#1063 SCHMIDT SPIELE - MOTORWELT (8329) and SPEEDWAY (8338) (Around 1989)

These two sets were made by Schmid around 1989, although the interesting part is that one of them includes a title card with the Berliner Spielkarten logo. I don't know what was the relation between the two brands, I think the company Berliner Blatz Group is the owner of both brands, but I'd like to know more about the relation between both companies. 

The first deck is Motorwelt, and includes 32 cards with cars available at the end of the eighties. There are cars in all price categories, from a Renault 5 to a Lamborghini Countach.  The Spitzen-Trumpf (the most powerful card in the deck) is the Porsche 959, which wins all other cards in several categories.

The cover card indicates that there is a Battleships game on the back of the cards, which is something I do not quite understand. I have other sets with this game as well, but If you play this game, you´ll have to write on the back of the cards and, this way, spoil the deck. Or maybe this was intended, so children buy the next quartet game?

The second deck deals with motocross motorbikes. The most remarkable feature of this other deck, is that each card has a piece of information about the machines in the photographs or about the sports in which they are used. Honestly, I am impressed by some of these racing events, like the speed race in snow or the others with sidecar. It must be very impressive to have seen that live. I am not sure if these competitions are still hold or not. Unfortunately, there technical information on each card refers to the motorbike, not to the pilots/drivers, which would have been very interesting too.

Again, the Spitzen Trumpf is a BMW motorbike with Sidecar. Germans are, of course, favouring their own brands against foreign ones. 

FACTS AND FIGURES

• Name: MOTORWELT (8329) and SPEEDWAY (8338)
• Year: Around 1989
• Company: Berliner or Schmidt Spiele (Germany)

#844 TOYS FROM THE PAST - MUSEUM (VII)

See more of these entries here: http://toysfromthepast.blogspot.com/search/label/TFTP

See you next month!

Important notice: The items on display are NOT for sale.

#782 SCHMIDT SPIELE – COUNT DUCKULA (1990)

I do not have many quartett decks by Schmidt; they are difficult to find, both the technical quartett and the classic quartetts. One of the quartetts I’d like to buy next is the M.A.S.K. deck, which is somehow similar to this one and to the other with Real Ghostbusters I presented some time ago.

I didn’t know this deck existed, so it was an unexpected find. The character Count Duckula is very interesting, I remember watching the cartoons as a kid. Despite being a vampire duck, it is funny and suitable for all ages. The scenery and the stories are quite pop, as you can see from the images shown in each card.

The families are dedicated to one character each, plus two families with places and objects. The backgrounds in bright colours are typical for Schmidt. Besides Count Duckula, Nanny, Igor and the Professor, there are two families with two creatures I cannot recognize (anyone?) and two more with objects and places related to this funny character. I love the coffin with the lights! (card 5D)

 

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: COUNT DUCKULA (Ref. 03192)
• Year: 1990
• Company: Schmidt Spiele (Germany)

#326 SCHMIDT SPIELE - (REAL) GHOSTBUSTERS QUARTETT (03166) (Around 1985)

I returned from my holidays just a few days ago, and I am writing the last articles just one or two days before they're published. I am quite busy this week, and after a very long article, you'll have to forsake me if I write just a short one.

This card deck was made in Germany around 1985. That year, the Real Ghostbusters were already quite popular and even had an own weekly comic book, published by Bastei, so it doesn't surprise me, that they also had a deck of quarett cards. In this blog we already talked about Schmidt Spiele.

The cards seem to have been made in a hurry, since the drawings are quite simple (no backgrounds) and most of them are just ghosts. From the 8 families, the first one are the four members of the group: Winston, Egon, Peter and Ray, the second family are the headquarters, Janine, the Ecto-1 and a "group picture". In the third family, we can recognise Marshmallow Man and Slimer, but the other two are not recognisable (at least for me!), maybe some die-hard fans of the cartoons can recognise them...

The same applies to the 5 families that follow.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: (REAL) GHOSTBUSTERS QUARTETT (Ref. 03166)
• Year: Around 1985
• Company: Schmidt Spiele (Germany)

#151 SCHMIDT - DAS SCHWARZE AUGE QUARTETT (1989)

The Black Eye (often also Dark World), or Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) is a role-playing game created in 1984 by Ulrich Kiesow. These games were very popular during the 80s, after the world-wide success of Dungeons and Dragons (1974) or Tunnels and Trolls. Ulrich Kiesow worked in his free time as translator of fantasy texts, including texts of role-playing game’s books. His first game was Das Schwarze Auge, and the one that brought fame to him. DSA was expanded by numerous books, rules and characters. Maybe it was a success because of the fantasy world in which it is set, in the Tolkien style (with dragons, elves, dwarfs and all those types of fictional characters). I’m sorry I cannot give much information about the game, but I never played it in any of its variants.

Due to this popularity, the game had its own merchandising, and side-products, for example, this deck of cards I present here today.

It is nothing but a classic “quartett” card game, 32 cards in 8 groups of 4 cards each; this game can be adapted to any possible topic you can imagine. In this case, the images in the cards are simply illustrations of the playing books. The only curiosity is that some of these images were at the time unreleased.

Schmidt Spiele (not to be mistaken with FX Schmid) is a German game publisher. It was founded in 1912. The founder, Josef Friedrich Schmidt, had invented a few years earlier a game named “Mensch ärgere dich nicht”, that has been a great success ever since (English: Parcheesi or Ludo, Spanish: Parchis,…). The company is actually two independent companies that merged in 1970: one founded by Josef Friedrich Schmidt, and another one founded by his son Franz Schmidt. 

Although the company went bankrupt in 1997, it was sold to the Blatz-Group and they kept the name, so it is still possible to find card and board games with this name in toy-shops worldwide.

FACTS AND FIGURES 

• Name: DAS SCHWARZE AUGE QUARTETT (No. 03170)
• Year: 1989 
• Company: Schmidt Spiele (Germany)