As best as I can tell, Tele Pop cards were a single series of pop culture trading cards featuring stars of movies, television and music, issued in Spain by Ediciones Este in 1980. I don’t know in what sort of package the cards were sold individually, but I’m pretty sure complete sets were sold in binders. There were 240 cards in the series, and card #189 was Robin Johnson, star of the hit film Times Square.

The curious thing about this is the train of throught that led to Robin’s inclusion in the set. I don’t know when in 1980 the cards were published, but Times Square came out in the US in October, and as far as I know it opened in Spain in April 1981. Someone at Ediciones Este had to be thinking quite a ways ahead when they were designing the cards to put Robin on one and describe Times Square as a hit, when it must have still been in the editing room at the time. Perhaps part of the process was to contact studios and find films that were currently in production, so the cards would come out more or less at the same time as then-current movies. However it came about, it’s still more evidence that everyone involved were convinced that Times Square was going to be massive, up until the moment it was actually released.

As always, I welcome the input of anyone who knows more than I do about any of this.

In celebration of its inclusion in the recently published 女の子が死にたくなる前に見ておくべきサバイバルのためのガールズ洋画100選 (100 Western Movies for Survival That Every Girl Should Watch Before Wanting to Die – as always, I welcome a better translation if you have one) by Kitamura Sae, a 2K projection of the 4K restoration of Times Square played at Stranger in Kikugawa from July 11, and Cinem@rt Shinjuku in Tokyo ending August 7, and those are just the theaters I know about thanks to the links provided by Alissa in her July comment. This re-release was accompanied by a new chirashi! I actually found this item before I knew about the 2025 screenings and thought it was a third one from 1981… but eventually I noticed the prominent “4K” on it, and I realized something was up…

The 1981 versions are here and here.

This post was made half-possible through the generosity of you Ko-Fi supporters. Thank you so much! Go Team RJ!!

This post was made possible through the generosity of my Ko-Fi supporters. Thank you so much! Go Team RJ!!

This is an 8 x 10 inch black and white negative transparency, containing an approximately 9 1/2 x 6 1/4 inch image of the poster side of the two-sided promotional foldout designed by Seiniger & Associates, with the addition of the words “suitable for mature audiences.” That’s a description and as much as I can swear to being actual fact. Based on that, I’ll say that since this sort of transparency was used to print ads in newspapers and magazines, this was used to print an ad promoting Times Square in a publication aimed at movie theater owners and bookers. I don’t know of any such publication, but it’s hard to believe that such a thing did not exist, and may yet exist. So there may still be out there a catalog of all the upcoming movie releases for 1980 that you may want to run at your theater, containing an extra full page ad for Times Square before the poster design was finalized. Or maybe not, since until such a thing turns up there’s no evidence this ad actually ran anywhere.

I’m starting to think that there are two separate sets of UK black-and-white publicity stills, one with borders, one without. You know, just to make things more confusing. Thankfully, so far at least there isn’t another one labeled “24” but not full-bleed.

On the Times Square commentary track recorded around 1999-2000, Robin says:

“Peter had so much trouble with this… It was hard for him to be rough and violent with me, actually. I remember him having some trouble with that… He’s such a doll… I didn’t want to do that fake, camera-angle stuff so I let him really smack me around. [laughs] It’s my S&M streak. ‘Smack me!'”

Although it’s hard to tell if he’s really hitting her in the film – for instance she’s definitely turning her head several frames before his hand starts traveling – as far as I can tell this still is unique in that it’s actually from the shot used in the film, just from a different, closer angle. I’d assume from that that there was no run-through or rehearsal, or even a second take, in order to reduce the wear and tear on both actors.

It’s impossible to tell from the film angle, but this photo definitely makes it look like a solid face-smashing slap that took something out of both performers. It seems something of a shame that it was never used for anything, as far as I know, and perhaps hasn’t been seen by anybody until now.

The black and white 8 x 10 stills released in England tend to have a lot of things in common, but the attributes are not absolute… Most of them, but not all, are full-bleed, with no borders. Many of them, but not all, have a caption pasted to their backs. Most, but not all, have a tiny number inset near the bottom. In at least one case, two nearly-identical photos with the same number are cropped slightly differently, and the number inset is visibly different and in a different spot, implying that they came from two different print runs.

For this shot of Nicky being hassled by the man, the caption pasted to the back clearly numbers it as 1.

The only problem with that is, there’s already a #1, that came in the UK press kit. There’s a number inset on this picture, but I’m damned if I can make head or tail of it. It could be a 1… it could be an upside-down 7 (but there already is a 7)… I’ve decided it’s a screwy-looking 2. (The problem with that is, there was a 2 in the press kit, just not in the copy I have, and its description is not this photo.)

On the other hand, I do have two different photos both very clearly numbered 4. I’ll leave this one as 2 for the time being, and if a different 2 turns up I’ll make it a second 1. But, as the only person I know of trying to keep track of this stuff, I reserve the right to change my mind about this at any moment on a whim.

For what it’s worth, I have 22 numbered photos from this British publicity blitz. The highest number I have is 41. So, hard as it is to believe, there are still at least nearly 20 Times Square publicity stills that apparently no one in this century has seen…
 

Would you like to know more?
15 or 16 UK Promo Photos
UK Promo Photos 4, 13, and 21, 1980-81
UK publicity still #22
UK Promo Photos 20 and 26, 1980-81
UK Promo Photo #29
More stills from the UK series
 

[Maybe I just do another roundup post of these… someday…]

Just what it says on the tin. This is the same basic image as would later be published in the Thai magazine Filmstar Vol. 1 No. 3 in August 1981, and used as a publicity still in Germany in 1982. The German version has a tiny number 22 inserted at the bottom like the UK series of photos, which is what led me to suspect that it was derived from a UK still; however, this still, although it’s of overall better quality than the German one, has no number on the front. Instead, it has “22” handwritten on the back in blue ink, and is stamped “MASTER” across the front. Perhaps it was the last copy in the file, used as a reminder of what went in there when more were printed? I have no idea. I do know that it shows less of Robin’s left hand than the Thai version, and less at the bottom than the German one. In fact, the number 22 would disappear if the German one was cropped like this one. It also shows less at the top than the German version, but more of Trini’s knee and hand at the left.

So, although this is the best version of this shot yet to turn up, none of them yet contain the full image from the negative. For whatever that’s worth forty years later.

 
Would you like to know more?
15 or 16 UK Promo Photos
More stills from the UK series