November 11, 2013

Choose Your Own Adventure... Fleer


Every Halloween for the last few years, the blog Thorzul Will Rule has hosted a custom baseball card contest. The Nightmares on Cardboard contest has seen some amazing submissions. Each year I am surprised at the creativity that goes into his readers' creations.

I'll admit I have entered a few times. I don't like to brag*, but I've won in the past. I was happy to find out that I won this year's contest too. I wanted to share my entry with the faithful readers of The Baseball Card Blog.

In the past, it would have been easy to share: One post, a few scans of custom cards. This year is a little more difficult... I made quite a few cards. If you read the contest results, you'll see that this year's victory was not much of challenge. There were only two entries. No offense to the runner-up (I loved - LOVED - his entry), but the PunkRockPaint team spent a lot of time and effort on our contest entry.

Each year, Thorzul picks a theme for the contest. The theme for this year's contest was "Fleer." I could think of nothing more horrific than 1991 Fleer. The boring design and the too-bright, yellow color made me hate this set the second it came out. I decided to share the horror with the world. I wanted to do something with cards that I had never seen before. After brainstorming ideas for a couple days, a lightning bolt of inspiration struck...

I decided to make a set of Choose Your Own Adventure cards. Making custom cards is what I do. Writing is not my strong point. Luckily, PunkRockPaint's Vice President of Deep Thoughts, Michael Sherrillo, was willing to devote a few days of his life to help write the story. Since the contest is run by a Brewers fan, and we wanted the story rooted in history, I picked an actual 1990 game around which to base the story. July 23rd, 1990, a Brewers 13-0 victory over the Red Sox, was the game I chose. For the contest, each card was resealed into a separate wax pack of 1991 Fleer cards, stacked back in their original box.



It is a pretty entertaining journey (if I do say so myself.) Fans of the Milwaukee Brewers will find a couple of inside jokes (provided by PunkRockPaint intern and life-long Brewers fan, Matthew Schuster).

If you would like to check the set out, please go to the first card.


*Braggin

2 comments:

Fuji said...

Man... that was insane. That's the most creative thing I've ever seen with cards. You sir... are a genius. Can't wait to see your 2014 contest entry.

Zvon said...

Brilliant stuff!