Friday, August 19, 2016

Topps Lays Down A Safety Squeeze

 These are Topps Bunt, the cardboard version. It's pretty surprising to me that these exist, I thought the point of Topps Bunt was that they were digital cards as opposed to physical ones. There were several insert cards that had codes on the back to download free digital packs.
 The price was right for these, and they made me think - hey, why aren't these the Opening Day cards? Like, it's obviously something Topps has interest in making - a card set that is both affordable and different from flagship. The blaster was $9.99 at Target. As you can see, it's a Stadium Club-esque mix of rookies, Stars, retired stars, and Hall of Famers.
Here are the insert sets that I found in my packs - the Program is probably my favorite of the bunch.

No Stats on these, which is another reason why I think this should be the Opening Day set - just put some copy on the back about the player's opening day exploits (or lack thereof). I liked these a lot more than I thought I would... Despite the question of why did they make these, I think this is a solid (if safe) product from Topps. If I had a vote in these things, I'd ask that Opening Day and this product merge into one thing - new designs for opening day versus Series One, still cheap, still full of all those cheesy inserts that Topps loves so much.

8 comments:

  1. I like the idea. The set at least has its own look.

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  2. I like these a lot. I'll have to get a blaster or potentially splurge on a hobby box.

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  3. This as a 'replacement' for Opening Day makes a lot of sense. I saw one on eBay yesterday, saw a shipping cost, and thought it was one of the online Bunt things that was mislabeled. Now I know.

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  4. I made a similar comment on my blog this morning - Opening Day to me is boring because it's so similar to the flagship. This could easily replace that.

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    1. I agree. Opening Day needs to get looked at and this would be a nice alternative.

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  5. I busted a box as well as a couple blasters. Pretty sure I have the entire base set, which got pretty much every PC guy I have, plus all Cubs base. Ended up light on inserts of guys I collect, heavy on those that I don't. One of these days I'll post the inserts up if you are interested in any of them.

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  6. And I'm guessing the marketing point behind this set is to get more people onto the app. The Bunt codes in Series 1/2 didn't fall very often, whereas with this you're virtually guaranteed to get a code insert in every couple packs, which gets people into the online game. I dabbled in it during the offseason, and once they revamped it for this season, it seemed overwhelming, and I wasn't getting anything tangible out of it. I'm definitely a fan of the design, and with the big logo at the top, I can see using them as the first card for each of my PCs!

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