Top Trump Horror Cards – Help Me Find The Original Images!

I was clearing out some stuff from my keepsake memory box, and I came across my Top Trumps Horror Cards. Top Trumps was a big thing when I was a kid, and between my brother and I we had several packs. A paraphrased summary of the instructions from the  Wikipedia page:

Each pack of cards is based on a theme, such as cars, aircraft, boats, dinosaurs, or characters from a popular film or television series. Each card in the pack shows a list of numerical data about the item. For example, in a pack based on cars, each card shows a different model of car, and the stats and data may include its engine size, its weight, its length, and its top speed.

All the cards are dealt among the players. There must be at least two players, and at least one card for each player. The starting player selects a category from their topmost card and reads out its value. Each other player then reads out the value of the same category from their cards. The best/highest value wins the “trick”, and the winner takes all the cards of the trick and places them at the bottom of his or her pile. The winner then looks at their new topmost card, and chooses the category for the next round.

In the event of a draw the cards are placed in the center and a new category is chosen from the next card by the same person as in the previous round. The winner of that round obtains all of the cards in the center as well as the top card from each player. Players are eliminated when they lose their last card, and the winner is the player who obtains the whole pack.

The game lent itself more to things like cars, bikes, tanks and so on, because they had actual statistics you could play the game with. I remember playing the game on rainy caravan holidays in the UK.

“Cylinders: 6.”

“Cylinders: 8!”

“Grr, you win this round, Simon, but I’ll be back!” (this is honestly how it went)

I had the ‘Prehistoric Creatures’ pack, which stretched the concept a bit more, because the stats were things like how long ago the creature had existed, or how big it was. This made it interesting because the Diplodocus was very big and not that old (only 100 million years or something), whereas the Giant Dragonfly was really old (400 million?), and “only” two feet long.

However, the Horror Cards really took it to the next level… down. The statistics used were as follows:

  • Physical strength
  • Fear factor
  • Killing power
  • Horror rating

These values were scattered through the various creatures seemingly at random. Dracula at least got the 100 Horror rating, and King King got the 100 in strength. Other than that it was a crapshoot.

The artwork was hit and miss as well. Some of the cards featured scribbly stuff that wouldn’t be out of place in some dodgy D&D bedroom effort. Others featured pictures that were clearly copied from movie stills or promotional artwork – and that’s where I need your help. I’ve been able to identify some of the more obvious source images, but there are many I can’t find, and I need you fans of horror and schlocky monster movies to take a look and find the source images for the cards.

Check out the cards here, and see if you can find the missing source images!