James Bond, as featured on birthday cards

Anyone looking for birthday cards in WHSmith or a similar purveyor of greetings cards is likely to have seen those cards which picture some of the events in the year of the recipient's birth. If you're after that sort of thing for a James Bond fan, then you might be interested in the 'Time of Your Life' range of cards.

Like most cards of this type, the 'Time of Your Life' cards are adorned with images of newspaper headlines, key events, and stars of stage and screen relevant to a particular year, but what is especially interesting is that James Bond is well represented.

The card for 1965 includes a photo of Sean Connery, no doubt reflecting the fact that one of the biggest films of that year was Thunderball. Roger Moore is pictured alongside Britt Ekland and Maud Adams on the card for 1974, the year in which The Man With The Golden Gun was released, and he appears again on the card for 1979, when Moonraker hit the screens. A publicity shot of Timothy Dalton and Carey Lowell from Licence to Kill is shown on the card for 1989, while the card for 1995 boasts a picture of Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye mode.
 

The Time of Your Life range featuring James Bond

The card series ends in 1999, so there's no picture of Daniel Craig's Bond, but remarkably Ian Fleming is not forgotten. The card for 1953 includes the newspaper-style headline: 'Ian Fleming writes Bond novel Casino Royale.'

With James Bond referenced so prominently, the cards might well appeal to the Bond fan. More generally, though, the cards attest to the enormous success of the Bond films and their lasting impact on popular culture. With over 50 years of the Bond films, each one a blockbuster, the card makers were certainly spoiled for choice.