Creator behind the scenes video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLVDtkJWMWU

See a video of the entire deck here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpZvuMgHKLQ

A Striking Collection: Matchbox Label Art Playing Cards. Deck includes 58 individual matchbox label playing cards illustrated by Chet Phillips. High quality, plastic coated standard poker sized deck of cards. Custom back design, 2 Jokers and 4 Wild Cards. Suits represent a variety of characters and objects from pop culture, books, TV and movies emulating vintage matchbox label ephemera. Each deck is sealed in cellophane wrapping and presented in a colorful heavy card stock custom box. Full Deck Scan: https://cardscans.piwigo.com/index?/category/174-a_striking_collection.

This deck features weirdly wonderful bio-mechanical anthropomorphic creatures from English artist Mr. Mead who channeled his childhood fear and obsession with anthropomorphism. The characters are grouped by family into the four suits, Birds for the Hearts, Horned Beasts the Diamonds, Cats the Spades and Foxes the Clubs. A total of 4 versions were printed in 6 runs of 100 each.  Each version uses the same cards, but a different tuck for each version.  Initially released in April 2011 as v1 with 100 decks using a tuckbox featuring a rat head and Antlers Gallery 'A' logo on the back, as they were sold by antlersgallery.com only or at the gallery reception event.  Shortly after a 2nd version was printed using the Diving Bull (AoD) on the tuckbox with 100 more decks.  This was followed by another 100 printing as v3 using the Voxman (AoC) on the tuckbox.  Finally the v4 in 3 print runs of 100 each using the foxhead logo, also known as the 'artist edition'.

Mr. Mead uses the traditional drawing technique of dip pen and ink to blend the animal, human and mechanic into a super species he nicknames Bio-Mechanical Anthropomorphism. Working from his studio in Jamaica Street Studios, Bristol, Mead creates artwork for folk tales, album covers, posters and large scale works. He has exhibited far and wide, from London to New York and Melbourne.

Note - details regarding the versions and printings were received directly from the artist via message exchange in early June 2015

The second version of Mike Willcox's skeleton deck contains different coloured backs and a new joker.

Scans of each card can be seen at www.marytcusack.com/maryc/decks/html/Cards/HerosLight.html

We are glad to announce our newest project “Heroes of the Nations”. Considering the popularity of fantasy style movies and computer games nowadays, I believe this genre will appeal to many of you. For 2 years we have been creating the heroes of 4 races and we believe the deck that we've created is a small masterpiece. We hope you will appreciate it as much as we do! Given the ambition of this project, we are making the deck of a high quality, and planning to have it printed by the famous USPCC. It will be a limited edition deck. We are planning to make 2 colors of decks, the dark and the light, consisting of 52 standard playing cards.

Please visit www.aprilglobalstore.com or www.ra-april.com/nations or www.facebook.com/heroesofthenations for more news and updates and to get some of these decks , if you missed the project

Our lead artist Oleg Shapkin used an original painting technique to create this deck. The images were drawn with watercolor pencils and clarified with gouache titanium dioxide pigments. The artist had drawn all of the smallest details, ornaments, letters, suits and symbols by hand and only after that the designer continued the work.