Is it just me, or has Upper Deck given up on Fleer Ultra? Who, exactly, is this set targeted to? And do those collectors even want this set? Man, I remember when Fleer Ultra was the shit to rock. And don't get me wrong, I like the fronts of this year's design, but man it feels like this is the last thing on Upper Deck's mind, like they were about to close up the shop late Friday when the boss slapped his forehead, remembering that thing he forgot earlier: create a middle-way Fleer set.The fronts are simple, one might even use the word 'elegant'. The backs, unlike Fleer Ultra of yore, are completely forgettable. It's here where the design falters: great cards get you with the front photo, but they really pull you in with a winning back-of-card design. Ultra's b-o-c has tons of empty real estate that could've been used for better things, like a funny cartoon or a transactions blurb, or a note about a player's interesting hobbies: "In his spare time, Barry Zito enjoys rolling in piles of dollar bills."
It's not all bad, though. Of course I'm talking about the concept of Fat Packs. These are modern-day rack packs, right? Also, how great is this math: at my local Kmart you can buy a blaster box of eight packs of 4 cards (32 cards) for $9.99, or you can buy a fat pack of 32 cards for $4.99. Um, two fat packs, please.
The cards:
Side A
1. Alex Rios, gold #331/999
2. Kenny Lofton
3. Jose Reyes
4. Randy Winn
5. James Shields
6. Omar Vizquel
7. Carlos Delgado
8. Jason Bay
9. Bobby Abreu
10. Jason Schmidt
11. Jon Garland
12. Jhonny Peralta
13. Howie Kendrick
14. Carlos Zambrano
15. Jeremy Sowers
16. Ben Sheets
Side B17. Josh Hamilton Lucky 13, gold #589/999
18. Vlad Guerrero
19. Adam Dunn
20. Manny Ramirez
21. AJ Pierzynski
22. Tadihito Iguchi
23. Jered Weaver
24. Derrek Lee
25. Chad Cordero
26. Mike Piazza
27. Chien-Ming Wang
28. David Wright
29. Akinori Otsuka
30. Yadier Molina
31. Francisco Cordero
32. Barry Zito
If you like star cards, this is your set. Nice photography too, except I just noticed something: there's only two variations for the photos. Pitchers are shown in various stages of the windup, and everyone else is shown batting. There are no photos of guys in the field. The photography is really how you can tell if your set is post-UD or pre-UD Fleer: if it looks like a professional took the photo, it's a card from after Fleer went bankrupt and Upper Deck consumed it. If the photo looks like it was taken by a beginning photography student at summer camp, it's pre-UD Fleer.
For the record, the retail packs have five cards in each pack.
ReplyDeleteAlso, with the exception of those cheesy one-per-pack Gold parallels, there are no other inserts in the Fat Packs.
Stick with the Blasters.
My son has an account on UDkids and the fat packs let him rack (no pun intended, well maybe a small one, which now in itself is a pun) up on points. Of course with the whole UD/Fleer thing, he can use fler cards too... So, I vote for the fatties... :-)
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