Are Those Just For Taking, Or??..........

What you see there is an unattended booth with single trading cards stacked up on the table and a coupon next to them.  It appears to be some sort of promotion for a new product; however, there doesn't appear to be any employees within sight and after waiting 5 minutes (while your girlfriend tries to track down Rankin/Bass Christmas special DVD's), no one appears to be supervising it.... what do you do?

That is, besides whip out your phone and take a picture to document the scene for your blog and pray that no one notices and asks what you're doing.

Well, I'll tell you what I did:  I walked right up, flipped through the stacks of cards, took one of each kind of card that was present and snapped up a coupon for good measure.  I'm about 99.9% sure that that was the intention; that said, it's always easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission too.

So, what were these mysterious cards?  If the lightsaber on the glorified, upturned cardboard box didn't give it away...

Star Wars cards.  I don't know if you've heard, but apparently there's another one of these that just came out.  I hear they're making a whole new trilogy.  They really should do a better job with their marketing...

I can't even type that with a straight face.  I've a huge Star Wars fan since I went to a 20th anniversary screening of A New Hope for a friend's birthday party and I have found the pervasive advertising/promotion to be quite nauseating at this point.

However, free cards is a promotion that I can always get behind.  Hey Topps - how about we do this every year when baseball season opens, eh?  Give some kids a couple free cards from Opening Day and maybe you'll have new collectors.  Just a thought.

I finally (it's been out for all of two days) got a chance to see The Force Awakens last night and, boy howdy, was it worth the wait.  Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil anything for you; the characters depicted on these cards are just background characters, which would probably be why they were chosen for a free giveaway.

I've been purposely avoiding perusing social media, lest someone with loose lips sink my ship.  After staying off of Twitter and Facebook (#FirstWorldProblems), with just a couple of quick exceptions, I have to say that it was worth preserving the plot twists.  J.J. Abrams has proven himself to be more than capable.

The other thing I absolutely adored about this new installment is that they didn't heavily rely on CGI and special effects for the background characters and aliens - something the last round of movies was guiltier than sin of doing.  As you can see from these two cards, we've gotten back to the feel of the original three with costumes and heavy makeup, with some exceptions of course.

Something about that just makes a film much more "realistic" and organic, in my opinion.  Otherwise, I kind of feel like I'm just watching a video game.  There's an art to it after all.

Back to the cards, I've never collected Star Wars trading cards - even though they've proven to be quite popular over the years, I love the franchise and I'm an obsessive trading card collector.  Pokemon, Digimon, baseball, football, hockey, (a little bit of) basketball, etc. etc.  For what ever reason, the two passions just never mixed with me.

When I was a kid, I think the large hoard of action figures that I accumulated was quite sufficient; however, now...  maybe I just have too many collecting endeavors.  I mean, one card of every player to play for three historic and long-running sports franchises is kind of a handful.

So, if anybody is interested in these two bad boys, speak up and they are yours.  I was just in this for the thrill of free cards and the possibility that I was taking something I wasn't supposed to.  I'm such a rebel, taking two slips of cardboard that were laid out in front of me with the more-than-likely scenario being that they were free anyway.  Lock me up and throw away the key!

I'll even let you have this excellent deal where you get a whole fifty cents off of a pack of these The Force Awakens cards if you'd like.  Like I said, if it hasn't happened by now, I don't think I'm ever going to be interested in these cards.  My wallet isn't too broken up about that though, let me tell you.

Now, I'm going to sit back and let my mind wander in all sorts of directions, wondering about what's going down in the Star Wars universe after this movie.  How in the hell am I going to make it another two years until the next one?  Netflix has spoiled my patience for such things.

In the meantime, may the force be with you - always.