2008 Mayo Cut Plug Blaster Break and Review

All righty then. I know the short prints. I have my blaster. I am facing certain doom and I laugh. I laugh! Ha! Ha! Let us face the doom together, as one.

Rip.

Pack One:

95 Kyle Wright RC
28 Glenn Dorsey RC
212 Funkmaster Flex SP
179 Anthony Gonzalez mini
201 Trent Edwards
182 Shawne Merriman

So, starting the blaster off right with a Funkmaster Flex short print. Yeehaw. Actually his card makes him look more like a defensive line coach for Kansas City than a DJ so I guess he fits in the set. Right? RIGHT? Ugh. I know this has been asked over 9000 times since Saturday, but can someone tell me why when Shawne Merriman got caught doing steroids the entire universe didn't implode from the unfairness of it all? But A-Rod gets outed (illegally and unethically) and Everything Is Ruined Forever. Ugh. If it weren't for the kick ass Glenn Dorsey card I might have given up on this box after the first pack.

Paquet Deux:

197 Gus Frerotte
261 Paul Gauguin
258 Dallas Clark
123 JP Losman Princeton Mini
SB38-A New England Patriots
162 Matt Schaub
151 Leon Washington

I'll compare the Princeton card with the mini in another pack. That vivid orange back is really striking in a set full of black, black, black. So far, I've noticed something about this set. The cards that have brightly colored uniforms look a hell of a lot better than the ones with muted colors. Compare The Gus Frerotte card with Matt Schaub there. Bench warming Frerotte pops right off the card while Schaub just looks like a schlub. And I don't know what's up with Leon Washington. His jersey just looks... off. Like it's a photo negative or something. The Gauguin card looks horrible. There are all kinds of pixel artifacts all over his face. I could come up with a better card of him in 5 minutes. Topps really just mailed this set in and that's a shame. The thing obviously was not even close to being ready by the release date. They should have pushed it to 2009 and done it right. I doubt we'll ever see a second set unless they decide to do a baseball set sometime in the future.

Paquete tres:

79 Archie Manning
131 John Elway
244 Justin Gage
263 Chris Chambers SP
105 Sterling Sharpe mini
138 Ahmad Bradshaw

Lookit that mop on Archie Manning! That card rocks. Elway is the first legitimate star I've gotten in this box, but they over processed his photo. It looks like an impressionist painting or something. Maybe pixelated Gauguin painted it. Sterling Sharpe makes for three retired players in the pack. I had to check twice to make sure the Bradshaw card wasn't Terry.

Satz vier:

20 Reggie Brown
234 DJ Williams
294 Reggie Wayne
273 AJ Hawk Mini
SB40-A Pittsburgh Steelers
189 Brian Westbrook
207 Antonio Cromartie

These Super Bowl decoy cards don't impress me much even though this Steelers card is pretty good looking. I like the fact that the three cards from each Super Bowl can be put together but it's still something like a 130 card set or so if they do all the Super Bowls. Do they actually do all the Super Bowls? I don't know because I haven't seen a checklist and I can't trust the one from Topps anymore. More SPs, more decoys, it's almost like Topps is using this set as a testing ground to see just how far they can push us in the '09 A&G set. Don't be surprised if you see 150 short prints (in a 200 card set) and a 438 card "Congressional Districts of America" decoy insert set in A&G this year. Here's that Princeton card compared to a gloomy looking AJ Hawk. Bam! It's like your eyeballs exploded!

Pacchetto cinque:

32 Roydell Williams
48 Marty Booker
314 Kurt Warner SP
98 Troy Smith Mini
227 Derek Anderson
64 Dwight Freeney

Kurt Warner pretty much has to go to the Hall of Fame now, doesn't he? I mean, he took the freaking CARDINALS to the Super Bowl and damn near won! That by itself is just mind boggling, add it to his career with the Rams and that's Hall of Fame material. I have nothing to say about the rest of the pack.

Пакет 6:

213 Keenan Burton
147 Colt Brennan RC
280 Thomas Jones
164 Ronnie Brown mini
SB42-C New England Patriots
76 Muhsin Muhammad
101 Jerry Porter

When was the last time you saw a fish eye spot on a new card?? (note - there is one on that Patriots card up by the top right corner but it didn't show up well on the scan. You can see it on the card) Oh well, the 2007 Patriots had a slight blemish too. (bad scan ruined my joke, grrrr) I got the Muhammad and Porter cards in the first pack I opened, also as the last two cards in the pack. Meh. I honestly don't have a lot to say about any of the cards in these packs. Maybe I'm just out of the loop after taking a year off from fantasy football. Here's a card of Colt Brennan, who got his butt stomped by Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.

Πακέτο επτά:

96 Malcom Kelly RC
41 Tashard Choice RC
266 Brady Quinn
288 Tony Romo SP
165 Bobby Engram Mini
119 James Harrison

Not a bad pack other than Quinn with a big ol' dink on a corner. A couple of rookies including Ga. Tech star Tashard Choice. I have no idea how he did for Dallas this year. Tony Romo ain't a bad SP to pull with all the Cowboy lovers out there. Romo is still popular, right? He hasn't given Jessica Simpson the clap or anything has he? I'm so totally out of it right now. I have got to pay attention to football next year just so I can do a decent box break. Sorry folks. Much like the set, this review is now a complete train wreck.

パック8:

321 Santana Moss
253 JaMarcus Russell
240 Kyle Boller
H-11 Chincoteague Pony
SB39-c Philadelphia Eagles
143 Demarcus Ware
164 Ronnie Brown

We end the box with a freaking horse. I wanted a ship, and got a horse. A big smelly horse. That poops. Ships don't poop. EVER. There's nothing else interesting in here, so here's the checklist for the horsies if you like that sort of thing.

Mercifully, it's all over. Here's the wrap up:

36/275 Base cards (13.1%)
4/55 Short Prints (Funkmaster, Chambers, Warner, Romo) 1:2 (7.3%)
0 Doubles
1 Damaged (Quinn)

Mini cards:
6 base
0 SP 1:12
0 Yale Parallel 1:17
1 Princeton Parallel (Losman) 1:24
0 Harvard Parallel 1:66
0 Ships 1:12
1 Horse (Chincoteague Pony) 1:48

4 Super Bowl inserts 1:2

0 Autogamers

Well, the best card in the box was a horse and I don't even like John Elway. (ba-dum-ching!) I want to like this set. I mean I really want to like this set. There's an authentic retro design, mini cards, famous ships, framed relics and autos, mini back parallels... It's just my kind of set. But I don't like the set. Topps killed it through sheer incompetence. The bogus sell sheet sent prices through the roof, then they pulled a bait and switch with the final checklist. The 55 short prints was the last straw for me though. Allen & Ginter has pretty much a perfect base set to short print ratio. 300 base, 50 short prints, one in two packs. It makes the set challenging, but not impossible. Now, since this is a football set I didn't expect there to be 350 cards in there. 300 is really pushing it for a football set that isn't a base brand like Topps or Score. There just aren't that many star players in the NFL. With the Legends players, celebrities and old timers in the set, 330 was doable. A 290/40 ratio would have been good and would have been close to the A&G makeup. 55 short prints is just not right for this set. Oh, but Dayf, it's just 15 more short prints, what's the big deal?

Ok. Short prints are found one in two packs. A set with 40 short prints means with perfect collation you need 80 packs to pull 'em all. There has not ever been, nor will there ever be perfect collation on God's green earth. So let's boost that up 50% to 120 packs. We're looking at 5 boxes here, but you will definitely have at least 95% of the short set if not a full set and then some and a good chunk of the short prints with plenty to trade. Ok, now let's add those 15 extra short prints. 80 packs is now 110. 50% more is now 165. Now we're at about 7 boxes, we've probably got a couple of the short sets put together and if we're lucky we have about 75-85% of the short prints with a big ol' pile to trade. Now let's get a-tradin'. Oh, wait a minute...

WHO IN THE SAM HILL IS GOING TO BE BUILDING THIS SET?!?

Allen & Ginter is a great set for trading, because everybody and their mother collects it and it's easy to swap doubles. Who's collecting Mayo football? The case breakers have already burned all their base cards because they were promised two autos a box and got two autos in a case. Actual football card collectors just want their favorite players and don't want to chase down a needlessly difficult set. The retro set building crowd is distracted by the new 2009 products and is already frothing at the mouth for Heritage baseball to come out. So who is collecting this set? This overpriced, half assed, needlessly difficult bait and switch set?

NOBODY!

Nobody* is collecting this set except the most hardcore retro card set builders who happen to have very deep pockets and don't mind that the hits in the product are mostly garbage. That is not a very large subset of collectors, folks. So even if you do pony up for half a case of this who are you going to trade all those doubles to? Nobody. You're eating those doubles. If you like the set, buy it ready built online and help out a case breaker who is still looking frantically for that Joe Paterno card that will help him pay off the credit card he put that case on after seeing that Topps promo video with the Charlie Sheen card on it.

I wanted to like this set. I really really wanted to like this stupid set. It could have been such a good set. But Topps muffed it. And now it's a bad set and I'm sad. I'm sad because this set now has no future. I'm sad because Topps utterly screwed the pooch. I'm sad just like pixelated Paul Gauguin.

Poor pixelated Paul Gauguin. Why couldn't Topps have left you in Polynesia painting topless native girls and not have dragged you into this mess. Poor Mayo Cut Plug.

*well, nobody except Matt. But that's all! Probably!