Actually, it didn't just feel like the longest wait, it was the longest wait. For reasons that are only known to Calbee they postponed the release of this year's set until May 5th.
I've been buying these things for over twenty years now and this is the first time I can remember then not scheduling the release date to roughly coincide with the start of the season in late March or early April. In 2023 I had a lot of trouble finding bags in stores in April but that was because Japan's WBC win made them sell out, not because they hadn't been released yet.
I have to say that I absolutely hate the May release date and hope it is a one off thing. It makes no sense - the first month of the season is when fans are at their "I want to buy baseball cards now" peak. April for those in the baseball card business should be like December for those in the toy business.
Anyway, the set is pretty much the same as last year, which isn't saying much. A pathetic 60 regular player cards just isn't anywhere near enough. The checklists which normally are the only cards that have interesting photos on them this year have cheaply animated images of team mascots on them.
On the plus side the Title Holder subset has a much nicer design this year than in recent years. But that is about the only nice thing I can say. This is what I got from my first bag:
Baystars mascot and Dragons infielder Kaito Muramatsu - who was hitting about .140 this year before going on the DL. Not an exciting player to be devoting a full 20% of the Dragons cards in this set to and providing the perfect illustration of how frustrating these stupid 60 card sets are.
The backs of the cards feature a remarkable innovation - they moved the card number from the top upper right corner of the card to the bottom left of it. This is about as radical a change as you can expect at Calbee these days.
I think all this laziness and descending quality of Calbee cards is probably the result of them trying to cut corners to save costs in an inflationary economy, but this hasn't prevented them from raising the cost of the bags of chips a bit again this year, which makes it even harder to stomach.
Bleh. Anyway, I'll try to piece the set together bag by bag with my kids again, on the plus side I think my duaghter might like the mascot cards so they've got that going for them!
One of the more exciting developments for me has been discovering that the Calbee chips themselves absolutely slap if you put them in instant miso soup right after you pour the hot water in and let it sit for a bit. The saltiness and the starchiness just work.
ReplyDeleteOK, I'm definitely going to try that. Thanks!
DeleteYou've buried the lede! The major change this year is in what Calbee DIDN'T do. After roughly ten years of alternating between English and Japanese for the player names on the card fronts, they used Japanese names two years in a row! In fact, the card fronts look almost EXACTLY like last year's cards. It looks like they took the card number off the front of the card and the team name below the graphic is in Japanese too where last year it was in English.
ReplyDeleteI can just see the meeting over at Calbee: "We've got to come up with something new this year, something that will really excite the collecting community." "I've got it, boss, let's move the card number on the back from the upper right to the lower left." "Genius! Any other great ideas?" "How about we take the card number off the front altogether?" "You're getting a raise and a promotion!"
Looking over all the cards at Jambalaya, I see some positives. I agree with you that the "Title Holder" cards look pretty good and I also like the "Legend" inserts. I also think they've got a better selection of photos than usual although I think you'd agree that it wouldn't take a lot of effort on their part to improve on what they usually do. But there's some "fielders fielding" shots which they haven't had in a while.
On the negative, the set's too damn small and there's no horizontal cards. I've got mixed feelings on the checklist cards. On the plus side, the cartoon mascot images are something that no one's really done before on cards (or at least not for a while). But the checklist cards typically had the best photos in the sets so replacing them with the cartoons kind of sucks.
Ha, you are right about that, I forgot about the alternating English/Kanji names on front, even though I had mentally noted it when comparing the fronts with last years'.
DeleteI hadn't noticed that they had dropped the card number off the front. Actually I kind of like that change, it makes the front a bit less cluttered and there wasn't any real use in having it on the front anyway.
About the mascots I would be OK with them if they were "in addition to" rather than "instead of" cards with interesting photos on them like usually go on the checklists. I think my daughter will like them though.
My problem this year is that a set consisting of just two 60 card base series isn't going to be enough for me this year. As a Dragons fan I can already see there are going to be some key players missing. Epoch or BBM, I'm not sure which but I'm going to be on the hunt for cheap boxes of them on Yahoo Auctions.
Lazy or not... if I found a case of these... I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I wish someone like Lays would package cards with their bags of chips here in the states.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Your daughter has great taste. That mascot card is sweet!
Thanks! Yeah what America desperately needs (well, cough cough, among many things these days) is a food maker that puts out decent regular sets of baseball cards. Potato chips are ideal for that and there is really nothing funner than going to the supermarket and throwing a couple of bags of baseball chips with two cards per bag into the cart.
DeleteHas it become significantly more difficult to pull the gold facsimile signature cards? I think I have bought 15 bags total and not one of the damn things. I definitely have at least half a dozen that I pulled myself from years past. Not sure if I was just very lucky though. Seems like they used to come like one every few packs.
ReplyDeleteActually now that you mention it I haven't gotten any of the gold signature cards yet. I've opened 11 bags so far so it might be just luck of the draw so far, but I do recall last year pulling one within the first 2 or 3 bags.
DeleteProbably in a month or so I'll have opened enough to get a better idea, but if both of us are coming up empty so far maybe that is a sign that they've made them harder to hit this year!