Everyone knows my feelings on the way Panini produces their products. If you dont know my feelings, you havent been reading this site for very long. After seeing the QC gallery from the recent post on their blog, it looks like Panini has found a way to screw up another product that I expected to be SLIGHTLY above poor when they previewed it on draft night.
Here is the story so far. Basically, a pre-premiere product like Prestige has become almost completely worthless because of the fact that Upper Deck now owns the exclusive rights to photos of the players in their NCAA uniforms. In most cases, the companies have decided to go with Helmet off sideline pictures, or just airbrushing out the logos on the action photos. Panini opted to go with somewhat of a combination of the two, close up photos of the players in their helmets, with airbrushing of the logos.
Here is a few examples of the cards from the previews they posted on draft night, ones that I didnt think were as horrible as I expected them to be.
Now, from the QC gallery they posted, things have changed quite a bit for the base rookie cards, mostly for the bottom half of the cards. If things turn out the way they are showing, the cards will be a complete 180, going from passable to complete lackadaisical failure. From what we can tell, instead of leaving the bright logos in place for the base rookie cards and washing them out for the autos, they washed the logos out for both. This makes the base rookie cards look ridiculous, and severely dampens any hope of having a good basis for the product.
See what I mean? Like just about every other card Panini does, they figured they didnt have to update the NON-Auto parallels to look complete. The cards look EXACTLY like the Autographed ones without a sticker, which sucks balls. It looks horrible. In fact, when I first saw the images I had to think about if they were just going to add the stickers onto these cards later. Complete and utter laziness abounds as usual.
Again, as of right now, Panini has yet to deal with the lack of Cam Newton and Mark Ingram autos in the product, and that proves to be a dark cloud hovering over an already BLAH set. The rest of the cards from the preview range from absolutely horrid to significantly below average, the typical range for most Panini products. Who knows, maybe everything will turn out the way it should have turned out in the first place.
And what is with the oddly shaped jersey windows on the jersey cards? Come on, didn’t they get enough feedback from Certified last year placing the jersey swatch on the player’s crotches??? Now a pentagon shaped window on their crotches?
no offense but you can’t be more wrong. Every single one of these cards is pure crap. I think the 90’s card movement will be the new vintage movement so long as this trend continues. Pray tell me who would buy this product?
I completely agree with you, they really jacked up the non auto rookies to the point that I don’t even want to buy this product anymore. I was pretty excited on draft night that the cards had the nice logos and looked pretty clean. But now that they have pulled thier typical Panini-zation of the RCs….they look like CRAP. Also….I tried commenting on this QC post…yeah they don’t want any neg comments to get approved…only “I love your crap” comments. WTF PANINI?!?! CENSORSHIP is your new game?! UGH!
Remember, people who want quality and value aren’t their intended consumer…
I’ve had negative comments not get approved as well. They’ll sometimes allow a “constructive criticism” through, but a lot of times not even then. Kind of makes you wonder if they’ll ever get it…they must block a lot of negative comments.
Consider me happy. This is another product that I won’t have to worry about chasing any bloated value Locker cards from. My budget thanks the Panini “design” team.