Bandai has archived product pages from 1985. As far as I can tell, cards started to be sold in 1986.

Today I worked on this set: https://www.bandai.co.jp/candy/products/1986/06183.html

First I archive the product page itself. https://web.archive.org/web/20160414200921/http://www.bandai.co.jp/candy/products/1986/06183.html

This does not seem to have the main product image so I archived that separately. https://web.archive.org/web/20220124155956/https://www.bandai.co.jp/candy/products/1986/image/06183.jpg

Images are hugely important in researching.

If you just look at the picture, this looks like a figure set, but according to the text, there are “Super Mario Certain Victory Cards” (スーパーマリオ必勝カード super mario hisshou card) included.

When doing research, I try to use the common English translation, but there are many times when I am translating something in this context for the first time. In this case, there are 3 options: don't translate, transliteration, find a relatively common/acceptable translation.

In this case, I couldn't find a reference to these cards in English, so I went for an English translation because there were similarly titled strategy guides from the https://megaman.fandom.com/wiki/Hisshouhou_Special .

Bandai's page says there are “21 types” of the figures (?) and it has a list of the different types. However, while it says Certain Victory Cards are included, it doesn't say how many cards there were. I thought maybe 21 cards to match the number of figures, but wanted confirmation.

Bandai's image also has a JAN code “4902425 061832” but googling this didn't bring up anything.

I tried スーパーマリオ必勝カード and actually found this page from Mandarake's blog. https://www.mandarake.co.jp/dir/nkn/micro/2017/12/17/1224dang-dang-11.html

Let's archive this. Hrm. the internet archive does not seem to want to archive that page. I keep getting job failed. I've saved the page as a pdf for reference, and I'll tag the final page as “need archive” to remind me to go back to this. need to archive

As you can see from this page, the box covers are exactly the same as the image in the bandai page, but the figures look different. If you look closely, they are the same figures, just unpainted versions. The website says they are erasers. The bandai page does not mention that they are erasers, which is odd.

Still, the box does look identical, and in absence of other evidence, I think we can say these sets are the same.

According to this Mandarake page, there were 21 erases, but 7 box types. Each box had a number, 1 to 7, and each box had specific set of erasers inside. Correspondingly, there were 7 Certain Victory cards, numbered 1 to 7, which are pictured on the website.

Certain Victory Cards

This is enough information for a proper set info page! See it here: Super Mario Certain Victory Cards