Willy Wonka Collectible Cards

One of the great things about wearing your fandoms on your sleeve is that your friends tend to remember your loves when they happen to come across them in their regular lives. I remember an old girlfriend’s mother browsing a cookie store (in Vegas of all places) and, seeing a tin with the Wizard of Oz on it, remembered my obsession with the Judy Garland classic and brought it home for me!

In that same way, a friend of mine was taking his young daughter to the Shopping Mall’s Fun Factory to play games and ride rides. There was a ticket crane-type game where you could snatch up these hard plastic cards of characters from the 1971 Gene Wilder movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:

After grabbing a few and seeing how nice they were, remembered, “Hey, Z was a really big fan of that Willy Wonka movie…bet he would LOVE these!”He then managed to get ahold of all 10 of the collectible cards and handed the whole deck over to me this past weekend, all bundled up with a rubber band.

MAN, these are some really beautiful cards! Not mere paper, they’re hard like credit cards and glossy. From what he said, you’re supposed to redeem these cards for ticket prizes but many opted to keep ’n’ collect ‘em instead!

Whooohoo, I sure lucked out! I’m the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted…and I lived happily ever after! LOLOL!