I figure this is probably a very obscure Throwback Thursday post, even for my niche demographic of weirdo 40ish horror-sci-fi nerds.  Believe it or not, I actually can remember receiving a pack of these “King Kong” trading cards in 1976 or 1977 or so.

I mentioned the 1976 “King Kong” remake here at the blog not too long ago.  Wikipedia tells me that it was a huge commercial success despite its campy approach compared to the 1933 classic.  I can only imagine that the film would strike a strange emotional chord today; in this version, the title monster climbs not the Empire State Building, but the World Trade Center.  I actually hadn’t seen the movie by the time I’d gotten the trading cards — these would have been made available in 1976 or a year later, I think …  I only saw this version of King Kong when it hit broadcast television years later.  I remember watching it with my older sister and being frustrated by it … it seemed to take a very long time to get to the giant gorilla.

I would have been four or five years old, I guess, but I remember riding in the back of my Dad’s car on a hot summer’s day while my pal David Darling and I eagerly thumbed through the pack my father had bought for each of us.

David was my best friend at the time; he lived in the house on the corner.   His family had an incredibly cool housekeeper who gave us fruit, without exception, every time we asked for it.  I tasted a pear for the first time after she handed them to us through the side screen door of that corner house.  She’d been in a hurry; Jan rushed around a lot … she seemed to have a lot of responsibilities.  I didn’t know what a pear was, having never seen one.  It looked … wrong to me, like a maybe a defective apple.  David talked me into taking a bite, chomping down into his first and reassuring me that it was good.  I followed suit and I loved it.

Anyway, I don’t know where David was going that day with me and my father … that wasn’t something that happened a lot.  (Had he come to church with us?  Or the beach?)

I can’t remember.  I’m impressed with myself that I can even vaguely recall an afternoon when I was four.  Those King Kong cards made a big impression on me.