Like it or not, The Outer Limits is best remembered for its monsters. Serious fans may consider them a single ripple in a deep, dark, refreshing pool, but for casual viewers they're unredeemable kiddie crap. The Topps trading card company, then, was the show's most casual viewer.
The target market for Topps products—boys mostly, somewhere between their last bed wetting and first wet dream—were undeniably drawn to the show's eerie moods, dynamic visuals, and hair-raising creatures. With this financially solvent audience in mind, Topps commissioned copywriter Len Brown to somehow devise gum cards from the series' patently adult narratives. His solution was simple: use the monsters, ignore the show.
Released in 1964 and drawn from the emblematic first season, "Monsters From Outer Limits" (the simultaneously accurate and misleading title for the card set) abandoned all but a visual affiliation with the show. Brown concocted new stories to accompany hand-colored images of key series creatures; the results were simplistic scenarios written for, and seemingly by, eight year olds. While the cards retain an odd charm, they're unflaggingly ludicrous and ultimately insulting to the careful conceptualization of The Outer Limits: Warren Oates's tortured, terrifying Reese Fowler from "The Mutant" is transformed into the jolly, naïve Man with Super Sight, while the tragic Andro (Martin Landau) from "The Man Who Was Never Born" devolves into the bluntly villainous Clay Man. The list goes on. Barring much of the show's second season, it's hard to imagine a more jarring slide from the sublime to the ridiculous.
But we aim to top it. The following four additions to the Topps set represent a combined homage and slap in the face to the cards and to Brown's graceless mishandling of the original stories. Bear with us as we tear apart what must have taken minutes to create.
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