Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Baseball Card Hall of Bad: 1996 Stadium Club Baseball Megaheroes

As a collector, I love cards that have unique designs. I'm game for something different. Risks can change the game. But sometimes, they're complete and utter failures. Case in point: 1996 Stadium Club Baseball Megaheroes.

The 10-card insert set gave different players superhero personas that matched their nicknames. While I'm a big fan of art and cards sharing the same canvas, these cards are about as attractive as fresh dog crap on the bottom of your new pair of runners.

The concept of making athletes heroes, although cheesy, could work. But the drawings look like they were done by a Rob Liefeld wannabe playing with the blur option in Photoshop. Here's the results:







Megaheroes were inserted 1:48 Series One hobby packs and 1:24 retail packs. 

Here's the checklist:

MH1. Frank Thomas, Chicago White Sox
MH2. Ken Griffey Jr., Seattle Mariners
MH3. Hideo Nomo, Los Angeles Dodgers
MH4. Ozzie Smith, St. Louis Cardinals
MH5. Will Clark, Texas Rangers
MH6. Jack McDowell, New York Yankees
MH7. Andres Galarraga, Colorado Rockies
MH8. Roger Clemens, Boston Red Sox
MH9 Deion Sanders, San Francisco Giants
MH10. Mo Vaughn, Boston Red Sox

If you want to see athletes as superheroes where cheesy can mean good (at least in the "so-bad-it's-good" sense), let me draw your attention to Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky in the Saturday morning classic, ProStars:

 

4 comments:

TheBrooklynMet said...

I completely agree that those cards are hideous, but check out this post on the same idea with basketball cards. I think those basketball ones are interesting enough, and were I a collector of basketball cards, I would want them. What do you think?

TheBrooklynMet said...

It'd probably help if I posted the link, huh?
http://canthavetoomanycards.blogspot.com/2010/03/birdman-mailman-and-warrior.html

Anonymous said...

Wow, sometimes I'm glad I missed the mid-to-late 90s.

Anonymous said...

The only ones I don't like at all are the Griffey, Thomas, and Will Clark with his Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple roller coaster background. The others I don't mind so much, and Nomo and Ozzie are awesome.