Continuing with my 80's trading card posts, I've scanned my Topps E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial cards from 1982. I don't have the full set, but I have 56/87 of the cards and 3/12 of the stickers. Good enough for a decent post I suppose.
Voted the 24th best movie of all time, E.T. was destined for a trading card series.
Here's box and wax pack pics:
Rack Pack card
Here's the cards from my collection. I included a little extra trivia just for fun.
ET's face was modeled after poet Carl Sandburg, Albert Einstein
, and a pug dog.
Elliot's last name is never mentioned.
The filmmakers had requested that M&M's be used to lure E.T., instead of Reese's Pieces. The Mars company had denied their request and so Reese's Pieces were used instead. As a direct result, Reese's Pieces sales skyrocketed. Because of this, more and more companies began requesting that their products be used in movies. Thus, product placement was born.
At one point during filming, 'Drew Barrymore' was consistently forgetting her lines, annoying Steven Spielberg to the point where he actually yelled at her. He later found out that she had reported to work with a very high fever. Feeling guilty, he hugged her and apologized repeatedly as she cried and cried. He then sent her home - with a note from her director.
Most of the full-body puppetry was performed by a 2' 10 tall stuntman, but the scenes in the kitchen were done using a 10-year old boy who was born without legs but was an expert on walking on his hands.
Harrison Ford was initially intended to have a cameo role in the film as Elliot's school headmaster, but the scene was cut.
E.T.'s voice was provided byPat Welsh, an elderly woman who lived in Marin County, California. Welsh smoked two packets of cigarettes a day, which gave her voice a quality that sound effects creator Ben Burtt liked. She spent nine-and-a-half hours recording her part, and was paid $380 by Burtt for her services. Burtt also recorded 16 other people and various animals to create E.T.'s "voice". These included Spielberg; Debra Winger;
Burtt's sleeping wife, who had a cold; a burp from his USC film professor; as well as raccoons, sea otters and horses.
Steven Spielberg stated in an interview that E.T. was a plant-like creature, and neither male or female.
E.T. riding in the basket on Elliot's bicycle flying in front of the moon has become the trademark image of Amblin Entertainment.
ET's communicator actually worked, and was constructed by Henry Feinberg,
an expert in science and technology interpretation for the public.
With the exception of Elliot's mom, no adults' faces are shown until the last half of the film.
The doctors and nurses that work on E.T. are all real emergency room technicians. They were told to treat E.T. the same way they would treat a real patient so that their dialogue and actions would seem real.
C. Thomas Howell's film debut.
E.T. provided the inspiration for
Neil Diamond's song "Heartlight" but no mention is ever made of the movie in the lyrics.
ET's plants included some made from inflated condoms with polyester blooms.
Here are three of the 12 stickers in the set. I don't have scans of the rest. The backs formed a puzzle.
Not only did Topps create the trading card series in 1982, but also a sticker album and ET candy dispensers.
I wish I would have bought these back in the day since they now sell for $8-10 each on Ebay.
NEXT: TOPPS A-TEAM 1983
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