Homemade deck of monster trading cards

From 2005-2006, illustrator Rafa Toro created and blogged a set of 80 notional monster trading cards. These are terrific -- I want them blown up to back-patch sized and safety-pinned to my jean-jacket! Link (via IZ Reloaded)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Avram

Apparently, “Robot Galáctico” is Spanish for “Darth Vader with tuberculosis”.
anthony

Thanks, Rafa!
revmannix138

See, what you’re all not noticing, is El Hongo isn’t actually doing anything malicious at all!! Those big black eyes of his? Why they’re just reflecting the TV!! Or his computer monitor!! Maybe he’s reading the site or browsing web-comix! He’s just misunderstood. I gotcher back El Hongo!! Dont’ let the man bring you down!!
MonsterMan

Man, I love the whole Spanish/Mexican horror aesthetic.

Some of those cheesy old Mexican horror flicks (THE BRAINIAC, et al) are among my favorite late-night monster movies, as well as some of the late ’60s early ’70s Paul Naschy (“the Spanish Lon Chaney”) films. These cards remind me of that whole vibe. Good stuff!
bobkat

I, for one, welcome our new fungal overlords…
TheFirstMan

Is number 52 there Brian Eno?
strider_mt2k

Agreed!

El Hongo rulez!
eustace

El Extraterrestre is a blend of ET and Peter Lorre! But to get to it you have to scroll past the truly horrifying El Payaso Diabolico (shudder).
stygyan

Just a comment: he didn’t create them. It’s a real trading card collection from the eighties. He had it and he thought it would be a good idea to share them.

In the first post (november 2005), it says “Hola a todos, este es el gato unicornio, el primero de una colecciÃ³n de cromos q casi completÃ© a finales de los 80.
Poco a poco irÃ© subiendo el resto…”.

It’s translated “Hi y’all, this is the unicorn cat, the first of a trading card collection i almost completed at the end of the 80s”.
mxhabla

These are great and I love to copied characters from other sources. So far I saw the ET character, a bloddy darth vadder, The Hulk and The Thing (from Fantastic Four) depicted in these trading cards.
Supurcell

Darth Vader + Vampire = Robot Galactico
RUAvina

To clarify #2 a little more, these are stickers that you would buy in packs and stick into an album. The album would be sold separately. These were cool because you could stick them all in an album and sometimes they would form a bigger picture or they would be part of a larger story. These are way cool.
If I remember correctly these types of stickers would also come with potato chips bags but my tired brain might be making that part up since I am trying to remember back 30 years ago when I would hang out in Tijuana and go to “La Tia Maria” with my cousins to buy papitas and plastic lucha libre wrestlers.
Haze

JEAN JACKET?! o.O”
Takuan

remember these?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_News
Takuan

ah good times
http://www.sterlingtimes.org/crushed_by_the_wheels.jpg
Takuan

yep
http://tommcmahon.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/06/10/civilwar19a2.jpg
Jelf

Ye gods, these are super fuckin’ rad!
Cowicide

EL HONGO IS YOUR GAWD.
Takuan

yeah,he’s my fave too. What is he, anyway?
lorisgirl

Hongo means fungus in spanish, so it should be an evil mushroom :)

I think it looks more like a devilish-fangged planaria.
iguanoid

El Devorador looks like Blanka from street fighter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanka
gabu

I wish I still had my sticker collection from 1982 so that I could print these out on Avery label paper and put them in my collection.

Damn — do people even collect stickers any more????
Glossolalia Black

Satan is disturbingly hot.
raindogmx

Correction:
These were not made by Rafa Toro. These are actual collectible cards circulating in Spain and Latin America in the 80s. There were many prints like this on different subjects like mexican wrestlers or bootleg cartoon characters also on many different versions because there was absolutely no copyright control back then. I’d say some of these might still be made today.

I remember I was always trying to win the colorful boxes at the fair parlor games but they were the most priced and difficult to get. I never won one.
Antinous

Satan is disturbingly hot.

If Lucifer looks like that, I am going to shatter at least five commandments before lunch. I wonder if he’d go for a three-way with El Hombre Lobo.
anthropomorphictoast

I love this stuff…they should totally reprint these or make posters of ‘em. I’d buy it! :D
Anonymous

There was a lot of monster trading carts collections in Spain in 80s, the first one was Historia FicciÃ³n (Histoy-Ficciton) 1982, with just a little monster section at the end, the best one was Otros mundos (Another Worlds) 1984. Really awesome!
Anonymous

Im Rafa Toro
as they correctly said, I didnÂ´t draw those stickers, I only scanned and uploaded them.
Its a collection I completed back in 1987.
Just for fun I started to remake them in this my other blogspot:

http://diabolicmonstersredux.blogspot.com/

Hope you like these too.