Michael Eisner says its time to bring kids back to the hobby. Fine. I agree that’s a good secondary goal, but when you think about who actually composes the makeup of the collecting populace, we have to question what is going to happen to the people who have grown to love the way it is now.
Eisner says that the biggest problem with the industry today is the confusion over products, kids going into Wal-Mart and Target, giving up because of not knowing which product to buy. Personally, that is total crap. Its pandering to a public that has a closed minded view of what the prime demographic SHOULD be, while not addressing what it has become. The reason kids don’t like cards as much anymore is because the interests of the general kid has switched from following sports to playing video games and japanese animated shows. The demographics have changed, and it has nothing to do with how many products are stocked at shop n’ save.
The fact of this industry since 1996 is that adults make up the market, not kids. Therefore to say that you are going to pull the train off the tracks and put it on a different track, screws over all the passengers on the train already. By refocusing the point of baseball card market to kids, it only makes things worse than it already is. Not only because kids shouldn’t be the focus, but also because most kids like the hobby the way it fucking is!
People, giving Topps the exclusive is not going to harken things back to 35 years ago. The hobby’s face has changed, and it is never going back. Its time to stop trying to recapture that nostalgia, because that shit don’t fly ’round here no more. The day of the kid going into the shop and buying cards is gone, mainly because kids don’t follow sports like they used to. The hobby has changed, made the thousands of people like me into collectors, and it needs to stay that way. I know that Baseball is a different animal than football, but the ideals hold true. People want to be closer to the game, and Topps Opening Day is not the way to accomplish that. Plus, when Triple Threads and Sterling are the worst products on the market, how long before the lack of competition makes everything that bad? Not long, especially when Topps has to scale back their product line to accommodate the new cost of the license.