The Terror of Terror Monster cards!
By Kurt Kuersteiner ©2025 Monsterwax
Monster Trading Cards for
The Wrapper Magazine
There have been so many neat cards reviewed in The Wrapper, that after 47 years, you could easily assume every worthwhile set has been written about at least once. So imagine my utter SHOCK when I realized there has never been an article about one of the most beloved monster sets from the 1960s: Terror Monster Green. Oh sure, there was one paragraph back in issue #197 when I discussed its sequel series, Terror Monster Purple. But other than that, there was nothing. Why?
My best guess is because the quality sucks. It’s one of the least professional monster sets ever made. There’s no wrapper, it’s routinely miss-cut, and the same images are repeated in not one, but two other card sets by the same company. What’s more, most the photos have contrast so terrible that it’s impossible to ignore. And yet, over time, my dislike for the quality of this set has slowly morphed into affection. It’s like the classic rom-com, When Harry Met Sally, where they start out as two opposites who annoy each other-- but eventually fall in love.
Why the change in attitude? Maybe it’s because the cards are so crude, that they remind me of when I loved any monster movie, so long as it had a cool monster. Others seem to be loving it more also (if rising prices are any guide). So let’s take a long overdo look and try to better appreciate this unique series.
First off, there’re the fronts to consider. I feel I can say without fear of contradiction that Terror Monsters used the worst washed out images found in any monster card set (except Famous Monsters… which Rosan also produced and recycled 40 of the same bad photos)! In order to improve the contrast, someone attempted to retouch many of the images with a black felt tipped pen. It looks pretty bad. Some feel it’s so bad, that it’s actually good. As far as photo subjects are concerned, it runs the gambit of different monster flicks. Some are famous, but most are not. There’s Phantom of the Opera (1922), The Creature of the Black Lagoon (mislabeled as The She Creature), The Wolfman (mislabeled as The Ape Man), and a plethora of cheap-o AIP shock/schlock flicks.
One of the most unusual (and in my opinion, charming) aspects of this series is the 20 card subset of original monster portraits (cards 45-64). These line art faces are pretty neat, with titles like The Werewolf, the Zombie, the Living Dead, The Ghoul, She Cyclopse [sic], The Sea Monster, She Face of Death, The Martian Monster, The Shrunken Head, The Fiend, The Melting Man, The Giant Bat, The 6 Eyed Creature, The Cobra Woman, etc. These are some of my favorite cards, because they are so… different. But why are they there? Did they run out of photos? (They recycled plenty of them in the Purple series, as well as in their Famous Monsters set.) But if the drawings were filler, why didn’t they draw two more and make it 66 cards, like most other 1960s sets?
The backs to the Green series have 49 different jokes. The other 15 of the 64 are all repeats. Many of their jokes are “borrowed” from 1961’s Horror Monster series. According to Todd Riley’s Non-sport.com, the same fronts have different jokes on the backs, creating four different varieties of each card. Now here’s the part where writers usually exclaim, “which means to make a true master set, you need to collect all 256 cards!” But I won’t say that, because 1.) They are the same backs, just recycled with different front images. And 2.) This series is scarce enough without collectors hoarding four of each card (which would reduce the overall population of available sets for everyone else by 75%!) If you collect this series, you can do fellow collectors a favor and be satisfied with just one set-- so long as you have all 49 different jokes!
Not surprisingly, the Terror Monster Purple cards also recycle jokes. 54 of its 66 cards are unique jokes, meaning the other 12 cards have duplicate backs. It also swaps duplicate jokes with different front images, but according to Todd Riley’s database, there are only two variations of each back seen so far— except for card #73, which has three different backs. So that makes a total of 133 joke combinations.
Here’s another weird idiosyncrasy about this sequel: There are also two different back graphics for Terror Monster Purple. (Is this getting confusing, or what?) One back is called the “Skull Back” design, because it has no reverse graphics except a skull & crossbones in the top right & bottom left corners (with the joke in the center). The other version is called the “Arch Back” design, because it has a cartoon arch with four poorly drawn monster faces near the top, and no skull & crossbones graphics on the back. That nearly doubles the Purple back variations from 133 to 265.
Although both Arch and Skull back Purple cards have the same photos, 19 of the Skull Back versions added a purple duotone effect to highlight parts of the picture. The portions that have the purple tint jump out from the rest of the photo, so it gives a sort of 3-D effect (when it’s not out of register—which it usually is). So that makes as many as 85 different fronts to the Purple series possible.
Here’s another mystery: Which back design came first? Some assume the Skull Back design was first, because it’s so basic. The Arch Back design covers more of the back, and doesn’t look as plain Jane as the Skull Backs. But if the Skull Back variety came first, then why did they stop offering the duotone effect on the fronts when they printed the Arch Back variety? One possible answer is that although the duotone effect enhanced the appearance of the cards, they were often out of register, which creates the opposite effect and makes them look rather shoddy. Since Rosan never seemed very worried about quality, they may have decided to forgo the duotone process in later reprints to avoid getting stuck with thousands of messed up cards fed through the press while trying to line up the purple tint with the black & white underlying image.
Regarding the Purple’s photos in general, about half of them are recycled from the Green series. A few of them look better, but most of them don’t. Aside from a repeat of the Green set’s The Red Planet and Kongo cards with poster art, all the images are photos except card #83, a crude illustration titled Satan’s Curse. I can’t find any movie by that name, and the artist is different from the Green series illustrator as well. Where it came from or why it’s there is unclear. It’s just another oddball card in this bizarre series. But the piece de resistance is card #128, Time Machine. It features a beautiful Eloi woman being menaced by an ugly Morlock. Rather than show the actress and risk owing Yvette Mimieux money for using her likeness, Rosan just pulled the top off their felt tip pen again and blotted out most of her face and body…and much of the Morlock’s bare chest, too. (Why risk offending parents by showing the monster’s nipples?) But don’t fret, what they remove in beauty, they more than add in weirdness with some sort of skull & crossbones doodle floating above the Morlock’s shoulder. It’s crazy and makes no sense whatsoever (unless the employee who did it was a saboteur working for a competitor)!
The release date for both series is widely credited as 1963. How that was determined is anybody’s guess, because none of the copyrights on the cards include a date (which is normally required to make a copyright enforceable). The Purple series started listing three of the production studios with the photos; 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, and AIP. Not mentioned was Universal or MGM, despite their images in the set.
I should point out Rosan’s reputation here: It doesn’t have one. (At least, not a good one.) Rosan is suspected of pirating numerous monster sets, including swiping all 84 images from Nu-Card’s Horror Monster series to create their (no company or copyright listed) Monster Card series in 1966. I personally believe they were also the unnamed company behind the so-called Horror Monster Blue cards, which many collectors mistakenly think were a “test” issue of NuCard’s Horror Monster. (Spoiler alert: they weren’t. They were prototypes for Rosan’s (Blue) Monster Cards. See Wrapper #357 for evidence.)
No vintage box, label, or wrapper has yet been found for the Green or Purple series, which would normally indicate they were either sold through vending machines or in cello packs. I’m guessing it was vending machines, because even cello packs require some sort of box or "J" label. If they were only sold via vending, then their original release was probably limited to North Eastern states near Rosan’s headquarters in Brooklyn NY, which would account for their relative scarcity.
There are no gum stains because they weren’t sold with gum. For those disappointed by the lack of a wrapper, Todd Riley comes to the rescue again: He designed his own fantasy wrapper for both the Green and Purple series (featuring the Bonus card images). You can find them on eBay or Non-sport.com for $6.
Which brings us back to the bonus cards… Why were they created? Were they supposed to be the two other drawings that should have rounded out the Green series? It would make sense, and yet, the style is clearly that of a better artist. Why did they call them bonus cards instead of just numbering them #65 and #66? It’s possible they forgot that the Green series was two cards shy of 66 when they started making the sequel. Then, after the first printing of the Purple set was released and someone complained that they were missing two cards, Rosan added them when they reprinted the sequel with a different back design. (Both bonus cards have the Arch Back design with the same identical joke.) That would also explain their scarcity compared to cards 67-132 (since they weren’t included when the Skull Backs were printed.) Bonus cards often sell for $150 to $300 each… Although two people on eBay currently offer them for $4,500 and $5,000. Get ‘em while they’re hot-- suckers!
Both sets are usually sold as singles for $10 to $20 each. If they are sold as sets, the Greens in VG-EX can fetch $600 to $800, and the Purple betwixt $400 and $600 in better grade (but without the bonus cards).
All things considered, I still don’t know why I (or anyone else) love this set. Maybe I’m getting older—and my vision is getting worse. Whatever the reason, I no longer let its many shortcomings bother me. In fact, I’m starting to enjoy them! (Could that be the secret to a long lasting marriage?) If you dismissed this series earlier, you might want to give it another look as well. You may end up making Terror Monsters one (or two!) of your favorite guilty pleasures.