Last year, Contenders took a complete 180 and delivered Panini’s best looking product of the year, for the most part. The main focus of the product, the rookie ticket autos, were simple and great looking, made better by hard signed signatures. Even with foilboard, my hideous mortal enemy, the cards looked classy and well done.
Today on their blog, Panini premiered the newest incarnation of the tickets for 2011. I am literally in shock as to how much worse they look after the awesome versions last year. First off, the switch to horizontal orientation and addition of the big white box for the signature takes away from the overall look of the card. Players looked trapped in the corner, and the busy design doesnt help to show any spacial planning for the actual “ticket” that has been present on each version since 1997.
These cards are complete downgrades in every way, and show exactly why Topps has blown past Panini in the design and content aspect, a part of this season’s situation that should have been something to work towards in Dallas. Five Star, Supreme, Chrome, all look faaaaaaar superior to anything we see here, and I do not have high hopes for National Treasures either. As they always do, Panini will find some way to screw it up.
Here are the pictures:
I don’t even understand how it can be so utterly terrible anymore. But, then again, I must not be within their ‘target audience’. That must be blind people. Utter trash. More money for Topps’ late-season releases with HOFer/Veteran autos, on card.
Do we know if the base will have the white box? I typed a full paragraph rant about the white box but then I got to thinking that maybe it won’t be present on the base cards.
Here’s my guess… No, they won’t be on the base cards, instead they will put the team’s logo in its place and it will look just as horrible (you can reference any base card from the last few years of National Treasures).
Ugh… why? This product has been so awesome in the past – why did they feel the need to wreck it? 2010 Contenders was awesome (aside from the damn foil board), this is… whatever the polar opposite of awesome would be.