Sunday Morning Pack Battle - April 4 2010 Edition

Today is a bit of a switch.  I went to the local Target and instead of grabbing the same old Topps or UD basketball releases, I switched it up and went for the UFC vs. Star Wars.  I'm a big MMA fan too.  I know, I know.  How many freaking sports can one guy follow?  A lot.  It's kind of what I do.  Later this month the Ultimate Fighter reality show is starting up again.  That's Must See TV in my house.

In any event, I like watching UFC, but I've not yet been inclined to actually invest in a collection.  So when I saw a retail pack, I couldn't resist picking one up to 'see what I see'.  In fact, in each of the above packs, there was 1 insert per pack.  So this shapes up to be a pretty good pack battle right from the start.  Here's UFC's base:

The base aren't actually all blue, that's just how they scanned.  They're holo-foil times Panini squared.  There is a ton of foil in this set.  It's all foil.  And while I like a nice chrome look for a certain card.  It just really goes overboard here.  Actually, you can see the pictures better in the scan than you can in your hands.

The other thing is the script they use for the names.  Kind of hard to read.  I'm not illiterate or anything.  But I don't often read that script. 

The Silba card is nice - he's a good fighter for sure.  The Stefan Strube card is a bit of a failure. You at least need to show the guy's face, Topps.  But other than that, the photography is actually pretty good.

The backs of the cards are really informative.  They give a good background of each fighter.  The only problem here is that there isn't any comprehensive stats for the fighter.  Half the purpose of the sports card has always been for reference.  It would be hard to imagine a baseball or basketball card without percentages and tons of useful numbers printed on the back.

Here there's no such luck.  And I hope that Topps can rectify that.  Before the age of the internet, that was how people looked up stats - on the cards.  UFC fighters should be afforded the same courtesy.

Here's the insert card.  It's kind of a miniature promotional poster for a past UFC event.  I like the idea.  Again, foil overload.  The card isn't that blue.  But the back of the card is matte.  So you can see the main event and the under card.  Pretty cool idea actually.  Just tone it down a notch.  I wouldn't put together this insert set just for that reason.  But it is of a Couture event, so points there for sure.

Now the Star Wars.  May the Force be with us. 

Again, a great variation of the art styles.  The propaganda stuff is really appropriate here.  The Topps baseball propaganda stuff was hit or miss with some collectors.  But in this format - it's F'ing genius.

My favorite card of this lot is the Stormtrooper raid on the Sandcrawler.  Click on the photo to enlarge it.  That's some killer stuff here.  It depicts a key piece of the Star Wars story that wasn't shown in Episode IV.  All we see in the movie is Luke and Obi-Wan driving up to the burning sandcrawler.  Here it shows it in detail.  It's a killer card.  Really huge fan of the painting style cards here.

The art-noveau style Leia card is great because it's unique.  This release is putting a whole new spin on what should and shouldn't be on cards.  The space around the 'picture' is great because it fits with the style of the art-noveau.  It's almost like every card in this set was made without apology.  And it looks like the sets was made for fans, by fans.  You can just tell.  How many times have you opened up a sports card release and asked yourself if the designers even like sports at all?  Like how could they get it so wrong?  You don't ever have that feeling here.  I'm loving this stuff.  I might actually buy a box of this.  It's just that fun.  You literally spend a couple minutes looking at each card.  That's rare.  And the inserts are great too.  Here's what I pulled:

The Vader, though not etched like the Boba Fett I pulled earlier, is surrounded by a mirror like foil.  It works because Vader is a great character to put in contrasts like that.  The card is just a great visual gem.  It makes me want to see the other 14 cards.  Well done Topps.  Well done indeed.

Obviously Star Wars wins again today.  Though I was expecting more from the UFC release - the Star Wars didn't let me down.  I'll wait for the prices to drop on this stuff and try to get a hobby box to officially review in the future.