Nintendo Cereal System — The Box

Nintendo Cereal System — The Box — from American Food Premiums in the Zelda Cards Gallery.

Here the packaging IS the product. The front is a single face split down the middle: Super Mario Bros. Action Series on the left, Zelda Adventure Series on the right, under one banner promising free Nintendo Power Cards inside. The back is the cards themselves — a panel of four punch-out Power Cards. A sealed box brought $200 or more on eBay as early as 2010, and the box — not any single card — is the form in which the set survives. Flip it: the first four cards of the set are on the back.

Other printings of the box carry different backs — poster offers and contest panels in place of the card panel — which is why period sources describe the set’s form two ways.

More from this set line: Nintendo Cereal System Cards.

Shown here at its verified native size, 550×826, the largest honest copy the Library holds for this object.

This object's back is verified too: use the flip control on the image to see it.

The box back is the Nintendo Power Cards panel ("COOL CARD DEAL!"): four punch-out cards — Mario, Princess Zelda, Koopa Troopa and the Old Man — with the promise that every box holds 4 free Power Cards and 12 make the full set.