Sunday 27 July 2008

Telstar Double Packs



To the best of my knowledge the Telstar we are talking about here is not the same as the Telstar music distributor which started in the 60's as suggested in the magazine scan below, although please let me know if you have better information. Telstar is a UK company which began life in 1993. They started out by selling discounted video games in 'double packs'. As far as I am aware it was only games for the Mega Drive, Master System and Game Gear then later they also released packs for the PC. Telstar went on to get the UK publishing right to 7th Guest.. it all went down hill from there until they were bought out by 'Take 2' in 1999.


Scan from issue 27 of Sega Pro - Christmas Special - November 1993 (click to enlarge)


The packs were advertised in the Sega magazines of the day (Sega Pro) and also sold through popular high street shops such as WH Smiths and HMV. Below is an advertisement feature from issue 31 of Sega Pro (Easter 94).


(click to enlarge)


As you can see from the above advert most of the Double Packs released were for the Mega Drive, in fact there are 20 mega Drive Telstar Double Packs in all, as can be seen listed on Guardiana (A French Mega Drive site). I do not collect for the Mega Drive but I have been told that these are very difficult to find and perhaps only pop up on ebay once maybe twice per year. Below is my Mega Drive collector friends set of 6 Double Packs.




The main reason for the rarity of these packs, other than the fact that comparatively few would have been sold, is the packaging. The outer casing is just thin clear plastic with a paper insert to cover the two original game boxes.





The games sit back to back so that the hangers fit through a gap in the outer casing. The only actual difference with the game boxes inside is the Telstar stickers over the original barcodes and smaller T F&G (Telstar Fun & Games) stickers on the front covers.





As you can see from the picture below Telstar and Sega Pro had a bit of a relationship going..



The Master System double pack I've shown here is the only one I have ever seen, I found it in June of 2007 on ebay. I ended up paying just over £30 for it which I was surprised at as the auction was quite poorly done. I would say that you shouldn't really have to pay more than this but it's one of those difficult to value items. The Mega Drive ones are more common (if you can call them that) as there was such a large range avaialble but apparently just 3 each for the Master System and Game Gear.

As with any of my articles if anyone has any more information or even just pictures they can provide then please let me know in the comments link below.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, who gave you permission to use my photo's!!!

Only joking, use any you want :). Its one of the few SMS items i would still love to get my hands on, one day....

ninjabearhug

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, Telstar released SNES double packs too, i'll send you a mag scan later if you want :).

ninjabearhug

James Costello said...

I don't know of anyone else other than you who actually collects MD oddities like this :)

So I will be using your photos in quite a few articals in future.. or if you like you can become a member of my blog and write them yourself? we can discuss it via PM on sega8bit if your interested?

Quite a few items I want to discuss are SMS and MD related like 'classic' re-releases and big box gift sets.

Thanks for the info on the SNES double packs, Please send me the scan. I'll update my artical accordingly.

Anonymous said...

Hello, Rupert! Here's Corredor X from Sega Brasil. Nice item this 2-pack, hope you can find the other two someday!

Unknown said...

i have the batman returns and back to the future part 3 double pack ;)

Unknown said...

Hi

Unknown said...

I have the telstar batman returns and back to the future 3 sega megadrive pack :)

James Costello said...

Sorry I had not logged in for a very long time... do you want to sell your double pack?

Joe said...

Hi Guys,

I currently have 14 of these double packs, I need the 100% combat one and another 5 any help would be much appreciated.