Ever since the Kingdom series was hinted at online I was intrigued. The War for Cybertron Trilogy (from a toy perspective) has been on the best. From the Cybertronian modes of Siege, to the more common Earth forms in Earthrise, Kingdom is set to take us back in time. While I'm still not sure what the story will be and how we have Optimus Prime fighting alongside Optimus Primal, my inner geek is still freaking out a little.
If the new toy line and included characters wasn't enough to get me excited, later I found out that trading cards would be making their way back into the packaging... *sigh*. Well that means I'll have my work cut out for me if I'm going to catalog every Kingdom card here in the Database.
The cards are only packaged with deluxe class or larger toys. Thankfully the cards are tucked away in a cardboard pouch as so they won't receive too much damage inside the packaging. Each card comes with a prismatic foil layer. Being a sports card collector as well, this layer reminds me of the protective layer card companies like Pinnacle and Topps used to protect some of their high end cards. The layer is meant to be peeled off, but with these the prismatic layer also features a headshot of the character. It's an opaque layer and when peeled off reveals the beautiful art underneath. Hasbro used a thick, chrome card stock for these cards. Each card has a rainbow sheen to them, again if you have dabbled in sports cards think of a Topps Refractor or a Panini Prizm. They are beautiful.
My dilemma was the whether to peel or not. I know that sounds silly, but both images are stunning. What I ended up doing was grabbing a few white "dummy" cards I had sitting around from older sports card packs I had opened. I noticed when I peeled back the corner of the top layer that the adhesive on the backside was still pretty sticky. Once I peeled the card, I carefully tried to match up the curled top layer to the white card. It was a little tricky trying to get the top layer matched perfectly, but eventually I was able to suppress my OCD and be happy with the end result.
So far I've opened 3 Kingdom deluxe class figures...Cheetor, Blackarachnia and Paleotrex. I figured each character would feature their own character card, but either they are randomly packaged or I got jipped! Cheetor had a Blackarachnia card as well as Paleotrex. Blackarachnia on the other hand had Dinobot's card. I still have Warpath to check, but I'm leaving him for another day.
If these cards are indeed randomly packaged it's going to make it tough to get them all to scan. This is where (I hope) you, the reader, can come in to help. If you are willing and have a scanner, I'd love to get a scan of the card before the top layer is peeled off, as well as a scan of the card underneath. 300 dpi resolution is fine (.JPEG format) and I much prefer a scan over a phone picture. I'll make sure to give you proper credit on the Submissions page if you wish to help me out with this endeavor.
Thank you to Hasbro for bridging two of my hobbies (Transformers and trading cards), but did you really have to make it so tough on me to get all the cards? My sole reason for buying Paleotrex was for the card...and I got a double! ARGH! That said, I will be up for trading my duplicate, unpeeled cards. Right now I have an extra Blackarachnia so if you'd like to trade, please let me know.
