I was at my local AEON supermarket yesterday looking in vain for bags of Series 2 Calbee baseball chips (they had them for a few days, but sold out quick) when I noticed another baseball related thing in the snack section. They had a big display of packs of the above "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection 2024", produced by Bandai-Namco. I hadn't heard of them before nor was I expecting them, but the artwork on the bags caught my eye.
These were bags of snacks though I couldn't tell what kind just by looking at the bag or feeling it. I would later notice on getting it home that the tiny little orange box of text on the front which you have to squint to make out is where it identifies what kind of snack it contains (more on this below). I was only interested in the card anyway, which was attached to the back, similar to how Calbee cards are attached to bags of chips.
They were more expensive than Calbee chips (168 Yen versus 108 Yen) and only had one card rather than Calbee's two, but I decided to give them a try and threw one in my shopping basket.
From Bandai Namco's home page for the set I gather these were just released a couple of days ago, so I give them credit with getting them on the shelves of my local store on schedule (this is me throwing shade on Calbee BTW). The set has 36 cards. I don't know why they are called "Deforme" cards, I have no idea what that word means.
Anyway, I got home and opened mine up to see who I got. Baystars Taiki Sekine:
This is what the backs look like.
I'm not a huge fan of caricature cards, but these seem pretty decent. From the pictures on the website the set as a whole looks quite colorful which I like.
I was thinking I might buy some of these for my kids, but I noticed for some absolutely bizarre reason that the packs are recommended for consumers "15 years and over". WTF? These are cartoon baseball cards, but kids aren't supposed to buy them?
This restriction made a bit more sense to me when I opened up the snack and discovered, to my horror, that it contained this:
If you've never been to Japan you may be unfamiliar with these. They are a crunchy snack made of rice that come with a bitter flavor that makes them almost inedible to me. Its kind of difficult to describe in words, but they just make your mouth feel awful, similar to what you feel when you stuff pure wasabi into it (albeit a bit milder). You often see them in little dishes mixed up with peanuts at bars for patrons to nibble at while drinking beer. Eating them is a mild form of torture and I've never met anyone who actually eats these when they aren't drunk.
For some reason Bandai-Namco decided to sell their baseball cards with bags of pure Kaki no Tane, not even mixed up with peanuts to dull their horrid effect. Gag.
So I've decided not to buy any of these for my kids, and won't be buying any more for myself either, which is kind of a shame as, like I said, the cards themselves (and the packages) are kind of neat. There is another grocery store I can hit up for Calbee Series 2 and I think I'll stick with that, for all the complaints I have about Calbee at least the chips are edible and my kids like them.
