2009 O-Pee-Chee Baseball Bait and Switch?

It's funny to think that a couple of hours ago I was thinking about scrounging some funds together to get a couple boxes of 2009 O-Pee-Chee Baseball. As of right now, I'm leaning in the other direction. Why? The old bait and switch that pisses me off, even when it's not the main content of a set I'm going after.

Case in point, Upper Deck's sales materials featured a vintage-esque 1971 O-Pee-Chee parallel that looked a little like this:

Then Topps decided to take Upper Deck to court. Both sides exchange press releases saying they're sticking to their guns. So I'm looking at A Pack to Be Named Later and I see this monstrosity:

(HT: APTBNL)

What the heck? I may be jumping the gun here but it looks like Upper Deck caved under pressure. And rather than admit it publicly, they went ahead and continued to sell, sell, sell without acknowledging somewhere along the line that the vintage parallel that had many people excited was being replaced with a much more generic black-border parallel. Again, I could be wrong but if the early eBay listings are any indication, the 1971 parallels are no more.

I wasn't planning on going after the parallel set, but I'm ticked nonetheless based on the apparent bait and switch. It's to the point where I don't really want to get anything from this set now - one that I've been looking forward to since I was shocked to hear it announced. Upper Deck took away a key ingredient without announcing it. Good reason for cancelling them or not, all it would have taken is a press release and a couple of emails and there'd be some disappointed folks but I have a hunch most would be understanding. It's called communication. If virtual Derek Jeter can sign some virtual autographs, would it really be that hard to get word out about the change? Isn't that what the Upper Deck blog, website or Facebook page might be good for?

This isn't the first bait and switch in this hobby, nor will it be the last. However, I feel it's one of the bigger ones.