The Trilogo 70C cardback

edd_jedi

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As you may have seen I have recently been working on a full set of 70B and 70C trilogo cards, so thought I would write up some of my findings on the subject.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about and think there is only one type of trilogo card, the difference is that the 70C has a longer 'race track' with the copyright information on the inside in black text, rather than outside in white text. It is quite obvious when you notice it:

70b-70c.jpg


More seasoned trilogo collectors will tell you there are many different variations of trilogo cards such as Parker, Meccano, PBP, Palitoy etc, however in my opinion they are mostly minor regional and manufacturing variations of the same design whereas this is actually a different (albeit small) design change, so IMO is one of the most significant trilogo card variants. If you would like to know more about all the different trilogo cardbacks, check out Joe's excellent guide here.

There are 25 figures in total that are confirmed to exist on 70C cards, which is less than a third of the line. Every figure (apart from the last 17) can be found on a 70B card. It is possible there are more 70C figures out there as Nikto was only discovered recently, if you know of any others please do let me know.

Star Wars
Luke Skywalker
Han Solo
Chewbacca
Ben Kenobi
Tusken Raider
Stormtrooper
Death Star Droid
Luke X-Wing

Empire
R2-D2 (sensorscope)
C-3PO (removable limbs)
Leia Bespin
Rebel Commander
FX-7
Ugnaught
Lobot

Jedi
Luke Jedi
Lando Skiff
Klaatu Skiff
AT-ST Driver
Teebo
8D8
Nikto
Rancor Keeper

POTF
Paploo
Lumat

As the two POTF Ewoks can only be found on the 70C card, I think we can assume the 70C is a later card design so older characters released on this cardback may have been reissues that had sold out and needed re-stocking. I am not sure exactly when they started being sold or where, but they come up for sale all over the place, especially in America with Kay Bee stickers.

It is important to note that 70C cards are not necessarily rarer than 70B. From my experience looking over the last couple of years, some figures are in fact much harder to find on 70B cards. Here is a list of the rarer figures on the 70C card:

Nikto (really tough, as of 2018 only two sealed examples and a cardback are confirmed)
Luke Skywalker
C-3PO
Tusken Raider
Chewbacca
R2-D2
Stormtrooper
8D8
FX-7

And these figures are harder to find on a 70B card:

Rancor Keeper
Luke X-Wing
Death Star Droid
Rebel Commander

All of the other figures appear in fairly even numbers, or at least aren't particularly hard to find on either.

Here is a group shot of all 25 70C cards. Sadly Nikto is just a cardback due to his rarity, if I ever find a MOC example I will take another photo:

trilogo-70c.jpg


A photo of the rare Nikto courtesy of Franck Gadal. According to Franck who discovered a large French Meccano factory worker find, the Rancor Keeper, Rebel Commander and Luke Jedi were found on 70C cards with glue residue indicating they were packaged in the sought-after French triple packs.

70c-nikto.jpg


And finally here is a group shot of most of the characters available on both 70B and 70C cards together:

trilogos-70b-70c.jpg
 

Cardbackkid

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Nice write up Edd I like the theory of the 70c cards being reissue of sold out figures although I can't imagine Ugnaught and 8D8 being popular characters back then and selling so many they needed to produce more packaging ?
 

edd_jedi

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Thanks, yes it's just a theory but I have heard from first-time collectors that sometimes the hard to find figures were not the obvious ones. Believe it or not I have heard somebody tell me Klaatu was hard to find when first released. My theory is that Palitoy assumed everybody would want the major characters like Darth Vader so made millions of them, and therefore he is now one of the most common. But perhaps more obscure figures like the Ugnaught were thought to be much less popular so made in fewer numbers to start with.
 

Cardbackkid

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Ah yeah I suppose that makes sense , so the 70c nikto was found at a meccano factory so does that indicate that the meccano factories was the last ones to produce tri logos ?
 

edd_jedi

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It's open to debate but my cardback came from France, and I think Stephane's one did too. I was wrong about Franck's so have corrected it above.
 

mr_palitoy

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Nice write up!

The other major distinction between 70B & 70C is that 70C is on much thinner cardstock. Useful if the bubble area at the bottom of the card is missing or torn as it often is.

cheers Jason
 

Jamas79

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Well done Ed!

Amazing research and interesting reading for us other collectors. As far a I know I don't have any one of this variation, did a check while back ago trying to learn more about trilogo cards.
 

theforceuk

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Brilliant thread, great info Edd. I love Trilogo's as they are a major memory from my childhood.

I remember in the 90's and even the 00's Trilogos were looked at as the cheap way to collect MOC. :lol:
 

Joe

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Nicely presented resource Edd, great set of figures too! A I said I will be adding this to Trilogo.info when I get a chance! Hope you find that Nikto one day :D
 

Michael Sith

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Nice piece of work Edd, TL are a great area of the vintage collecting hobby, you have a super collection there :D will be popping on to Tri logo info as well

Thanks for sharing Edd
 

Oracle

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Very nice collection Edd and congratulations on putting that lot together. Good luck with Nikto.

Apologies if this is covered already but is there variation in the 70c card back origins, for a given figure?

It just so happens that my small number of 70c card backs show the same 'Made In' as yours (eg Han Made in China, and I have a Stormtrooper, Kenobi and Rebel Commander, all matching yours). Not a big sample, but I did a quick ebay search of the Rebel Commander and didn't see other card back origins. Not drawing conclusions from that, so thought I'd ask.
 

edd_jedi

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It's a good question. In my experience almost all trilogo cards (including but not limited to 70C) are printed with Made In Hong Kong. Han Solo always says Made In China for some reason. And of course sometimes you see the Made In Macau stickered cards too.

But according to variant collectors by the end of the line the origin of the figure and the card often did not match.
 

Oracle

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edd_jedi said:
It's a good question. In my experience almost all trilogo cards (including but not limited to 70C) are printed with Made In Hong Kong. Han Solo always says Made In China for some reason. And of course sometimes you see the Made In Macau stickered cards too.

But according to variant collectors by the end of the line the origin of the figure and the card often did not match.

That's interesting that you haven't seen variation with the Han card.

As for the figure origin and card origin matching, I just checked the figure COOs and they only show dates and copyrights, no COO. These are my childhood figures and I know that they belong with the cards. For the cards, I have Ben (white hair) and Han (big head), both Made in China, and Stormtrooper (hard torso-soft limbs) and Rebel Commander both Made in Hong Kong. I wonder if by this stage of production they decided to drop the figure COO so that stock could be distributed and packaged as required by local demand.
 
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