Virtual Trading Cards
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| During June & July 2001, fans had an opportunity to collect all 30 digital "cards" of their favorite Rugrats characters, while visiting Nick.Com. To collect, you must sign up for their free "My Nick" service; you get 500 points just for signing up and logging in. Then, you get weekly or daily "NickPoints" by browsing Nick.Com, in areas as directed in the website. There are also bonus points available by successfully finding the area suggested in the given hints. And you can get even more points by browsing around the site, with the points awarded by finding the area with the "top secret" points. These hints are given in the sidebar on the left side of Nick's main page. Then, using the latest version of Flash (5.0 and up), you can go to the My Nick section and redeem your points for cards; the more points you have, the more cards you get. |
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When you're ready to redeem your points for cards, got to the My Nick
section, and follow the links. You get a "pack" of 4 e-cards for 300 points
per pack. And like the old-fashioned cardboard variety, you're likely to
get duplicates. At right is my first 2 packs of e-cards. As you can see here,
each pack has a Phil card. And according to the rule of card trading, the
more packs you buy, the more duplicates you're likely to get.
As for what to do with the duplicates? You can swap them back to Nick, in exchange for more points -- you get 50 points for each card you swap. You can also trade with other people in the My Nick community, though of course, when that started, it's too late to "buy" new cards. |
 
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Left:
The My Nick "NickPoint Swap" control center, where your latest cards are displayed, along with the number of points remaining, and ways to get more NickPoints. The "stats" grid on the left lists the cards that you already have, with duplicates highlighted in yellow. |
To see all your cards, click on "See my e-Collection". There, all the cards you own will be there for display. To display a card, just click on the card from the "deck"; the card will then be placed on the "counter". For a bigger picture, double-click on the card twice. Flip the card over by clicking on "flip". On the back side, you'll find a brief description of the character, plus a brief audio clip of the character.
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The Gold CardsAlso in this set of 30 cards are 9 "gold" cards, featuring all the tweenage Rugrats, plus an elderly Spike (Spike will also be in his "tweens", but to a dog, he'll as old as Grandpa). These cards are inserted randomly, just like the other cards. But as any collector knows, gold cards are usually more harder to find than the regular cards. |
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| At left here is my third "pack" of cards; the "Dil Pickles" card, # 24, is one of 9 "gold" cards that can be yours. |
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Here are the pictures of all 30 cards. (Some cards provided by Super Yo.)
| #1 -- Tommy | #2 -- Susie | #3 -- Spike | #4 -- Stu | #5 -- Reptar | #6 -- Phil |
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| #7 -- Minka | #8 -- Grandpa | #9 -- Lil | #10 -- Kira | #11 -- Drew | #12 -- Kimi |
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| #13 -- Howard | #14 -- Angelica | #15 -- Betty | #16 -- Boris | #17 -- Charlotte | #18 -- Chazz |
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| #19 -- Chuckie | #20 -- Didi | #21 -- Dil |
#22 -- Angelica Gold |
#23 -- Chuckie Gold |
#24 -- Dil Gold |
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#25 -- Kimi Gold |
#26 -- Lil Gold |
#27 -- Phil Gold |
#28 -- Spike Gold |
#29 -- Susie Gold |
#30 -- Tommy Gold |
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The Nick-Tix to Nowhere: Rugrats E-Cards NOT Coming "Soon" To BritainIn December 2001, Nick UK's website announced that they would be making these E-Cards available to its British Rugrats fans (practically, anyone anywhere who missed their chance when Nick.Com offered them). The cards were to have been the same as the American version. The method of collecting and redeeming NickPoints (called "N-Creds" in Britain) would have also been the same, except that new MyNick subscribers in Britain will start out with 1500 points, instead of 500 in the US. |
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Above: The opening panel to the British MyNick
section, advertising the coming of the Rugrats E-Cards. Instead of
informing viewers of a normal start date to receive the cards, MyNick counts
down with "Nick-tix". In my opinion, this is nothing but a ruse, which I'll
explain in a second.
This is where I went wrong: With a little calculation, I estimated that the E-cards will be available around January 28, 2002. How did I figure that? In the Nick-tix clock, the fourth digit from the right counts down at a rate of once per second. Then I calculated as follows (all numbers are rounded to nearest whole number):
4959508 seconds (the last 3 digits aren't important) The date I wrote this was December 2, 2001. I added 57 days from that date, and the end result is January 28, 2002 (give or take a couple of days). However, I checked again on 1/28/2002, when I thought the cards would be released, and the "Nicktix" counter didn't budge. As a matter of fact, the counter ticked down, and started again with a higher number. As of 3/25/2002, almost 4 months since the announcement of the cards, the first 2 digits, which were "49" through the end of January, has been changed to "75". Also, the last digit has been dropped. However, the timer is still looping -- the fourth and fifth digits from the left start at "80" and go to "74", before starting over again at "80". And as of 7/1/2002, the cards were still not available. The reason for this delay, according to the Nickdisk forum, was the difficulties in installing the special equipment for the e-cards. The new target date to make the cards available was moved to July. But apparently, whatever was causing the trouble, it was never fixed, and the cards' opportunity has long passed. When Nick US released their cards, it was only about a month between the initial announcement and the actual release. But in Britain, the promotion, which never went beyond the promotional and "coming soon" stages, was quietly pulled in mid-October 2002 -- over 10 months after it was first announced at Nick UK's website. |
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