04-013 Mirror Card

04-013
Mirror Card

In one sunny winter morning, there was an extraordinary long queue inside a local McDonald’s restaurant. We like McDonald’s. There are always long queues. But that time was different.

The long queue inside a McDonald's

It was only 10:55am, a time that was too late for breakfast but too early for lunch. People in the queue were not looking for food. They were looking for a card.

Big Mac family combo, but this is not what people wanted

It is the cards that people wanted

“Mirror Card” is a set of collectable trading cards bear the images of Hongkong’s (probably) most popular boyband, Mirror. The card is a promotional product distributed by McDonald’s together with their Crispy Thighs lunch set. The card set is a limited edition so people gathered in restaurants early to make sure that they can get a copy. The Crispy Thighs set of McDonald’s costs around 5 USD here. But the card can be sold at 10 USD or more on internet. Technically, that would mean free lunch.

There were 2 rounds of promotion recently.
The first round is for promoting a TV drama on ViuTV.

The second round is more a promotion of McDonald's own food

-- the Chicken Thighs set.

I got an Ian card.
The card is about the size of a Pokemon card but without round corners. 

Popstar photo

Popstar culture exists everywhere. Even North Koreans have their famous actors. Hongkong is one of the cradles of Asian popstars. We have our homebrew singers and movie actors. Their names may not be heard in the western world. But they are very popular here.

Since young, I saw friends started collecting photos of their favorite popstars. Popstar photos are normally in 3R or 4R sizes. Apart from the images, they are just ordinary photos. My friends keep them as bookmarks. Some are printed in smaller 2R size for keeping inside wallets.

An art gallery in Aberdeen has a section selling Mirror soveniors

Bookmarks, A4 folders, badges, keyrings
-- all sort of stuffs that can be carried around with you

One of the eye-catching item is the photo pack of Mirror

I bought a pack Anson Lo photos for my daughter.
The pack costed me $25, which means $5 per photo.

And they are real photos with image only on one side.

Selling popstar photos can really make a profit in the 90s. A popular photo can be sold up to 5 HKD, which is around 80 cents. That was quite a lot as you can get a lunch set at around 10 to 15 HKD at that time. And developing a 3R photo back then would only cost 0.5 HKD. Since there is no portrait rights in Hongkong, if you managed to get you some negatives of popstar photos on hand, you can make some easy fortune instantly.

Back in the 80s and 90s, many stationary shops sold popstar photos to make some extra money. There were even shops dedicated in selling popstar photos. Some of those shops still exist nowadays. But their businesses started to decline with the launch of “yes!! card”.

yes!! card, & copycats

Being first launched in 1991, “yes!! card” is a wallet size photo card with the image of popstar on one side and some random messages on the other. It is published by the then most popular youngsters magazine, “yes!!”. With the advance in printing technology, the quality of the image is comparable to photo. But printing a card is definitely cheaper. And they are waterproof and doubled-sided. Soon, they replaced popstar photos and collecting “yes!! card” became a trend among young people. Back in the 90s or early 2000, nearly every young people was keeping at least one or two “yes!! card” in their wallet. Hope that I am not surprising you, one of my friend is still keeping a Vivian Chow “yes!! card” as bookmark and carry it around every day.

My friend is still carrying a Vivian Chow "yes!! card" around every day.

“yes!! card” renews its series every 3 weeks. There are around 60 to 90 different cards in a series. And they only include the most popular popstars in their collection. So, “yes!! card” also serves as an indicator to the popularity of different popstars. “yes!! card” does not only feature local popstars. You can find “yes!! card” of western popstars as well.

"yes!! card" vending machine outside a trading card shop in Wan Chai.
The shop also sell Pokemon and baseball cards.

A close-up of the "yes!! card" vending machine.
The machine is 100% mechanics and it only takes coins!

I spent $4 and got a Jason Kui card and a Polly Lau + Andy Lai card.
Don't ask me. I've never listened to their songs. I don't even know who they are!

The back sides of "yes!! card" are rather random.
The Jason Kui card shows his zodiac sign.
The Polly Lau + Andy Lai card shows details of the event where the photo was taken.

"yes!! card" is the same size as a Pokemon card.

Printing of photo card is nothing rocket science. Ever since the launch of “yes!! card”, copycats started floating around. But “yes!!” is very smart, yet controversial, in marketing. They encouraged their readers to bully others if they found anyone buying or carrying a fake card.

A photo developing store in Wah Fu has one of this "fake" card vending machine.

The machine looks exactly the same as the "yes!! card" machine,
only the colour is different.

Each card also costs $2. And it only sells Mirror cards.

The card is in credit card size.
On the back, you can find the logo of the boyband.

"yes!! card", together with its magazine, was popular for nearly 2 decades until smart phones became popular. The magazine went out of print in 2014 but “yes!! card” survives. At the time of writing, they are in their 90^th series. Though they are much less popular than before. The cards are sold through specially made vending machines. Each card only costs $2 HKD. The price has been frozen for nearly 3 decades!

Their vending machines are also very old-fashioned. They are 100% mechanics and only take $1 coins. Don’t worry if you don’t have coins on hand. The storekeeper will give you change.

You can find the official website of “yes!! card” below. The site is in Chinese language but you can get a look of how their cards look like.

Official Website of yes!!

That is all I wanted to say. I was first considered to put this post under the chapter “Card Games”. But that does not seem proper. It is okay to call a popstar photo a card but it is definitely not a game. So, I decided to put the post under the chapter “Hong Kong”.

Am I a big fan of “yes!! card” or Mirror? No way. I can hardly know who they are and I don’t collect photo cards. I wrote this post is just to tell you that we have this kind of things in this city.

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