You know… for kids!
August 6th, 2009 by slangon

hudsucker-proxySo everywhere I look is news of Topps exclusivity deal with MLB. I tend to agree with most of the opinions that I’ve read on the subject regarding the loss of competition, so I’m not really going to talk about that to much. I do think it’s sort of lame that now we basically have no choice but to put up with whatever baseball cards Topps decides to make, or else not buy cards. I personally like Topps more than Upper Deck, but it’s nice to have the choice.

Anyway, what I did want to talk about was all this mumbo jumbo about “redirecting the entire category towards kids“. Now, before anyone has a conniption, I’m not dogging on the kiddies. I think collecting baseball cards is a wonderful hobby for a young boy or girl to have. I think it’s awesome when I see a young kid seaching through boxes of singles, trying to track down that Homer Bailey cards from last years set that seems to be eluding him. It’s great. What bothers me about that comment from The New York Times article is the examples that it gives to illustrate Michael Eisner’s commitment to the young’uns. 3-D cards? ToppsTown? Attax? Really?

Although, I personally don’t have any interest in these particular products, and I think they’re stupid and should die, I’m not saying that Topps should be done with them. If some dumb kid would rather spend his money on that than an old beat up ’73 Bill Gogolewski, that’s his business. I just hope that Topps keeps the big kids in mind and realizes the responsibility they’re taking on by becoming the only game in town.

I also just want to point out that according to the article, Upper Deck still has a contract with the Players Association, just not MLB. So they still have rights to players likenesses, just not team logos and trademarks. It’ll be interesting to see how UD interprets that. See what happens, Upper Deck, when you rip peoples card designs off?

All I have to say is, if Topps turns baseball card collecting into a slightly less nerdy version of Yu-Gi-Oh, I’m gonna be pissed.

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