I was checking out a rival blog at the behest of my buddy Sparky. I don’t do this often; I believe it’s a big ocean with more than enough complete ignorance of our existence to go around, and I won’t pick on yours if you won’t pick on mine. Besides, I gave up reading for Lent.
Anyway, this person’s blog basically ridicules the poses and designs found on individual cards. It’s a lot of fun and really well done and good for them, but I occasionally (okay, make that rarely) aspire to more. I could spend the rest of my natural days, plus a few of the unnatural ones, shooting the fish in the bottom of that barrel. To me the aggregate is much more interesting. Any cardmaker is going to goober out a stool sample when faced with an 4-A shortstop who just was traded from the Astros to the Expos for Don Bosch and a player to be named later, or a product manager whose sister-in-law does this groovy painting thing where she imagines steroid-fueled sluggers as Shetland horses (“My Little Phony,” she calls it). It’s when an entire set or series of sets is redolent of the cattle barn at the Trempealeau County Fair that you have to question the motivation of the … uh, cow-makers.
Speaking of cows and their byproducts, leave us examine the promotional sheet issued by Fleer in 1993 to promote its football set. If you were around the business at all during the Handful O’Landfill era you remember these sheets and scores of others just like them. They were the main way cardmakers built demand for upcoming products. The idea was that the promo sheet would get out in quantities limited enough so that demand built for the promo sheet and its subsequent card set without the sheet being flat-out unobtainable. This was a tightrope much skinnier than the hawser Nik Wallenda strung across the Grand Canyon, and in the end most of the cardmakers wound up plunging into the abyss, with nothing to break their fall.[1]
In 1993 Fleer made two different football products – Ultra
and this. In case you couldn’t tell, this was the base product. And while a lot
of lips in those days were swearing that the base-level products got as much
attention as the high-zoot stuff, a lot of hands were being held behind backs
with fingers crossed.
There’s really nothing bad about these cards per se. In
1993, this passed for a pretty nice base set. Back then we were screaming for
action shots – shots of football players playing football – that were in focus,
and with the most prominent player in the photo being the player featured on
the card.[2]
We wanted full-color backs with something of interest on the flip side, stats that
meant something and copy that wasn’t just conspicuous consumption of black ink.
We also were minimalists when it came to graphics but we weren’t fanatics about
it, though we were whole-namers and not fans of the last-name-only movement.
(Incidentally, this sheet is a perfect example of why we are
not last-name-onlyites. The names of the players on this sheet are Young,
Walker, Lohmiller, Greene, Heyward, Jones, Smith, and Byars. Two are Hall of
Famers and instantly recognizable – Emmitt Smith and Steve Young. Three are
recognizable if you were following football in 1993: Craig “Ironhead” Heyward,
Kevin Greene, and Keith Byars. But Jones and Walker? Is that Adam Jones and
Antoine Walker? Kenny Jones and Kenny “Sky” Walker? Homer Jones and Herschel
Walker? Steve Jones and Scott Walker? Well, no; it’s Ernie Jones and Kenny
“Ground” Walker, neither of whom spring immediately to mind when considering
the NFL landscape of the early ‘90s. In fact, they are so unresponsive in the
springing-immediately-to-mind department that I had to check their pulses, and
then see who the heck they were. Ernie Jones caught 38 balls for four TDs in
1992, a performance that put him only 70 short of Sterling Sharpe for the
league lead. Kenny “Non-Sky” Walker had 1.5 sacks in 1992, his last season in
the league -- though, as his card back takes pains to remind us, he was the
second deaf person to play in the NFL.)
So let’s recap the players that Fleer used to build a tidal
wave of undeniable, irresistible demand for its namesake product among
collectors:
·
Arguably the greatest running back of all time;
·
Arguably the greatest quarterback of all time;
·
A borderline Hall of Fame pass-rushing
linebacker/defensive end;
·
A durable journeyman running back;
·
A pass-catching third-down specialist;
·
The fourth-best receiver on a 4-10 team;
·
A kicker; and
·
A defensive end who was pitched as the NFL’s
wholly inadequate answer to Jim Abbott but was out of football after two years,
16 starts, and 4.5 sacks.
Well, there was also the centerpiece card reading “Fleer ’93
Football – A Game In Every Pack,” a semi-truthful statement when you consider
that almost every NFL game has a couple of superstars, some decent players,
some marginal guys, kickers, and someone who will be out of the league shortly.
The promo-card business is a crapshoot, as proven by the
previously ridiculed cards of Scott Chiamparino and Kevin Morton. The whole
enterprise looks even sillier through a 20-year lens. But even given all that,
I would choose the ’93 Fleer football promo sheet over the Fleer Ultra X-Men
promo sheet that came out a year later.
Don’t get me wrong: I like comics. I like comic art. I like comic art on trading cards. I like Marvel comics. I like the X-Men. I like comic art of the X-Men on trading cards. I like comic art of the X-Men on trading cards with a side of fries to go with that shake. But I do not like this promo sheet, Sam I Am.
Here’s why: Look at this sheet. Where do your eyes go? If
your eyes are like mine, they go into the back of your head and stay there
until it’s safe for them to come out again. There’s so much to look at that you
don’t look at anything, and everything is a different color. Beast’s blue is
different from Angel’s blue which is different from Iceman’s blue which is
different from the blue in the center of the card that serves as a background
for the product logo in – you guessed it – a different shade of blue. Hulk
Green is different from the ectoplasmic green that serves as the background for
the X-Men Gold Team cards, which are, yes, green. There’s Magneto red and
Bishop red and Archangel purple and Jean Grey pink (which really, really ought
to be a contradiction) and two Storms that don’t really look much like one
another, since one looks like a possessed Lady Gaga in a silver bodysuit and
the other looks like a possessed Beyonce in a silver bodysuit.[3]
I could have cut this sheet into nine pieces and ridiculed
each one separately, but had I done that there would have been nothing to
ridicule. This box of Cracker Jack would have contained eight nice-looking
comic art cards and a prize.
Sometimes we get so engrossed in the search for stupidity
that we overlook the excellence. Sometimes the stupidity is in the
presentation. And given that I’ve just spent 1,200 words talking about Fleer
promo sheets, sometimes the fricking stupidity is right here.
[1]
More or less. As my son observed while we watched Wallenda battle the winds
and praise the Lord, “He’s got something to break his fall. Rocks.”
[2] Seems obvious I know, but even Jim and Sparky would be amazed at how many times this didn’t happen.
[3]
Neither being a stretch, sartorially or cerebrally.[2] Seems obvious I know, but even Jim and Sparky would be amazed at how many times this didn’t happen.
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