kitty diary at that age that I discovered the other day. An entry from this time period: "Something very bad is happening far away. I don't know what it is but lots of people are sad." What are our children seeing and writing and knowing today?
posted by pecanpies at 7:35 AM on April 7, 2017 [5 favorites]


most of us felt it was the right thing to do to help Kuwait in it's battle against Saddam Hussein's invasion way back in 1991.

citation needed.

I marched against that war too, and I wasn't the only one.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 7:40 AM on April 7, 2017 [15 favorites]


citation needed.

Well, there's this. There was opposition, too, of course. (Doing a quick search for "no blood for oil" didn't confirm my belief that that slogan dates from anti-Gulf I protests, but it did turn up this bit from the Onion.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:53 AM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Lazlo: It looks like your recollection is partly correct. I remember my own skepticism. However, per the link, it seems the statement about American views in 1991 is accurate - a majority did support the effort by the time the war was started, and support grew as the effectiveness and limited scope of the engagement became apparent.
posted by meinvt at 7:53 AM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


If someone could get present-day Colin Powell to do a facepalm while holding his Desert Storm Card, that would be pretty epic.
posted by AndrewInDC at 8:29 AM on April 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yes, I'm afraid most people did support the 1st Gulf War. I had my patriotism questioned during a discussion at work for saying the war was wrong, and nobody had my back. This was in liberal MA. The media were all for it, of course, because nothing sells advertising better than a good war.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:30 AM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah sure, in the same way most people support Trump. The protests were massive.
posted by sexyrobot at 9:09 AM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was eating in an Applebee's in Marietta, Ga when the news that we were bombing Baghdad came. The TV was tuned to CNN. As people became aware of what was happening, they stopped talking, and the whole place got quiet. I remember some poltroon started clapping and only one or two people joined in, and they had to trail off, looking foolish. The mood was somber.
posted by thelonius at 9:14 AM on April 7, 2017


From a contemporary article in the NYT:
"But approval of how Mr. Bush is handling the Presidency stood at 86 percent in Thursday's polling, and on Sunday it was at a statistically equivalent 84 percent. The 79 percent who said Thursday that the United States was right to attack was about equal to the 76 percent who said so on Sunday. Before the war, the country was evenly split between attacking and waiting for the economic sanctions to have more impact."
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 9:27 AM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Haha, I have a booster pack of one of these somewhere. God.
posted by symbioid at 9:49 AM on April 7, 2017


I got one of these as a throw in with some t-shirts I bought a couple years ago, and aside from the bonkers jingoism, I can't even imagine how disappointed a 10 year old would be to open up a pack of trading cards and get, like, 3 pictures of politicians/generals, 2 of troops standing around, a map of the Czech Republic, the Egyptian flag, and a missile.
posted by Copronymus at 11:00 AM on April 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


"No Blood for Oil" was a protest slogan from the first gulf war, for sure.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 11:17 AM on April 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yeah, it was enough of a thing that George HRH Bush felt it necessary to say "This is not about oil." I guess some people believed him, because some people will believe anything.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 12:49 PM on April 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


most of us felt it was the right thing to do to help Kuwait in it's battle against Saddam Hussein's invasion way back in 1991.

Not all of us. My first real political protesting was done over the Gulf War, I even got to go on a local radio show and talk to the host about why our group opposed the war.

I also remember how the war was intensely monitized by a lot of vulture type companies, not just the icky trading cards, but yellow ribbons and all manner of other war kitch were for sale.

In fact, I remember Mark Russell singing "Sell a yellow ribbon, make a buck today! While the war's still on, make the conflict pay..."
posted by sotonohito at 2:22 PM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh, God the yellow ribbons. That was and remains one of the most distasteful war-as-sports idiocies of our age.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:23 PM on April 7, 2017 [6 favorites]


I had a bunch of these! I was six or seven. And yeah, I enjoyed the tanks and jet fighters a lot more than like, the Dick Cheney and Colin Powell stuff.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:43 PM on April 7, 2017


Baudrillard was right (again). The Gulf War never happened.
posted by runcifex at 9:10 PM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


most of us felt it was the right thing to do
whatever "us" is referred to here does not, did not, and will not include me, and fuck you, whoever wrote that.
posted by mwhybark at 5:32 PM on April 8, 2017


Wow, seeing this stuff referred to as "vintage" really pushed the knife blade in. I was a warrior in Desert Storm .. and it can't have been *that* long ago, can it?
posted by dwbrant at 10:33 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


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