We interviewed Upper Deck Marvel Brand Manager Ben Seck at Gen Con about the company’s plans for trading card products based on Marvel films (see “Marvel Superstars TCG”). 

What are your plans for Marvel trading card releases?

The major one is Iron Man II movie cards.  Upper Deck has a pretty long history of doing movie cards.  We’re going to put out classic Upper Deck quality with all the inserts.  We’re going to have autographs, sketch cards, we’re going to make it basically as good a movie card product as there is.

Any memorabilia cards?  Or are autograph and sketch cards going to be the primary rare cards?

There are probably going to be four or five subsets.  The primary memorabilia cards will be costume cards; we’re going to have costumes embedded into some cards.  We’ll have autograph cards, which is fairly standard in these kinds of products, as well as sketch cards from very famous comic creators as well as from some of the new emerging talent.

What other Marvel trading card projects do you have planned?

The next one is Marvel Superhero Squad.  Superhero Squad is basically Marvel’s foray into kid cartooning.  It’s very kid-friendly, essentially a mass product.  We’re making sure it’s very fun.  It’s got stickers, it’s got tattoos, it’s got pop-up cards.  Basically we’re doing a product for the very young audience, I would say anywhere from as young as four to eight or so. 

The cartoon will do very well.  I’ve seen a lot of what they have and it’s very exciting for that audience I think. 

Marvel’s really trying to broaden their audience for everything.  They had some of the biggest movies of last year and have a lot of animation going.  I think this brand for Upper Deck is going to be very strong just because it reaches from the very young all the way to the very old.  

You said Superhero Squad is a mass product.  You’ll sell it into hobby if they want it, right?

Yes.  We’re not running any exclusives.  There are plenty of comic stores that sell to younger audiences as well as retail stores that sell for all the audience.  There’s nothing exclusive about where we’re selling them.  The general trend for these products is to go to mass and that’s where we’re going to go. 

Any other Marvel trading card products?

We will definitely have some Marvel comics trading card products next year and probably the coming years.  The comic stuff will probably be much more hobby focused and will concentrate on the comic stores.  Those are the people who really appreciate graphic art and classic characters.  But that’s to say that we’ll neglect other channels.  If there’s a demand for a product, we’ll definitely try to satisfy the demand.