Mark is correct (although it's last 15 not 17
) the only Trilogos that had a barcode on the card are indeed the POTF figures.
Seeing as though the blank square was mentioned I thought I'd add something to the discussion! Now..I've no concrete evidence that what I'm about to say is 100% true (yet!) but it's my theory on what the little blank square on the back is all about.
Even though some retailers did indeed use it as a place to put their price stickers, I don't think that was it's real purpose. I believe that Palitoy were trying to work a barcode onto the Trilogo card from the very beginning ('84) which is the real reason it's there. I've not measured it but I bet it's exactly the same size as the bar code box that is present on the POTF Trilogos.
If the process Kenner used to design their packaging is anything to go by then the barcode box on a product is usually left blank when it's in the design phase. The actual code itself is added later:
Which means that even if no barcode was ever added to the product when it was printed, the empty space for one would have still been there.
I'll admit that the placement of the barcode on the front of the POTF Trilogos doesn't seem to support that theory, given the fact that they could have simply used the empty box that was already on the back..but it could have been placed on the front for any number of reasons. The fact that the Trilogo cardback was never updated throughout Trilogo production may have had something to do with it, or it might have just made more sense for it to be on the front of the card as opposed to the back so that you didn't have to flip every single figure over to scan them (if shop staff ever did scan them!) or maybe it was a combination of both? (They opted to use the front and couldn't be ****ed to remove it from the back!)
Hope nobody nodded off :lol:
