Figurine Panini!
The name alone prompts a wave of nostalgia and immediately recalls frenzied sessions of ‘swapping’ stickers with school-friends in the playground. The excitement of finding that special ‘need’ nestled among all the ‘gots’ is something later generations would sadly never be part of, or indeed, understand.
And such variety! There was a collection for everybody. For the girls, Barbie, Sarah Kay and Fame, for the boys there were the annual Football albums but for those with alternative tastes there were Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, E.T. and Superman the Movie…
Don’t remember it? Well, unlike the comic adaptation and photo novel which never actually made print – this album was published in 1978, exclusively for the Italian market. There were also albums published in France, Portugal and the Netherlands by different companies – one can’t help but feel deprived of an essential piece of childhood collecting were it not for the iconic Topps Trading cards.
To make matters worse, flicking through the pages of this complete example, the album is every bit as nicely presented as any one of Panini’s best, utilizing many of the familiar publicity shots while telling the story of the film over a total of 204 stickers.
While this item does occasionally appear on auction sites its rarely complete and individual stickers, after 40 years, are as hard to come by as it sounds – a true jewel in the SUPERMANIA collection…
Fantastic.