Sort of.
You may have seen their TV ad wherein Chewbacca wishes someone a happy birthday. I did, and I immeadiately went looking to see what other cards featured songs from movies. And was disappointed that there were so few, and definitely no Ghostbusters – I should have known however that Hallmark was holding back until the appropriate season.
Anomaly recently spotted the above card in a CVS (a drugstore chain, I’m to understand), though I’m sure you can find it most anywhere that sells Hallmark cards (like, say, a Hallmark store.) And as the text suggests, the song the card plays is Ghostbusters! Online shoppers note that you can buy the card through the link – you can even have it personalized and sent to someone.
It would have been sweet if it actually had the logo or characters, but that would mean more money, and really, all Hallmark wants is the music. Still, pretty cool.
Not logged in 
I got this card yesterday from a friend! Its pretty neat! $5 approx. Nice good quality portion of the ghostbusters song. best hallloween card ever
I just bought the card today. My local CVS has two left and I bought both of them. I have no plans to actually send them to anyway. They’re just for collectibility. Interesting, the two cards have a slightly different pitch in the music, though you wouldn’t notice it unless you opened each one right after the other.
As you can see in the photo, the front of the card says “WHEN IT COMES TO HAVING FUN, WHO YOU GONNA CALL?”. The inside says “(HOPEFULLY, ME, TOO!) HAPPY HAUNTING”. The song snippet is only 27 seconds long. Anybody expecting the full song will be sadly disappointed.
The card cost $4.99 in the USA and $6.49 up in Canada (you poor Canucks always get overcharged on stuff). Five bucks is a little much for a card, even a Hallmark card, but you know that extra cost is because of the music (thank the greedy record companies). It should come as no surprise that you can already buy the card over on eBay. What IS a surprise is that it is CHEAPER than buying it from the store at the manufacturer’s face price:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270175817881
Buy It Now price: $3.50
Shipping: $1.50
Quantity: 3 available
According to a Hallmark press release, Hallmark made Cards With Sound featuring popular Halloween songs such as “Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Bad Moon Rising,” and “Purple People Eater,” as well as Hollywood and TV clips from shows such as Ghostbusters, The Addams’s Family, and Pirates of the Caribbean. The press release might have been a little misworded as I doubt that there are cards featuring clips from the MOVIE Ghostbusters. Here are all of the Halloween musical cards that I saw in my local CVS (all $4.99 each):
Cinderella (costume themed, audio: a message from Cinderella)
Mickey Mouse (audio: song “They Don’t Scare Me”)
Nightmare Before Christmas – “This Is Halloween”
It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (audio: dialogue snippet from tv special)
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Bad Moon Rising (humorous, based on misinterpreted lyric “There’s a bathroom on the right”)
Purple People Eater (cute card with the PPE on the cover with an attached one-eye)
I Want Candy (yes, the Bow Wow Wow song – candy themed card)
Somebody’s Watching Me
Ghostbusters (the one listed above with the song snippet)
There were no cards featuring The Addams’ Family or Pirates of the Caribbean. I have a feeling that The Addams’ Family card, if Hallmark did make it, might contain the theme song and not an audio snippet from the show.
I was highly disappointed to find that they didn’t make any cards featuring Monster Mash and Thriller. Those two songs are, to me, the top two Halloween songs of all time.
Although they didn’t license any Ghostbusters visual elements, they did so for the Disney and Peanuts properties. Yes, this does make the Ghostbusters card a bit disappointing. However, I think the biggest missed opportunity, in terms of licensing visual and audio elements, is the lack of a Tales From The Crypt card. The Cryptkeeper has that trademark laugh, so there’s the audio portion, and with his penchant for puns, you have some material for the written elements. Slap a photo of him on the front and you have the perfect Halloween card!
What I find most interesting about all of these cards is that Hallmark went through an awful lot of trouble for a holiday that isn’t a traditional card-giving holiday. I mean, really, how often to do you give cards on Halloween? (To be fair, they also had two audio cards for Bosses Day!!!)
So if they REALLY wanted to go through a lot of trouble for a niche market, they could really play up the horror element of the Halloween cards and do ones featuring horror icons such as Freddy, Jason, Michael, Chucky, and Jigsaw. Each one of those guys has audio quips/lines/trademarks that would be perfect for a card. (For Jason and Michael, two silent killers, they could feature the musical stings from the soundtracks. You know, that “cha-cha-cha-cha-cha” sound from the Friday the 13th movies for Jason, and a piece of John Carpenter’s Halloween score for Michael.)
By the way, thanks Chris for posting this article about the card. When I took a quick glance at the site last night, I did a brief read, and knowing that I would be in the vicinity of a CVS today, I knew to go inside and look for the card. Otherwise I wouldn’t have even bothered going in as I had no other business to conduct at CVS.
The list in my last post lost its formatting (the comment system doesn’t like html unordered lists), so here’s how it should have been formatted:
– Cinderella (costume themed, audio: a message from Cinderella)
– Mickey Mouse (audio: song “They Don’t Scare Me”)
– Nightmare Before Christmas – “This Is Halloween”
– It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (audio: dialogue snippet from tv special)
– Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
– Bad Moon Rising (humorous, based on misinterpreted lyric “There’s a bathroom on the right”)
– Purple People Eater (cute card with the PPE on the cover with an attached one-eye)
– I Want Candy (yes, the Bow Wow Wow song – candy themed card)
– Somebody’s Watching Me
– Ghostbusters (the one listed above with the song snippet)
Isn’t it much easier to read now?
I’m pretty sure when I was looking at the Hallmark site, they had a Pirates of the Caribbean card – it featured part of the film score. Something about fog, I think. Perhaps I saw wrong.
The Hallmark website was down the other night when I wrote my original comment, so I couldn’t check it to see which cards they made that my CVS didn’t have. It’s back online now, and looking over all of the Halloween cards, I see three more that I didn’t know about before:
– “Monster Mash” performed by Bobby Pickett.
– Theme from “The Addams Family” performed by Vic Mizzy.
– “Fog Bound” from “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
The Pirates card has an audio sample on the site (most of the sound cards do). It’s not the score, per se, but a chant/dialogue clip (“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest…”).
It’s very conforting to know that Hallmark DID make a Monster Mash card. That just makes things a little better in the world
So according to Hallmark’s site, and the CVS stock, the complete set of Halloween 2007 “Cards With Sound” cards, consists of:
– “Ghostbusters” performed by Ray Parker, Jr.
– “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.”
– “They Don’t Scare Me” performed by Mickey Mouse.
– “This Is Halloween” from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” performed by Danny Elfman.
– Cinderella: “You put an enchanting spell on everyone you meet.”
– “I Want Candy” performed by Bow Wow Wow.
– “Somebody’s Watching Me” performed by Rockwell.
– “Monster Mash” performed by Bobby Pickett.
– Theme from “The Addams Family” performed by Vic Mizzy.
– “Fog Bound” from “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
-– “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”
-– “Bad Moon Rising” (humorous, based on misinterpreted lyric “There’s a bathroom on the right”).
-– “Purple People Eater” performed by Sheb Wooley (cute card with the PPE on the cover with an attached one-eye).
(13 cards total, the last three cards are not on the Hallmark site.)
By the way, I was watching Elvira’s new reality show (“The Search For the Next Elvira” on the Fox Reality channel) the other day and I couldn’t help but think that she would also make a good theme for a Halloween sound card. So there you go Hallmark. Something to consider for next year’s set of cards.
Another CVS just opened in my town today and I got to see more cards than I did in the other CVS. Considering I only looked at the Halloween section last time, of course I’d see more cards this time around
You might be interested to know that Hallmark also makes a birthday card that plays “Disco Inferno”. It’s a humor card geared towards older people (seems specifically targeted towards women).