American Gladiators Umm Australian

From Ebay for just about $6 I got a nice little 4 card set of Promo cards for the Australian "Gladiators" TV show (Opening Credits via Youtube). They were made by an Australian company Tempo Trading Cards in 1996. It's the Australian Version of "American Gladiators" and "Gladiators UK" the TV Guide usually describes them as "Reality TV" shows but they are actually amateur sports athletic competitions. Think 1970s ABC Battle of the Network Stars or the college competition show that came before that called "Almost Anything Goes". All these shows are a mix of various athletic competitions where speed and or agility earn contestants points and at the end it is an all out obstacle course where the fastest person through wins.

I don't know how many cards are in the set, but apparently they have 4 categories of cards. Gladiators, Animation, The Games and Backgrounds. The Gladiator cards I gather are brief bio cards of the Professional "Gladiators" that stand in the way of the contestants sometimes in head-to-head competitions sometimes in contestant vs. a group of Gladiators. The Animation cards appear to be caricatures of the gladiators. The Games cards show the various events that the contestants have to go through and the Background cards give details of the Gladiators and some of the show I guess.

These cards are difficult to find outside of Australia. Especially for a nice price and not directly from an Australian dealer, international shipping and all that. Fortunately some dealers on Ebay in the US either buy stuff from overseas or they find the stuff from supply companies that have already done that. Like other late 1990s cards I'm pretty sure there are some parallel chase cards. It also appears there maybe some serial numbered auto cards and gold coloured cards and maybe a few other of the usual parallels and inserts.

During the original 1990s Run of American Gladiators Topps produced a set of cards and stickers for that. I have that entire set of cards and stickers with some dupes. Plus maybe an unopened pack or two. I even have an empty display box and maybe a full box. Back in those days Topps didn't shrink wrap the card boxes. One of these days I'll scan some of that stuff and mention it again here. I've got lots of things like that I need to do eventually.

here are the fronts of all 4 promo cards:

GP-1 Gladiator Delta

GP-2 Animation Condor

GP-3 The Games - The Wall

GP-4 Backgrounds Vulcan*

Anyway I'd like to get more of these, a complete base set. Maybe some of the autos of select gladiators after I see what they look like and get some bios, descriptions.

*Gladiator Vulcan also appeared on the UK version of Gladiators.