Crunch 'n Munch & Star Basketball Cards

So it's August and news is slow.  What better time than to remember back to one of the very cool things of the 1980s: Star Basketball Cards.  Anyone who has collected sports cards is probably familiar with them.  Well did you know in the 80s Crunch 'n Munch used to sell their boxes of caramel popcorn and peanuts and give away a free NBA card?

It's true!  And when I was a kid me and my brother each got a box once.  It was probably 1986 and I was a big Celtics fan and my brother a big Bulls fan.  So of course we KNEW we were pulling out a Larry Bird and Michael Jordan cards, right?  Wrong.  Absolutely wrong.  The guys we got?  Eric Sleepy Floyd and Lester Conner.  Yes Sleepy once upon a time scored 29 in a quarter vs the Flakers in the playoffs.  And yes, Lester wound up being a Celtics' assistant coach under Jim O'Brien.  But we were bummed.

But know what I realized today?  How much worse the cards could have been!  Look at the entire set of Warriors above!  I mean look at them!  As you probably know I'm a huge NBA fan from the 80s and 90s and while names like Larry Smith, Purvis Short, Mickey "The Rubberband Man" Johnson and Jerome Whitehead certainly ring a bell in my head, basically none of the others do!  Steve Burtt?  Peter Thibeaux?  Gary Plummer?  These names are hilarious!  Mike Bratz?  Chuck Aleksinas?  Othell Wilson?  Incredible!

You get a snack & a 1980s hoops card?! Sweet

Does anyone else remember any of these guys?  Are there any interesting stories any of our older fans can tell us about this team or any of these players?  Obviously I give them all the respect in the world; they played in the league when it was its most competitive, before overexpansion ruined things.  So they most definitely had big-time skills.  I just wouldn't have guessed that one team from the 80s would have so many guys on it I didn't recognize.

Getting Sleepy Floyd and Lester Connor certainly wasn't Jordan and Bird but at least it wasn't Steve Burtt or Othell Wilson.