New on the Shelf: Game Boy Bubble Gum and Trading Cards

Few things capture the flavour of early-90s Game Boy mania quite so literally as this. The latest arrival is a set of Nintendo-licensed Game Boy trading cards from 1993, released by Amurol and hidden inside little chewing-gum boxes shaped, of course, like a Game Boy.

What It Is

There were ninety-six cards in total, spread across four series, which kept children and collectors alike hunting for the ones they were missing. Each card pictured an iconic Game Boy title, Super Mario Land, Metroid or Kirby's Dream Land among them, with a short game tip printed on the back, so the set doubled as a scrap of strategy guidance as well as a collectable. The gum was the hook; the cards were the point. Unsurprisingly, they quickly gained cult status, and they remain coveted today as a small, sugary time capsule of the 8-bit era.

Trading cards hidden inside gum boxes shaped, of course, like a Game Boy.

Why It Joined the Collection

Licensed novelties like these are the connective tissue between the Game Boy and the wider childhood culture of the time, and they are exactly what a collection about the console's cultural life should preserve. Being consumable, gum and paper both, they were never meant to survive, which makes clean examples genuinely hard to find. Keeping them on the shelf holds on to the everyday, playground side of the Game Boy phenomenon, the part that was as much about collecting and trading as it was about playing.

The Amurol Game Boy bubble gum and cards are documented, with photographs, on their own page in the collection.