Is it All Part of the Plan for Upper Deck...

...to leave us all hanging?

It's now less than a month until February 3 - the launch of Upper Deck Baseball 2.0 (or 0.5, depending on how you look at it) where Upper Deck is set to release its flagship 2010 Upper Deck Baseball Series One. It's just three weeks until the scheduled release date of 2009 Upper Deck Ultimate Collection Baseball. But no pictures for either.

Upper Deck has done a solid job at providing the content for both sets but without knowing what they're going to look like, there's no way I can decide whether to go for it or not. If this were a regular year, that'd be fine. But it's not. Without the Major League license logos and such are out of the question. So do we get Players Association jerseys, air-brushed action shots, studio portraits or some homo-erotic artsy thing like this:

I also find it interesting that there's been little info released about any of Upper Deck's additional 2010 plans other than the cross-brand Exquisite cards and the fact that Shoeless Joe is going to appear in 2010 Upper Deck Goudey.

All I'm asking for is a little nibble, perhaps something minor like say a base card design to get me excited. What do you say?

Bob Barker's Comeback?

To continue on with their string of "celebrity" guest hosts, TV legend Bob Barker is hosting WWE Raw tonight. I sense a lot of really bad comedic sketches coming but I do hope that Barker's classic cameo from Happy Gilmore makes the cut as he knocks someone on their butt.

Now 85, Barker was the host of The Price is Right for 35 years before stepping down in 2007. The classic game show has continued on with Drew Carey taking up the duties of helping old ladies spin the big wheel and fending off their advances. But the couple of times that I've seen Carey just makes me long for Barker so I've stopped watching on my days off altogether.

Barker joins the likes of Shaquille O'Neal, Seth Green and Jeremy Piven as previous Raw guest hosts in WWE's attempts to gain more mainstream attention. So far the results have been mixed. Shaq was pretty awesome and Green wasn't too bad either. Piven, though, well he'll forever be linked with the term "Summerfest" amongst pro wrestling circles.

Here's a Price is Right custom I whipped up. I was going for a glittery 70s-looking border. It's all right but not exactly what I had in mind. As soon as I finished it I was reminded of 1991 Donruss Elite inserts.

 

Note to Topps: Consider looking into the logistics of getting a Raw guest host autograph lineup for an upcoming WWE set and get Bob Barker in there. 

Update:

I kept playing with the design after dinner and came up with a couple of "parallels":

John Hughes Collection: Sixteen Candles

My John Hughes Collection of customs sends the time machine back to 1984. I found these templates to be the trickest because there were more components to them, easpecially the Topps baseball where I couldn't find the right font for the team name so I had to cut, paste and paint letters from several cards. Plus there's the additional photo.

Through my research, it appears that Shermer High School, the fictional "prison" that Hughes set most of his films, was never given a nickname although I did find a bulldog logo at one point.

Enjoy!

The John Hughes Collection: Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Here's some customs I did for Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I'm not super happy with the 1986 Donruss ones of Ferris and Sloane. I might revisit them one day. But I do like how Cameron turned out.

Enjoy.

 

  

 

RIP John Hughes Redux

 

In the film world, he was the voice of the 1980s so here's a quintessential 1981 custom. 

(Thanks to Bad Wax for the awesome tutorial.)