Giridiron Gear Is Live, Ugly

Back in 2006, I discovered Gridiron Gear as a cool set with cards that featured rookie patches and autos for a great price. The design was very cool, everything fit well, and I was more than excited to see that Laurence Maroney and a few of the other targets I had were being featured on some of the coolest cards around.

When 2007 Gridiron Gear was released, there were a ton of people who were touting it as one of the best looking products of the year. I was one of those people. The cards looked great, the subsets were fresh, and the Gridiron Gems looked top of the line. A Simple, white background, as well as nice placement of the swatches, all combined to make a great looking card. It was a build on the 2006 set that I was collecting, but looked even better with the clear sticker.

Then 2008 rolled around, and the design trends that are running rampant through Panini's product lines today, started to show up and become the rule instead of the exception. Busy backgrounds, oddly placed swatches that broke the border of the card, and a complete disregard for the elements that made 2007 great. I didnt even buy a single pack out of protest.

Now we are getting 2009 Gridiron Gear, and again, the set is going in the wrong direction. Floating swatches are back, though this time they are shaped weirdly and dont really fit. The background is still busy, and looks like a giant pac-man eating the windows. The player is again covered up by the relics, and nothing really looks right. When you look back at how cool 2006 and 2007 was, this is an abomination.

Really, this is only one part of the set, but the other parts are just rehashes. Plastic helmets are back, player timelines are back, and Gridiron Gear continues its slide. The set is filled with ugly cards, and I am disappointed that once again, I am prevented from collecting one of my favorite sets because the cards were Panini-nized.

Oh, and I almost forgot - MORE FUCKING REDEMPTIONS FOR STICKER AUTOS OF PLAYERS AT THE ROOKIE PREMIERE!

First Look: 2009 Donruss Gridiron Gear Football

In 2007, Gridiron Gear was one of my favorite sets of the year, but in 2008, it dropped well below acceptable standards to me. The continued use of event used footballs, as well as a RC Patch auto design that didnt lend well to parallels sold the product down the river to me.

I see a lot of 2008's product in 2009's preview, which concerns me, in addition to ANOTHER Donini set with sticker autos, despite a focus on hard signed products elsewhere. Gridiron Gear is like SPA and Limited is like Ultimate in terms of the release calendar, and both are at a disadvantage to UDs sets before a preview is even released. See, I love UD products because they are the best, its not even a contest, especially when Donini continually falls short of product expectations.

Ill give you an example.

Instead of retiring lame gimmicks like signed plastic NFL fields, and cards with rubber helmets embedded in them, they are issued as a staple in the product. I cant tell you how bored I am with these cards, even when they were created in 2007, and it makes me really frustated to think how lazy the Donini designers are. Why not focus on the design of the Gridiron Gems to ASSURE that every parallel fits into the design. It didnt last year, and from the preview of the sanchez here, this year's is the same. Look at the tapering of the window in relation to the design. It looks off, because the card was actually designed for the other parallels. This fact, in turn, makes the window look like it is breaking through the borders of the card.

Here is the reality I see in Donini cards for 2009. Who ever is designing them was just given the old set and adobe photoshop and told to reinvent. Rather than starting from scratch as UD and Topps usually do, they just tweak little parts of the old cards. Im guessing its because of a lack of talent/lack of knowhow in the designers' repetoir, but it could just be that they have no resources - hence all the stickers.

As I said in my UD bias post, I give them more positive press because they are just better at making cards. Donini and Topps are second tier when you hold up the calendar against each other. Sadly, the second tier is second class in this case. Ill take SPA and Ultimate over Limited and Gridiron Gear every day of the week.

Product Review: 2008 Gridiron Gear Football

Its time for Gridiron Gear, and I was pumped a long time ago for this set. The problem was that I saw some previews on DLP's website, and I became much less pumped. The set isnt THAT bad, but Ill go over a few things so you know what I mean.

The Good

Gridiron Gear base cards are always pretty nice, and this year they stuck with the winning formula. The pictures are really nice action shots and the foil board around them makes them stand out. But really, they are base cards, so its not a big score to do well on the trimming.

Some of the insert sets are actually pretty cool. Last year, the playbook inserts were basically the crap jerseys you got in a hot box. They were ugly, single color crap pieces, and I always prayed I didn’t get a hot box for that reason. This year, they are still the crap jerseys, but the cards look much nicer. They went with the white background (COMPLETELY UNDERRATED!) and put the jerseys in an "O" or "X" shape. The cool thing is that they also put the player's nick name on the side of the card, so for people like Peterson, it says "AD", and for Braylon Edwards, it says "B-Easy". On a side note, not every player has a cool nickname, so Peyton Manning's just says "Peyton."

I also liked the curved borders for the swatches on most of the jersey cards, another completely underrated technique. Most of the time its just square and boring, but for some of the jumbos and the RC crap, they made the window fit the card. Very sleek.

My favorite cards in the set are the hidden gems autos for the RCs. The Gems template was designed for these cards and it shows. Full bleed pics, a good design, and a sweet idea for the pull out signed jerseys (again, very underrated to used signed swatches in a product). These look like they were the focus of the set designers, and I really applaud them for a cool card set. There are problems with this design, and I will get to them later.

The Bad

Jumbo swatches are good in products, but not when they are just thrown in as parallels. The jumbos from SP RC Threads were very cool, because it was SUPPOSED to be a jumbo swatch. These are just windows that look like they were miscut. They interfere with the pic on the card, and it makes it look really fucking ugly. Ditch this idea, and maybe the patch fakers wont have such a hey day with your cards.

Hot box layout is awful for this product. Yes, you get 8 hits per hot box, but who cares when you are stuck with a base rookie auto and 8 crap jerseys? Hot boxes are supposed to be cool because you get 8 box type hits in one box instead of 3, not just a way to fill out the set with jersey cards you cant use any more. Joe Collectors love these because they are filled with "MOJO!!!!111one", but they are idiots, and I would rather have a 3 hitter any day of the week.

Last year, the Gridiron Gems were fucking beautiful. This year, they had potential, but it was obvious the design was for the pullouts only. The double and triple swatch cards look weird and I think the windows needed to be lower on the card to fit inside the border. That would have made them so much better. Because of this flaw, I may pass on this product all together, but who knows, I may throw together a group break if people want it.

The Ugly

I have brought this up many times before, no more event used football swatches. Who the fuck came up with this crap??? At least with LCM, DLP had the know how to put shoes in the swatch matrix, but with Grid Gear, wow. Personally, I cant think of a more detached player item than a ball they caught for 2 seconds at the rookie premier. I would rather have a ball I bought from Target.

Floating swatches, floating swatches, floating swatches. Holy fucking god this product is chaulk full of these bastards. The next generation cards are so awful that I will die a little inside if I pull one. Total fucking shit for cards with that. Anyways, read the post down the page.

Overall, this product is not as good as Absolute, but better than LCM. I am now VERY scared for National Treasure's potential, and I sincerely hope that they A) Fix the design issues, B) Get off the sticker auto train, and C) Make it as worthwhile as last year. If Grid Gear is any indication, this is going to be a bad year for DLP.

A Comment On Card Design

Dear Manufacturers,

If you are going to product a card that has a jersey and auto parallel, make sure you build the card backwards. Build the base card first, then put the jersey swatch on it, and finally find a place for the auto. If it doesnt work, DONT FUCKING PRODUCE IT. Stop building cards that have floating swatches and look as if they are auto cards without the auto. Let me give you some examples from a product to be release tomorrow:

Lets start with this one of the late, great, beastly Reggie White. This card is NEVER going to have a sticker auto, yet the jersey swatches look random. Why in fucking hell would you put the swatches where they are? Oh, right because you didnt build the card correctly. Good job DLP, you are slipping faster than McCain in the polls.

Here is another DLP victim. Can you explain to me why the swatch is not 2 inches to the left? This is a poorly designed card and it should never have been created. If the card would have been done differently, it could have been really cool. Cutting corners are we?

The lesson is this, if you want me to continue buying your cards, design them properly. So far a good number of DLPs products have suffered this year because of poorly placed swatches on coolly designed cards. Get off your ass and fix it.

Thanks,

Gellman

A Crisis We All Can Relate To: IM BORED!

You know, as a card blogger, I had a feeling it would eventually come to this. Right now there is a huge lull in the product release, and just not much going on in the hobby really. On the personal side, the Twins are done and the Vikings are REALLY FUCKING BORING, so its tough to not want to run to the shop and rip through 800 dollars worth of crappy boxes.

Originally I thought this lull would be cured by the best or second best mid end product of last year, Gridiron Gear, but after seeing some of the acutal card designs, wow, I am disappointed.

Who put these jersey windows on the design plate? They are further into no-man's land than George Costanza's shirt button. Someone needs to alert them that the lack of an auto on a jersey card is not an excuse to leave the jersey window there. Wow.

As for the RC Gridiron Gems, the pullouts look fine. In fact they look so fine, that the rest of the cards look out of place when they didnt make up for the fact that their design doesnt fucking fit the other parallels of the card. Last year's white borderless design was good enough to bring a tear to your eye. This year they went into design overdrive and it looks awful. Really too bad.

I am praying...

...PRAYING that Limited has potential. If limited sucks as bad as Gridiron Gear may suck, National Treasures is a lost cause. Also, with UDs seemingly endless parade of on card autos, the stickers just dont do it anymore for me. However, after talking to a few shop owners over the weekend, we may have to see some adjustment in High End stuff because they cant sell it anymore. Premier was great in my opinion, but the product is out en masse with no buyers. That is really too bad as well.

I would not be surprised if 5 years from now, there are no remnants of the hobby wax as it is today, but rather a new way of thinking about it altogether. I mean, look at the configuration for Ultimate - I have a feeling that is just the beginning.

First Look: 2008 Gridiron Gear Football

One of my favorite sets from last year is back, and it looks fucking sweet. I like the stone design for this and you know that things are going to rock when you get the dual and triple patches going with the autos. Personally, this could be a front runner for sets of the year as the designs for the gridiron signatures and and the NFL teams signatures has also been updated. AWESOME.