Curious Collectibles from The Rothmans

The UK is a curious place. It’s just like here, but weirder.

Back in the 70s, a cigarette company called Rothmans printed out several series of collectible trading cards of Europe’s finest football (that is “soccer”) players. Whether or not this was a questionable endeavor considering that the collectors and traders of cards are usually young boys and that smoking and football are polar opposites on the lung capacity spectrum didn’t really seem to phase the Rothmans company.

(Then again who am I to judge, considering my generation was essentially tricked into smoking once by a penis-faced cartoon camel and no collectible anything to keep at the end of it…but death. But that’s another blog post altogether.)

Point being, this cigarette company created these cards, with everyone from Pele to Maradona and sold a billion cigarettes in the process. Here, stateside, we hadn’t a clue.

Until now.

A mysterious record label called Rothmans run by a shadowy figure who calls himself Rothmans, is using the Rothmans collectible cards as inspiration for his limited edition 180 gram vinyl only releases.

Ranging from nu-Disco vibes to acid house to techno, the absolutely nasty 12″ EPs feature belters by Ali Renault, Timothy J Fairplay, Max Essa, Tusk Wax and Chamboche. The forthcoming Socrates 12″ is a full on proper afterhours warehouse killer from Coyote and has a Mark E remix.

Like the collectible cards they’re inspired by, each Rothmans release is a very literally a sound investment.