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It’s Halloween season and that means it’s time for Monsterwax’s most ballyhooed card set, Spook Show, to finally see the dark of night. Coming out this week, Spook Show celebrates the fright-filled traveling stage shows of the last century.

This card set is more than just a potential moneymaker for Monsterwax’s owner, Kurt Kuersteiner, it’s also a labor of love. “I’ve built up a rather large collection of information on spook shows from a half-decade pursuit of the topic,” said Kuersteiner. “The Spook Show [card set] is more than just a collection of cool horror posters. It’s the true story of a time when we weren’t afraid to be afraid, and the amazing things people witnessed when they let their imaginations run wild in dark theaters under the direction of hypnotic Ghostmasters. For all the technology of Cinemascope and 3-D movies, still nothing can compare with the live shows where the air above the audience was literally filled with floating phantoms, giant dangling spiders, and hovering monsters of every ilk. It is no wonder one of the reasons spook shows eventually became extinct is because people were getting hurt stampeding out of theaters when the blackout (séance segment) occurred and it caused mass panic.”

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Kurt’s love of the topic now extends to his own card set. “I have a hard time sorting the cards because the moment one of the images draws me in and gets me to start reading the backs, it is difficult to stop. The stories are stranger than fiction and funnier than fact, but 100% true. And the characters are so fascinating; it’s fun to envision the phantom-filled world they created in the minds of their patrons.”

In addition to a spirited 66-card base set, Monsterwax has gone out of their way to provide collectors with a monstrous number of intense inserts in each 24-pack box. Here’s the final tally:

• Six Frightening Foils
• Three Gruesome Gimmick cards
• Two Emerge-o-Vision cards
• One Sketch card (Shawn Conn, Kevin Graham, Larry Jakubecz, or Matthew Kirscht)
• One Faint Pill
• One free $10,000 “death by fright” insurance policy
• Two checklists
• One “Credits Card”
• Two of six available Promo cards
• One Mini Comic Book Tract
• One of five different Spook Show Tickets
• EITHER a Monsterwax Metal Card (actual printing plate) or an autographed card by an actual Ghostmaster (Spook Show magician)
• Two different wrappers
• One free stick of Ghoul Gum in every pack—the gum so tempting, they serve it in HELL!
• One box designed by artist Kevin Graham

For more information on Spook Show, see the current issue (Vol 22, No 5) of Non-Sport Update and Monsterwax’s Spook Show page. Happy Halloween!

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